HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*

CHAPTER X.

CHURCH FATHERS, AND THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

Comp. the general literature on the Fathers in vol. i. § 116, and the special literature in the several sections following.

I.—The Greek Fathers.

 § 161. Eusebius of C sarea.

I. Eusebius Pamphili: Opera omnia Gr. et Lat., curis variorum nempe II. Valesii, Fr. Vigeri, B. Montfaucon, Card. Angelo Maii edita; collegit et denuo recognovit J. P. Migne. Par. (Petit-Montrouge) 1857. 6 vols. (tom. xix.-xxiv. of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca). Of his several works his Church History has been oftenest edited, sometimes by itself, sometimes in connection with his Vita Constantini, and with the church histories of his successors; best by Henr. Valesius (Du Valois), Par. 1659–’73, 8 vols., and Cantabr. 1720, 3 vols., and again 1746 (with additions by G. Reading, best ed.); also (without the later historians) by E. Zimmermann, Francof. 1822; F. A. Heinichen, Lips. 1827–’8, 3 vols.; E. Burton, Oxon. 1838, 2 vols. (1845 and 1856 in 1 vol.); Schwegler, Tüb. 1852; also in various translations: In German by Stroth, Quedlinburg, 1776 ff., 2 vols.; by Closs, Stuttg. 1839; and several times in French and English; in English by Hanmer (1584), T. Shorting, and better by Chr. Fr. Cruse (an Amer. Episcopalian of German descent, died in New York, 1865): The Ecclesiastical History of Euseb. Pamph., etc., Now York, 1856 (10th ed.), and Lond. 1858 (in Bohn’s Eccles. Library). Comp. also the literary notices in Brunet, sub Euseb., and James Darling, Cyclop. Bibliograph. p. 1072 ff.

II. Biographies by Hieronymus (De viris illustr. c. 81, a brief sketch, with a list of his works), Valesius (De vita scriptisque Eusebii Caesar.), W. Cave (Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the Church, vol. ii. pp. 95–144, ed. H. Cary, Oxf. 1840), Heinichen, Stroth, Cruse, and others, in their editions of the Eccles. Hist. of Eusebius. F. C. Baur: Comparatur Eusebius Hist. eccl. parens cum parente Hist. Herodoto. Tub. 1834. Haenell: De Euseb. Caes. religionis christ. defensore. Gott. 1843. Sam. Lee: Introductory treatise in his Engl. edition of the Theophany of Eusebius, Cambr. 1843. Semisch: Art. Eusebius v. Caes. in Herzog’s Encycl. vol. iv. (1855), pp. 229–238. Lyman Coleman: Eusebius as an historian, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, 1858, pp. 78–96. (The biography by Acacius, his successor in the see of Caesarea, Socr. ii. 4, is lost.)

This third period is uncommonly rich in great teachers of the church, who happily united theological ability and practical piety, and who, by their development of the most important dogmas in conflict with mighty errors, earned the gratitude of posterity. They monopolized all the learning and eloquence of the declining Roman empire, and made it subservient to the cause of Christianity for the benefit of future generations. They are justly called fathers of the church; they belong to Christendom without distinction of denominations; and they still, especially Athanasius and Chrysostom among the Greek fathers, and Augustine and Jerome among the Latin, by their writings and their example, hold powerful sway, though with different degrees of authority according to the views entertained by the various churches concerning the supremacy of the Bible and the value of ecclesiastical tradition.

We begin the series of the most important Nicene and post-Nicene divines with Eusebius of Caesarea, the "father of church history," the Christian Herodotus.

He was born about the year 260 or 270, probably in Palestine, and was educated at Antioch, and afterwards at Caesarea in Palestine, under the influence of the works of Origen. He formed an intimate friendship with the learned presbyter Pamphilus,1894 who had collected a considerable biblical and patristic library, and conducted a flourishing theological school which he had founded at Caesarea, till in 309 he died a martyr in the persecution under Diocletian.1895  Eusebius taught for a long time in this school; and after the death of his preceptor and friend, he travelled to Tyre and to Egypt, and was an eye-witness of the cruel scenes of the last great persecution of the Christians. He was imprisoned as a confessor, but soon released.

Twenty years later, when Eusebius, presiding at the council at Tyre (335 or 336), took sides against Athanasius, the bishop Potamon of Hieraclea, according to the account of Epiphanius, exclaimed in his face: "How dost thou, Eusebius, sit as judge of the innocent Athanasius?  Who can bear it?  Why! didst thou not sit with me in prison in the time of the tyrants?  They plucked out my eye for my confession of the truth; thou camest forth unhurt; thou hast suffered nothing for thy confession; unscathed thou art here present. How didst thou escape from prison?  On some other ground than because thou didst promise to do an unlawful thing [to sacrifice to idols]? or, perchance, didst thou actually do this?  "But this insinuation of cowardice and infidelity to Christ arose probably from envy and party passion in a moment of excitement. With such a stain upon him, Eusebius would hardly have been intrusted by the ancient church with the episcopal staff.1896

About the year 315, or earlier, Eusebius was chosen bishop of Caesarea,1897 where he labored till his death in 340. The patriarchate of Antioch, which was conferred upon him after the deposition of Eustathius in 331, he in honorable self-denial, and from preference for a more quiet literary life, declined.

He was drawn into the Arian controversies against his will, and played an eminent part at the council of Nicaea, where he held the post of honor at the right hand of the presiding emperor. In the perplexities of this movement he took middle ground, and endeavored to unite the opposite parties. This brought him, on the one hand, the peculiar favor of the emperor Constantine, but, on the other, from the leaders of the Nicene orthodoxy, the suspicion of a secret leaning to the Arian heresy^.1898  It is certain that, before the council of Nicaea, he sympathized with Arius; that in the council he proposed an orthodox but indefinite compromise-creed; that after the council he was not friendly with Athanasius and other defenders of orthodoxy; and that, in the synod of Tyre, which deposed Athanasius in 335, he took a leading part, and, according to Epiphanius, presided. In keeping with these facts is his silence respecting the Arian controversy (which broke out in 318) in an Ecclesiastical History which comes down to 324, and was probably not completed till 326, when the council of Nicaea would have formed its most fitting close. He would rather close his history with the victory of Constantine over Licinius than with the Creed over which theological parties contended, and with which he himself was implicated. But, on the other hand, it is also a fact that he subscribed the Nicene Creed, though reluctantly, and reserving his own interpretation of the homoousion; that he publicly recommended it to the people of his diocese; and that he never formally rejected it.

The only satisfactory solution of this apparent inconsistency is to be found in his own indecision and leaning to a doctrinal latitudinarianism, not unfrequent in historians who become familiar with a vast variety of opinions in different ages and countries. On the important point of the homoousion he never came to a firm and final conviction. He wavered between the older Origenistic subordinationism and the Nicene orthodoxy. He asserted clearly and strongly with Origen the eternity of the Son, and so far was decidedly opposed to Arianism, which made Christ a creature in time; but he recoiled from the homoousion, because it seemed to him to go beyond the Scriptures, and hence he made no use of the term, either in his book against Marcellus, or in his discourses against Sabellius. Religious sentiment compelled him to acknowledge the full deity of Christ; fear of Sabellianism restrained him. He avoided the strictly orthodox formulas, and moved rather in the less definite terms of former times. Theological acumen he constitutionally lacked. He was, in fact, not a man of controversy, but of moderation and peace. He stood upon the border between the ante-Nicene theology and the Nicene. His doctrine shows the color of each by turns, and reflects the unsettled problem of the church in the first stage of the Arian controversy.1899

With his theological indecision is connected his weakness of character. He was an amiable and pliant court-theologian, and suffered himself to be blinded and carried away by the splendor of the first Christian emperor, his patron and friend. Constantine took him often into his counsels, invited him to his table, related to him his vision of the cross, showed him the famous labarum, listened standing to his occasional sermons, wrote him several letters, and intrusted to him the supervision of the copies of the Bible for the use of the churches in Constantinople.

At the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of this emperor’s reign (336), Eusebius delivered a panegyric decked with the most pompous hyperbole, and after his death, in literal obedience to the maxim: "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum," he glorified his virtues at the expense of veracity and with intentional omission of his faults. With all this, however, he had noble qualities of mind and heart, which in more quiet times would have been an ornament to any episcopal see. And it must be said, to his honor, that he never claimed the favor of the emperor for private ends.

The theological and literary value of Eusebius lies in the province of learning. He was an unwearied reader and collector, and probably surpassed all the other church fathers, hardly excepting even Origen and Jerome, in compass of knowledge and of acquaintance with Grecian literature both heathen and Christian; while in originality, vigor, sharpness, and copiousness of thought, he stands far below Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories. His scholarship goes much further in breadth than in depth, and is not controlled and systematized by a philosophical mind or a critical judgment.

Of his works, the historical are by far the most celebrated and the most valuable; to wit, his Ecclesiastical History, his Chronicle, his Life of Constantine, and a tract on the Martyrs of Palestine in the Diocletian persecution. The position of Eusebius, at the close of the period of persecution, and in the opening of the period of the imperial establishment of Christianity, and his employment of many ancient documents, some of which have since been lost, give these works a peculiar value. He is temperate, upon the whole, impartial, and truth-loving—rare virtues in an age of intense excitement and polemical zeal like that in which he lived. The fact that he was the first to work this important field of theological study, and for many centuries remained a model in it, justly entitles him to his honorable distinction of Father of Church History. Yet he is neither a critical student nor an elegant writer of history, but only a diligent and learned collector. His Ecclesiastical History, from the birth of Christ to the victory of Constantine over Licinius in 324, gives a colorless, defective, incoherent, fragmentary, yet interesting picture of the heroic youth of the church, and owes its incalculable value, not to the historic art of the author, but almost entirely to his copious and mostly literal extracts from foreign, and in some cases now extinct, sources. As concerns the first three centuries, too, it stands alone; for the successors of Eusebius begin their history where he leaves off.

His Chronicle consists of an outline-sketch of universal history down to 325, arranged by ages and nations (borrowed largely from the Chronography of Julius Africanus), and an abstract of this universal chronicle in tabular form. The Greek original is lost, with the exception of unconnected fragments by Syncellus; but the second part, containing the chronological tables, was translated and continued by Jerome to 378, and remained for centuries the source of the synchronistic knowledge of history, and the basis of historical works in Christendom.1900  Jerome also translated, with several corrections and additions, a useful antiquarian work of Eusebius, the so-called Onomasticon, a description of the places mentioned in the Bible.1901

In his Life, and still more in his Eulogy, of Constantine, Eusebius has almost entirely forgotten the dignity of the historian in the zeal of the panegyrist. Nevertheless, this work is the chief source of the history of the reign of his imperial friend.1902

Next in importance to his historical works are his apologetic; namely, his Praeparatio evangelica,1903 and his Demonstratio evangelica.1904 These were both written before 324, and are an arsenal of the apologetic material of the ancient church. The former proposes, in fifteen books, to give a documentary refutation of the heathen religious from Greek writings. The latter gives, in twenty books, of which only the first ten are preserved, the positive argument for the absolute truth of Christianity, from its nature, and from the fulfilment of the prophecies in the Old Testament. The Theophany, in five books, is a popular compend from these two works, and was probably written later, as Epiphanius wrote his Anacephalaeosis after the Panarion, for more general use.1905  It is known in the Greek original from fragments only, published by Cardinal Mai,1906 and now complete in a Syriac version which was discovered in 1839 by Tattam, in a Nitrian monastery, and was edited by Samuel Lee at London in 1842.1907  To this class also belongs his apologetic tract Against Hierocles.1908

Of much less importance are the two dogmatic works of Eusebius: Against Marcellus, and Upon the Church Theology (likewise against Marcellus), in favor of the hypostatical existence of the Son.1909

His Commentaries on several books of the Bible (Isaiah, Psalms, Luke) pursue, without independence, and without knowledge of the Hebrew, the allegorical method of Origen.1910

To these are to be added, finally, some works in Biblical Introduction and Archaeology, the Onomasticon, already alluded to, a sort of sacred geography, and fragments of an enthusiastic Apology for Origen, a juvenile work which he and Pamphilus jointly produced before 309, and which, in the Origenistic controversy, was the target of the bitterest shots of Epiphanius and Jerome.1911

 § 162. The Church Historians after Eusebius.

I. The Church Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Evagrius, Philostorgius, and Theodorus Lector have been edited, with the Eccles. Hist. of Eusebius, by Valesius, Par. 1659–’73, in 3 vols. (defective reprint, Frankf. a. M. 1672–’79); best ed., Cambridge, 1720, and again 1746, in 3 vols., with improvements and additions by Guil. Reading. Best English translation by Meredith, Hanmer, and Wye Saltonstall, Cambr. 1688, 1692, and London, 1709. New ed. in Bohn’s Ecclesiastical Library, Land. 1851, in 4 vols. small 8vo.

II. F. A. Holzhausen: De fontibus, quibus Socrates, Sozomenus, ac Theodoretus in scribenda historia sacra usi sunt. Gött. 1825. G. Dangers: De fontibus, indole et dignitate librorum Theod. Lectoris et Evagrii. Gött. 1841. J. G. Dowling: An Introduction to the Critical Study of Eccl. History. Lond. 1838, p. 84 ff. F. Chr. Baur: Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Tüb. 1852, pp. 7–32. Comp. P. Schaff: History of the Apostolic Church, Gen. Introd. p. 52 f.

Eusebius, without intending it, founded a school of church historians, who continued the thread of his story from Constantine the Great to the close of the sixth century, and, like him, limited themselves to a simple, credulous narration of external facts, and a collection of valuable documents, without an inkling of the critical sifting, philosophical mastery, and artistic reproduction of material, which we find in Thucydides and Tacitus among the classics, and in many a modern historian. None of them touched the history of the first three centuries; Eusebius was supposed to have done here all that could be desired. The histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret run nearly parallel, but without mutual acquaintance or dependence, and their contents are very similar.1912  Evagrius carried the narrative down to the close of the sixth century. All of them combine ecclesiastical and political history, which after Constantine were inseparably interwoven in the East; and (with the exception of Philostorgius) all occupy essentially the same orthodox stand-point. They ignore the Western church, except where it comes in contact with the East.

These successors of Eusebius are:

Socrates, an attorney or scholasticus in Constantinople, born in 380. His work, in seven books, covers the period from 306 to 439, and is valuable for its numerous extracts from sources, and its calm, impartial representation. It has been charged with a leaning towards Novatianism. He had upon the whole a higher view of the duty of the historian than his contemporaries and successors; he judged more liberally of heretics and schismatics, and is less extravagant in the praise of emperors and bishops.1913

Hermias Sozomen, a native of Palestine, a junior contemporary of Socrates, and likewise a scholasticus in Constantinople, wrote the history of the church, in nine books, from 323 to the death of Honorius in 423,1914 and hence in its subjects keeps pace for the most part with Socrates, though, as it would appear, without the knowledge of his work, and with many additions on the history of the hermits and monks, for whom he had a great predilection.1915

Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, was born at Antioch about 390, of an honorable and pious mother; educated in the cloister of St. Euprepius (perhaps with Nestorius); formed upon the writings of Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia; made bishop of Cyros, or Cyrrhos, in Syria, after 420; and died in 457. He is known to us from the Christological controversies as the most scholarly advocate of the Antiochian dyophysitism or moderate Nestorianism; condemned at Ephesus in 431, deposed by the council of Robbers in 449, acquitted in 451 by the fourth ecumenical council on condition of his condemning Nestorius and all deniers of the theotokos, but again partially condemned at the fifth long after his death. He was, therefore, like Eusebius, an actor as well as an author of church history. As bishop, he led an exemplary life, his enemies themselves being judges, and was especially benevolent to the poor. He owned nothing valuable but books, and applied the revenues of his bishopric to the public good. He shared the superstitions and weaknesses of his age.

His Ecclesiastical History, in five books, composed about 450, reaches from 325 to 429. It is the most valuable continuation of Eusebius, and, though shorter, it furnishes an essential supplement to the works of Socrates and Sozomen.

His "Historia religiosa" consists of biographies of hermits and monks, written with great enthusiasm for ascetic holiness, and with many fabulous accessories, according to the taste of the day. His "Heretical Fables,"1916 though superficial and marred by many errors, is of some importance for the history of Christian doctrine. It contains a severe condemnation of Nestorius, which we should hardly expect from Theodoret.1917

Theodoret was a very fruitful author. Besides these histories, he wrote valuable commentaries on most of the books of the Old Testament and on all the Epistles of Paul; dogmatic and polemic works against Cyril and the Alexandrian Christology, and against the heretics; an apology of Christianity against the Greek philosophy; and sermons and letters.1918

Evagrius (born about 536 in Syria, died after 594) was a lawyer in Antioch, and rendered the patriarch Gregory great service, particularly in an action for incest in 588. He was twice married, and the Antiochians celebrated his second wedding (592) with public plays. He is the last continuator of Eusebius and Theodoret, properly so called. He begins his Ecclesiastical History of six books with the council of Ephesus, 431, and closes it with the twelfth year of the reign of the emperor Maurice, 594. He is of special importance on the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies; gives accounts of bishops and monks, churches and public buildings, earthquakes and other calamities; and interweaves political history, such as the wars of Chosroes and the assaults of the barbarians.1919  He was strictly orthodox, and a superstitious venerator of monks, saints, and relics.1920

Theodorus Lector, reader in the church of Constantinople about 525, compiled an abstract from Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, under the title of Historia tripartita, which is still extant in the manuscript;1921 and composed a continuation of Socrates from 431 to 518, of which fragments only are preserved in John Damascenus, Nilus, and Nicephorus Callisti.1922

Of Philostorgius, an Arian church historian (born in 368), nothing has come down to us but fragments in Photius; and these breathe so strong a partisan spirit, that the loss of the rest is not to be regretted. He described the period from the commencement of the Arian controversy to the reign of Valentinian III. a.d. 423.

The series of the Greek church historians closes with Nicephorus Callistus or Callisti (i.e., son of Callistus),1923 who lived at Constantinople in the fifteenth century. He was surprised that the voice of history had been silent since the sixth century, and resumed the long-neglected task where his predecessors had left it, but on a more extended plan of a general history of the catholic church from the beginning to the year 911. We have, however, only eighteen books to the death of emperor Phocas in 610, and a list of contents of five other books. He made large use of Eusebius and his successors, and added unreliable traditions of the later days of the Apostles, the history of Monophysitism, of monks and saints, of the barbarian irruptions, &c. He, too, ignores the Pelagian controversy, and takes little notice of the Latin church after the fifth century.1924

In the Latin church—to anticipate thus much—Eusebius found only one imitator and continuator, the presbyter and monk Rufinus, of Aquileia (330–410). He was at first a friend of Jerome, afterwards a bitter enemy. He translated, with abridgments and insertions at his pleasure, the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, and continued it to Theodosius the Great (392). Yet his continuation has little value. He wrote also biographies of hermits; an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed; and translations of several works of Origen, with emendations of offensive portions.1925

Cassiodorus, consul and monk (died about 562), composed a useful abstract of the works of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, in twelve books, under the title of Historia tripartita, for the Latin church of the middle age.

The only properly original contributions to church history from among the Latin divines were those of Jerome († 419) in his biographical and literary Catalogue of Illustrious Men (written in 392), which Gennadius, a Semi-Pelagian presbyter of South Gaul, continued to the year 495. Sulpicius Severus († 420) wrote in good style a Sacred History, or History of the Old and New Testament, from the creation down to the year 400; and Paulus Orosius (about 415) an apologetic Universal History, which hardly, however, deserves the name of a history.

 § 163. Athanasius the Great.

I. S. Athanasius: Opera omnia quae extant vel quae ejus nomine circumferuntur, etc., Gr. et lat., opera et studio monachorum ordinis S. Benedicti e congregatione S. Mauri (Jac. Lopin et B. de, Montfaucon). Paris, 1698. 3 tom. fol. (or rather 2 tomi, the first in two parts). This is the most elegant and correct edition, but must be completed by two volumes of the Collectio nova Patrum, ed. B. de Montfaucon. Par. 1706. 2 tom. fol. More complete, but not so handsome, is the edition of 1777, Patav., in 4 vols. fol. (Brunet says of the latter "Édition moins belle et moins chère quo cello de Paris, mais augmentée d’un 4^e vol., lequel renferme les opuscules de S. Athan., tirés de la Collectio nova du P. Montfaucon et des Anecdota de Wolf, et de plus l’interpretatio Psalmorum.")  But now both these older editions need again to be completed by the Syrian Festal Letters of Athanasius, discovered by Dr. Tattam in a Nitrian monastery in 1843; edited by W. Cureton in Syriac and English at London in 1846 and 1848 (and in English by H. Burgess and H. Williams, Oxf. 1854, in the Libr. of the Fathers); in German, with notes by F. Larson, at Leipzig in 1852; and in Syriac and Latin by Card. Angelo Mai in the Nova Patr. Bibliotheca, Rom. 1853, tom. vi. pp. 1–168. A new and more salable, though less accurate, edition of the Opera omnia Athan. (a reprint of the Benedictine) appeared at Petit-Montrouge (Par.) in J.P. Migne’s Patrologia Gr. (tom. xxv.-xxviii.), 1857, in 4 vols.

The more important dogmatic works of Athanasius have been edited separately by J. C. Thilo, in the first volume of the Bibliotheca Patrum Graec. dogmatica, Lips. 1853; and in an English translation, with explanations and indexes, by J. H. Newman, Oxf. 1842–’44 (Library of the Fathers, vols. 8, 13, 19).

II. Gregorius Naz.: Oratio panegyrica in Magnum Athanasium (Orat. xxi.). Several Vitae Athan. in the 1st vol. of the Bened. ed. of his Opera. Acta Sanctorum for May 2d. G. Hermant: La Vie d’Athanase, etc. Par. 1679. 2 vols. Tillemont: Mémoires, vol. viii. pp. 2–258 (2d ed. Par. 1713). W. Cave: Lives of the most eminent Fathers of the first Four Centuries, vol. ii. pp. 145–364 (Oxf. ed. of 1840). Schröckh: Th. xii. pp. 101–270. J. A. Möhler: Athanasius der Grosse und die Kirche seiner Zeit, besonders im Kampfe mit dem Arianismus. Mainz, 1827. 2d (title) ed. 1844. Heinrich Voigt: Die Lehre des heiligen Athanasius von Alexandria oder die kirchliche Dogmatik des 4ten Jahrhunderts auf Grund der biblischen Lehre vom Logos. Bremen, 1861. A. P. Stanley: Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church. New York, 1862, lecture vii. (pp. 322–358).

Athanasius is the theological and ecclesiastical centre, as his senior contemporary Constantine is the political and secular, about which the Nicene age revolves. Both bear the title of the Great; the former with the better right, that his greatness was intellectual and moral, and proved itself in suffering, and through years of warfare against mighty, errors and against the imperial court. Athanasius contra mundum, et mundus contra Athanasium, is a well-known sentiment which strikingly expresses his fearless independence and immovable fidelity to his convictions. He seems to stand an unanswerable contradiction to the catholic maxim of authority: Quod sem per, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est, and proves that truth is by no means always on the side of the majority, but may often be very unpopular. The solitary Athanasius even in exile, and under the ban of council and emperor, was the bearer of the truth, and, as he was afterwards named, the "father of orthodoxy."1926

On a martyrs’ day in 313 the bishop Alexander of Alexandria saw a troop of boys imitating the church services in innocent sport, Athanasius playing the part of bishop, and performing baptism by immersion.1927  He caught in this a glimpse of future greatness; took the youth into his care; and appointed him his secretary, and afterwards his archdeacon. Athanasius studied the classics, the Holy Scriptures, and the church fathers, and meantime lived as an ascetic. He already sometimes visited St. Anthony in his solitude.

In the year 325 he accompanied his bishop to the council of Nicaea, and at once distinguished himself there by his zeal and ability in refuting Arianism and vindicating the eternal deity of Christ, and incurred the hatred of this heretical party, which raised so many storms about his life.

In the year 3281928 he was nominated to the episcopal succession of Alexandria, on the recommendation of the dying Alexander, and by the voice of the people, though not yet of canonical age, and at first disposed to avoid the election by flight; and thus he was raised to the highest ecclesiastical dignity of the East. For the bishop of Alexandria was at the same time metropolitan of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis.

But now immediately began the long series of contests with the Arian party, which had obtained influence at the court of Constantine, and had induced the emperor to recall Arius and his adherents from exile. Henceforth the personal fortunes of Athanasius are so inseparably interwoven with the history of the Arian controversy that Nicene and Athanasian are equivalent terms, and the different depositions and restorations of Athanasius denote so many depressions and victories of the Nicene orthodoxy. Five times did the craft and power of his opponents, upon the pretext of all sorts of personal and political offences, but in reality on account of his inexorable opposition to the Arian and Semi-Arian heresy, succeed in deposing and banishing him. The first exile he spent in Treves, the second chiefly in Rome, the third with the monks in the Egyptian desert; and he employed them in the written defence of his righteous cause. Then the Arian party, was distracted, first by internal division, and further by the death of the emperor Constantius (361), who was their chief support. The pagan Julian recalled the banished bishops of both parties, in the hope that they might destroy one another. Thus, Athanasius among them, who was the most downright opposite of the Christian-hating emperor, again received his bishopric. But when, by his energetic and wise administration, he rather restored harmony in his diocese, and sorely injured paganism, which he feared far less than Arianism, and thus frustrated the cunning plan of Julian, the emperor resorted to violence, and banished him as a dangerous disturber of the peace. For the fourth time Athanasius left Alexandria, but calmed his weeping friends with the prophetic words: "Be of good cheer; it is only a cloud, which will soon pass over."  By presence of mind he escaped from an imperial ship on the Nile, which had two hired assassins on board. After Julian’s death in 362 he was again recalled by Jovian. But the next emperor Valens, an Arian, issued in 367 an edict which again banished all the bishops who had been deposed under Constantius and restored by Julian. The aged Athanasius was obliged for the fifth time to leave his beloved flock, and kept himself concealed more than four months in the tomb of his father. Then Valens, boding ill from the enthusiastic adherence of the Alexandrians to their orthodox bishop, repealed the edict.

From this time Athanasius had peace, and still wrote, at a great age, with the vigor of youth, against Apollinarianism. In the year 3731929 he died, after an administration of nearly forty-six years, but before the conclusion of the Arian war. He had secured by his testimony the final victory of orthodoxy, but, like Moses, was called away from the earthly scene before the goal was reached.

Athanasius, like many great men (from David and Paul to Napoleon and Schleiermacher), was very small of stature,1930 somewhat stooping and emaciated by fasting and many troubles, but fair of countenance, with a piercing eye and a personal appearance of great power even over his enemies.1931  His omnipresent activity, his rapid and his mysterious movements, his fearlessness, and his prophetic insight into the future, were attributed by his friends to divine assistance, by his enemies to a league with evil powers. Hence the belief in his magic art.1932  His congregation in Alexandria and the people and monks of Egypt were attached to him through all the vicissitudes of his tempestuous life with equal fidelity and veneration. Gregory Nazianzen begins his enthusiastic panegyric with the words: "When I praise Athanasius, I praise virtue itself, because he combines all virtues in himself."  Constantine the Younger called him "the man of God;" Theodoret, "the great enlightener;" and John of Damascus, the corner-stone of the church of God."

All this is, indeed, very hyperbolical, after the fashion of degenerate Grecian rhetoric. Athanasius was not free from the faults of his age. But he is, on the whole, one of the purest, most imposing, and most venerable personages in the history of the church; and this judgment will now be almost universally accepted.1933

He was (and there are few such) a theological and churchly character in magnificent, antique style. He was a man of one mould and one idea, and in this respect one-sided; yet in the best sense, as the same is true of most great men who are borne along with a mighty and comprehensive thought, and subordinate all others to it. So Paul lived and labored for Christ crucified, Gregory VII. for the Roman hierarchy, Luther for the doctrine of justification by faith, Calvin for the idea of the sovereign grace of God. It was the passion and the life-work of Athanasius to vindicate the deity of Christ, which he rightly regarded as the corner-stone of the edifice of the Christian faith, and without which he could conceive no redemption. For this truth he spent all his time and strength; for this he suffered deposition and twenty years of exile; for this he would have been at any moment glad to pour out his blood. For his vindication of this truth he was much hated, much loved, always respected or feared. In the unwavering conviction that he had the right and the protection of God on his side, he constantly disdained to call in the secular power for his ecclesiastical ends, and to degrade himself to an imperial courtier, as his antagonists often did.

Against the Arians he was inflexible, because he believed they hazarded the essence of Christianity itself, and he allowed himself the most invidious and the most contemptuous terms. He calls them polytheists, atheists, Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, spies, worse persecutors than the heathen, liars, dogs, wolves, antichrists, and devils. But he confined himself to spiritual weapons, and never, like his successor Cyril a century later, used nor counselled measures of force. He suffered persecution, but did not practise it; he followed the maxim: Orthodoxy should persuade faith, not force it.

Towards the unessential errors of good men, like those of Marcellus of Ancyra, he was indulgent. Of Origen he spoke with esteem, and with gratitude for his services, while Epiphanius, and even Jerome, delighted to blacken his memory and burn his bones. To the suspicions of the orthodoxy of Basil, whom, by the way, be never personally knew, he gave no ear, but pronounced his liberality a justifiable condescension to the weak. When he found himself compelled to write against Apollinaris, whom he esteemed and loved, he confined himself to the refutation of his error, without the mention of his name. He was more concerned for theological ideas than for words and formulas; even upon the shibboleth homoousios he would not obstinately insist, provided only the great truth of the essential and eternal Godhead of Christ were not sacrificed. At his last appearance in public, as president of the council of Alexandria in 362, he acted as mediator and reconciler of the contending parties, who, notwithstanding all their discord in the use of the terms ousia and hypostasis, were one in the ground-work of their faith.

No one of all the Oriental fathers enjoyed so high consideration in the Western church as Athanasius. His personal sojourn in Rome and Treves, and his knowledge of the Latin tongue, contributed to this effect. He transplanted monasticism to the West. But it was his advocacy of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity that, more than all, gave him his Western reputation. Under his name the Symbolum Quicunque, of much later, and probably of French, origin, has found universal acceptance in the Latin church, and has maintained itself to this day in living use. His name is inseparable from the conflicts and the triumph of the doctrine of the holy Trinity.

As an author, Athanasius is distinguished for theological depth and discrimination, for dialectical skill, and sometimes for fulminating eloquence. He everywhere evinces a triumphant intellectual superiority over his antagonists, and shows himself a veritable malleus haereticorum. He pursues them into all their hiding-places, and refutes all their arguments and their sophisms, but never loses sight of the main point of the controversy, to which he ever returns with renewed force. His views are governed by a strict logical connection; but his stormy fortunes prevented him from composing a large systematic work. Almost all his writings are occasional, wrung from him by circumstances; not a few of them were hastily written in exile.

They may be divided as follows:

1. Apologetic works in defence of Christianity. Among these are the two able and enthusiastic kindred productions of his youth (composed before 325): "A Discourse against the Greeks," and "On the Incarnation of the Divine Word,)"1934 which he already looked upon as the central idea of the Christian religion.

2. Dogmatic and Controversial works in defence of the Nicene faith; which are at the same time very important to the history of the Arian controversies. Of these the following are directed against Arianism: An Encyclical Letter to all Bishops (written in 341); On the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea (352); On the Opinion of Dionysius of Alexandria (352); An Epistle to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya (356); four Orations against the Arians (358); A Letter to Serapion on the Death of Arius (358 or 359); A History of the Arians to the Monks (between 358 and 360). To these are to be added four Epistles to Serapion on the Deity of the Holy Spirit (358), and two books Against Apollinaris, in defence of the full humanity of Christ (379).

3. Works in his own Personal Defence: An Apology against the Arians (350); an Apology to Constantius (356); an Apology concerning his Flight (De fuga, 357 or 358); and several letters.

4. Exegetical works; especially a Commentary on the Psalms, in which he everywhere finds types and prophecies of Christ and the church, according to the extravagant allegorizing method of the Alexandrian school; and a synopsis or compendium of the Bible. But the genuineness of these unimportant works is by many doubted.1935

5. Ascetic and Practical works. Chief among these are his "Life of St. Anthony," composed about 365, or at all events after the death of Anthony,1936 and his "Festal Letters," which have but recently become known.1937  The Festal Letters give us a glimpse of his pastoral fidelity as bishop, and throw new light also on many of his doctrines, and on the condition of the church in his time. In these letters Athanasius, according to Alexandrian custom, announced annually, at Epiphany, to the clergy and congregations of Egypt, the time of the next Easter, and added edifying observations on passages of Scripture, and timely exhortations. These were read in the churches, during the Easter season, especially on Palm-Sunday. As Athanasius was bishop forty-five years, he would have written that number of Festal Letters, if he had not been several times prevented by flight or sickness. The letters were written in Greek, but soon translated into Syriac, and lay buried for centuries in the dust of a Nitrian cloister, till the research of Protestant Scholarship brought them again to the light.

 § 164. Basil the Great.

I. S. Basilius Caes. Cappad. archiepisc.: Opera omnia quae exstant vel quae ejus nomine circumferuntur, Gr. et Lat. ed. Jul. Garnier, presbyter and monk of the Bened. order. Paris, 1721–’30. 3 vols. fol. Eadem ed. Parisina altera, emendata et aucta a Lud. de Sinner, Par. (Gaume Fratres) 1839, 8 tomi in 6 Partes (an elegant and convenient ed.). Reprinted also by Migne, Par. 1857, in 4 vols. (Patrol. Gr. tom xxix, xxxii.). The first edition of St. Basil was superintended by Erasmus with Froben in Basle, 1532. Comp. also Opera Bas. dogmatica selecta in Thilo’s Bibl. Patr. Gr. dogm. vol. ii. Lips. 1854 (under care of J. D. H. Goldhorn, and containing the Libri iii. adversus Eunomium, and Liber i. de Spiritu Sancto).

II. Ancient accounts and descriptions of Basil in the funeral discourses and eulogies of Gregory Naz. (Oratio xliii.), Gregory Nyss., Amphilochius, Ephraem Syrus. Garnier: Vita S. Basilii, in his edition of the Opera, tom. iii. pp. xxxviii.-ccliv. (in the new Paris ed. of 1839; or tom. i. in Migne’s reprint). Comp. also the Vitae in the Acta Sanctorum, sub Jan. 14, by Hermant, Tillemont (tom. ix.), Fabricius (Bibl. tom. ix.), Cave, Pfeiffer, Schröckh (Part xiii. pp. 8–220), Böhringer, W. Klose (Basilius der Grosse, Stralsund, 1835), and Fialon (Etude historique et littéraire sur S. Basile, Par. 1866).

The Asiatic province of Cappadocia produced in the fourth century the three distinguished church teachers, Basil and the two Gregories, who stand in strong contrast with the general character of their countrymen; for the Cappadocians are described as a cowardly, servile, and deceitful race.1938

Basil was born about the year 329,1939 at Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, in the bosom of a wealthy and pious family, whose ancestors had distinguished themselves as martyrs. The seed of piety had been planted in him by his grandmother, St. Macrina, and his mother, St. Emmelia. He had four brothers and five sisters, who all led a religious life; two of his brothers, Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, and Peter, bishop of Sebaste, and his sister, Macrina the Younger, are, like himself, among the saints of the Eastern church. He received his literary education at first from his father, who was a rhetorician; afterwards at school in Constantinople (347), where he enjoyed the instruction and personal esteem of the celebrated Libanius; and in Athens, where he spent several years, between 351 and 355,1940 studying rhetoric, mathematics, and philosophy, in company with his intimate friend Gregory Nazianzen, and at the same time with prince Julian the Apostate.

Athens, partly through its ancient renown and its historical traditions, partly by excellent teachers of philosophy and eloquence, Sophists, as they were called in an honorable sense, among whom Himerius and Proaeresius were at that time specially conspicuous, was still drawing a multitude of students from all quarters of Greece, and even from the remote provinces of Asia. Every Sophist had his own school and party, which was attached to him with incredible zeal, and endeavored to gain every newly arriving student to its master. In these efforts, as well as in the frequent literary contests and debates of the various schools among themselves, there was not seldom much rude and wild behavior. To youth who were not yet firmly grounded in Christianity, residence in Athens, and occupation with the ancient classics, were full of temptation, and might easily kindle an enthusiasm for heathenism, which, however, had already lost its vitality, and was upheld solely by the artificial means of magic, theurgy, and an obscure mysticism.1941

Basil and Gregory remained steadfast, and no poetical or rhetorical glitter could fade the impressions of a pious training. Gregory says of their studies in Athens, in his forty-third Oration:1942 "We knew only two streets of the city, the first and the more excellent one to the churches, and to the ministers of the altar; the other, which, however, we did not so highly esteem, to the public schools and to the teachers of the sciences. The streets to the theatres, games, and places of unholy amusements, we left to others. Our holiness was our great concern; our sole aim was to be called and to be Christians. In this we placed our whole glory."1943 In a later oration on classic studies Basil encourages them, but admonishes that they should be pursued with caution, and with constant regard to the great Christian purpose of eternal life, to which all earthly objects and attainments are as shadows and dreams to reality. In plucking the rose one should beware of the thorns, and, like the bee, should not only delight himself with the color and the fragrance, but also gain useful honey from the flower.1944

The intimate friendship of Basil and Gregory, lasting from fresh, enthusiastic youth till death, resting on an identity of spiritual and moral aims, and sanctified by Christian piety, is a lovely and engaging chapter in the history of the fathers, and justifies a brief episode in a field not yet entered by any church historian.

With all the ascetic narrowness of the time, which fettered even these enlightened fathers, they still had minds susceptible to science and art and the beauties of nature. In the works of Basil and of the two Gregories occur pictures of nature such as we seek in vain in the heathen classics. The descriptions of natural scenery among the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome can be easily compressed within a few pages. Socrates, as we learn from Plato, was of the opinion that we can learn nothing from trees and fields, and hence he never took a walk; he was so bent upon self-knowledge, as the true aim of all learning, that he regarded the whole study of nature as useless, because it did not tend to make man either more intelligent or more virtuous. The deeper sense of the beauty of nature is awakened by the religion of revelation alone, which teaches us to see everywhere in creation the traces of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of God. The book of Ruth, the book of Job, many Psalms, particularly the 104th, and the parables, are without parallel in Grecian or Roman literature. The renowned naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, collected some of the most beautiful descriptions of nature from the fathers for his purposes.1945  They are an interesting proof of the transfiguring power of the spirit of Christianity even upon our views of nature.

A breath of sweet sadness runs through them, which is entirely foreign to classical antiquity. This is especially manifest in Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil. "When I see," says he, for example, "every rocky ridge, every valley, every plain, covered with new-grown grass; and then the variegated beauty of the trees, and at my feet the lilies doubly enriched by nature with sweet odors and gorgeous colors; when I view in the distance the sea, to which the changing cloud leads out—my soul is seized with sadness which is not without delight. And when in autumn fruits disappear, leaves fall, boughs stiffen, stripped of their beauteous dress—we sink with the perpetual and regular vicissitude into the harmony of wonder-working nature. He who looks through this with the thoughtful eye of the soul, feels the littleness of man in the greatness of the universe."1946  Yet we find sunny pictures also, like the beautiful description of spring in an oration of Gregory Nazianzen on the martyr Mamas.1947

A second characteristic of these representations of nature, and for the church historian the most important, is the reference of earthly beauty to an eternal and heavenly principle, and that glorification of God in the works of creation, which transplanted itself from the Psalms and the book of Job into the Christian church. In his homilies on the history of the Creation, Basil describes the mildness of the serene nights in Asia Minor, where the stars, "the eternal flowers of heaven, raised the spirit of man from the visible to the invisible."  In the oration just mentioned, after describing the spring in the most lovely and life-like colors, Gregory Nazianzen proceeds: "Everything praises God and glorifies Him with unutterable tones; for everything shall thanks be offered also to God by me, and thus shall the song of those creatures, whose song of praise I here utter, be also ours .... Indeed it is now [alluding to the Easter festival] the spring-time of the world, the spring-time of the spirit, spring-time for souls, spring-time for bodies, a visible spring, an invisible spring, in which we also shall there have part, if we here be rightly transformed, and enter as new men upon a new life."  Thus the earth becomes a vestibule of heaven, the beauty of the body is consecrated an image of the beauty of the spirit.

The Greek fathers placed the beauty of nature above the works of art, having a certain prejudice against art on account of the heathen abuses of it. "If thou seest a splendid building, and the view of its colonnades would transport thee, look quickly at the vault of the heavens and the open fields, on which the flocks are feeding on the shore of the sea. Who does not despise every creation of art, when in the silence of the heart he early wonders at the rising sun, as it pours its golden (crocus-yellow) light over the horizon? when, resting at a spring in the deep grass or under the dark shade of thick trees, he feeds his eye upon the dim vanishing distance?"  So Chrysostom exclaims from his monastic solitude near Antioch, and Humboldt1948 adds the ingenious remark: "It was as if eloquence had found its element, its freedom, again at the fountain of nature in the then wooded mountain regions of Syria and Asia Minor."

In the rough times of the first introduction of Christianity among the Celtic and Germanic tribes, who had worshipped the dismal powers of nature in rude symbols, an opposition to intercourse with nature appeared, like that which we find in Tertullian to pagan art; and church assemblies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at Tours (1163) and at Paris (1209), forbid the monks the sinful reading of books on nature, till the renowned scholastics, Albert, the Great († 1280), and the gifted Roger Bacon († 1294), penetrated the mysteries of nature and raised the study of it again to consideration and honor.

We now return to the life of Basil. After finishing his studies in Athens he appeared in his native city of Caesarea as a rhetorician. But he soon after (a.d. 360) took a journey to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to become acquainted with the monastic life; and he became more and more enthusiastic for it. He distributed his property to the poor, and withdrew to a lonely romantic district in Pontus, near the cloister in which his mother Emmelia, with his sister Macrina, and other pious and cultivated virgins, were living. "God has shown me," he wrote to his friend Gregory, "a region which exactly suits my mode of life; it is, in truth, what in our happy jestings we often wished. What imagination showed us in the distance, that I now see before me. A high mountain, covered with thick forest, is watered towards the north by fresh perennial streams. At the foot of the mountain a wide plain spreads out, made fruitful by the vapors which moisten it. The surrounding forest, in which many varieties of trees crowd together, shuts me off like a strong castle. The wilderness is bounded by two deep ravines. On one side the stream, where it rushes foaming down from the mountain, forms a barrier hard to cross; on the other a broad ridge obstructs approach. My hut is so placed upon the summit, that I overlook the broad plain, as well as the whole course of the Iris, which is more beautiful and copious than the Strymon near Amphipolis. The river of my wilderness, more rapid than any other that I know, breaks upon the wall of projecting rock, and rolls foaming into the abyss: to the mountain traveller, a charming, wonderful sight; to the natives, profitable for its abundant fisheries. Shall I describe to you the fertilizing vapors which rise from the (moistened) earth, the cool air which rises from the (moving) mirror of the water?  Shall I tell of the lovely singing of the birds and the richness of blooming plants?  What delights me above all is the silent repose of the place. It is only now and then visited by huntsmen; for my wilderness nourishes deer and herds of wild goats, not your bears and your wolves. How would I exchange a place with him?  Alcmaeon, after he had found the Echinades, wished to wander no further."1949

This romantic picture shows that the monastic life had its ideal and poetic side for cultivated minds. In this region Basil, free from all cares, distractions, and interruptions of worldly life, thought that he could best serve God. "What is more blessed than to imitate on earth the choir of angels, at break of day to rise to prayer, and praise the Creator with anthems and songs; then go to labor in the clear radiance of the sun, accompanied everywhere by prayer, seasoning work with praise, as if with salt?  Silent solitude is the beginning of purification of the soul. For the mind, if it be not disturbed from without, and do not lose itself through the senses in the world, withdraws into itself, and rises to thoughts of God."  In the Scriptures he found, "as in a store of all medicines, the true remedy for his sickness."

Nevertheless, he had also to find that flight from the city was not flight from his own self. "I have well forsaken," says he in his second Epistle,1950 "my residence in the city as a source of a thousand evils, but I have not been able to forsake myself. l am like a man who, unaccustomed to the sea, becomes seasick, and gets out of the large ship, because it rocks more, into a small skiff, but still even there keeps the dizziness and nausea. So is it with me; for while I carry about with me the passions which dwell in me, I am everywhere tormented with the same restlessness, so that I really get not much help from this solitude."  In the sequel of the letter, and elsewhere, he endeavors, however, to show that seclusion from worldly business, celibacy, solitude, perpetual occupation with the Holy Scriptures, and with the life of godly men, prayer and contemplation, and a corresponding ascetic severity of outward life, are necessary for taming the wild passions, and for attaining the true quietness of the soul.

He succeeded in drawing his friend Gregory to himself. Together they prosecuted their prayer, studies, and manual labor; made extracts from the works of Origen, which we possess, under the name of Philocalia, as the joint work of the two friends; and wrote monastic rules which contributed largely to extend and regulate the coenobite life.

In the year 364 Basil was made presbyter against his will, and in 370, with the co-operation of Gregory and his father, was elected bishop of Caesarea and metropolitan of all Cappadocia. In this capacity he had fifty country bishops under him, and devoted himself thenceforth to the direction of the church and the fighting of Arianism, which had again come into power through the emperor Valens in the East. He endeavored to secure to the catholic faith the victory, first by close connection with the orthodox West, and then by a certain liberality in accepting as sufficient, in regard to the not yet symbolically settled doctrine of the Holy Ghost, that the Spirit should not be considered a creature. But the strict orthodox party, especially the monks, demanded the express acknowledgment of the divinity of the Holy Ghost, and violently opposed Basil. The Arians pressed him still more. The emperor wished to reduce Cappadocia to the heresy, and threatened the bishop by his prefects with confiscation, banishment, and death. Basil replied: "Nothing more?  Not one of these things touches me. His property cannot be forfeited, who has none; banishment I know not, for I am restricted to no place, and am the guest of God, to whom the whole earth belongs; for martyrdom I am unfit, but death is a benefactor to me, for it sends me more quickly to God, to whom I live and move; I am also in great part already dead, and have been for a long time hastening to the grave."

The emperor was about to banish him, when his son, six years of age, was suddenly taken sick, and the physicians gave up all hope. Then he sent for Basil, and his son recovered, though he died soon after. The imperial prefect also recovered from a sickness, and ascribed his recovery to the prayer of the bishop, towards whom he had previously behaved haughtily. Thus this danger was averted by special divine assistance.

But other difficulties, perplexities, and divisions, continually met him, to obstruct the attainment of his desire, the restoration of the peace of the church. These storms, and all sorts of hostilities, early wasted his body. He died in 379, two years before the final victory of the Nicene orthodoxy, with the words: "Into Thy hands, O Lord I commit my spirit; Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth."1951  He was borne to the grave by a deeply sorrowing multitude.

Basil was poor, and almost always sickly; he had only a single worn-out garment, and ate almost nothing but bread, salt, and herbs. The care of the poor and sick he took largely upon himself. He founded in the vicinity of Caesarea that magnificent hospital, Basilias, which we have already mentioned, chiefly for lepers, who were often entirely abandoned in those regions, and left to the saddest fate; he himself took in the sufferers, treated them as brethren, and, in spite of their revolting condition, was not afraid to kiss them.1952

Basil is distinguished as a pulpit orator and as a theologian, and still more as a shepherd of souls and a church ruler; and in the history of monasticism he holds a conspicuous place.1953  In classical culture he yields to none of his contemporaries, and is justly placed with the two Gregories among the very first writers among the Greek fathers. His style is pure, elegant, and vigorous. Photius thought that one who wished to become a panegyrist, need take neither Demosthenes nor Cicero for his model, but Basil only.

Of his works, his Five Books against Eunomius, written in 361, in defence of the deity of Christ, and his work on the Holy Ghost, written in 375, at the request of his friend Amphilochius, are important to the history of doctrine.1954  He at first, from fear of Sabellianism, recoiled from the strong doctrine of the homoousia; but the persecution of the Arians drove him to a decided confession. Of importance in the East is the Liturgy ascribed to him, which, with that of St. Chrysostom, is still in use, but has undoubtedly reached its present form by degrees. We have also from St. Basil nine Homilies on the history of the Creation, which are full of allegorical fancies, but enjoyed the highest esteem in the ancient church, and were extensively used by Ambrose and somewhat by Augustine, in similar works;1955 Homilies on the Psalms; Homilies on various subjects; several ascetic and moral treatises;1956 and three hundred and sixty-five Epistles,1957 which furnish much information concerning his life and times.

 § 165. Gregory of Nyssa.

I. S. Gregorius Nyssenus: Opera omnia, quae reperiri potuerunt, Gr. et Lat., nunc primum e mss. codd. edita, stud. Front. Ducaei (Fronto le Duc, a learned Jesuit). Paris, 1615, 2 vols. fol. To be added to this. Appendix Gregorii ex ed. Jac. Gretseri, Par. 1618, fol.; and the Antirrhetoricus adv. Apollinar., first edited by L. Al. Zacagni, Collectanea monum. vet. eccl. Graec. et Lat. Rom. 1698, and in Gallandi, Bibliotheca, tom. vi. Later editions of the Opera by Aeg. Morél, Par. 1638, 3 vols. fol. ("moins belle que cello de 1615, mais plus ample et plus commode ... peu correcte," according to Brunet); by Migne, Petit-Montrouge (Par.), 1858, 3 vols.; and by Franc. Oehler, Halis Saxonum, 1865 sqq. (Tom. i. continens libros dogmaticos, but only in the Greek original.)  Oehler has also commenced an edition of select treatises of Gregory of Nyasa in the original with a German version. The Benedictines of St. Maur had prepared the critical apparatus for an edition of Gregory, but it was scattered during the French Revolution. Angelo Mai, in the Nov. Patrum Biblioth. tom. iv. Pars i. pp. 1–53 (Rom. 1847), has edited a few writings of Gregory unknown before, viz., a sermon Adversus Arium et Sabellium, a sermon De Spiritu Sancto adv. Macedonianos, and a fragment De processione Spiritus S. a Filio (doubtful).

II. Lives in the Acta Sanctorum, and in Butler, sub Mart. 9. Tillemont: Mém. tom. ix. p. 561 sqq. Schröckh: Part xiv. pp. 1–147. Jul. Rupp: Gregors des Bischofs von Nyssa Leben und Meinungen. Leipz. 1834 (unsatisfactory). W. Möller: Gregorii Nyss. doctrina de hominis natura, etc. Halis, 1854, and article in Herzog’s Encykl. vol. v. p. 354 sqq.

Gregory of Nyssa was a younger brother of Basil, and the third son of his parents. Of his honorable descent he made no account. Blood, wealth, and splendor, says he, we should leave to the friends of the world; the Christian’s lineage is his affinity with the divine, his fatherland is virtue, his freedom is the sonship of God. He was weakly and timid, and born not so much for practical life, as for study and speculation. He formed his mind chiefly upon the writings of Origen, and under the direction of his brother, whom he calls his father and preceptor. Further than this his early life is unknown.

After spending a short time as a rhetorician he broke away from the world, retired into solitude in Pontus, and became enamored of the ascetic life.

Quite in the spirit of the then widely-spread tendency towards the monastic life, he, though himself married, commends virginity in a special work, as a higher grade of perfection, and depicts the happiness of one who is raised above the incumbrances and snares of marriage, and thus, as he thinks, restored to the original state of man in Paradise.1958  "From all the evils of marriage," he says, "virginity is free; it has no lost children, no lost husband to bemoan; it is always with its Bridegroom, and delights in its devout exercises, and, when death comes, it is not separated from him, but united with him forever."  The essence of spiritual virginity, however, in his opinion, by no means consists merely in the small matter of sensual abstinence, but in the purity of the whole life. Virginity is to him the true philosophy, the perfect freedom. The purpose of asceticism in general he considered to be not the affliction of the body—which is only a means—but the easiest possible motion of the spiritual functions.

His brother Basil, in 372, called him against his will from his learned ease into his own vicinity as bishop of Nyssa, an inconsiderable town of Cappadocia. He thought it better that the place should receive its honor from his brother, than that his brother should receive his honor from his place. And so it turned out. As Gregory labored zealously for the Nicene faith, he drew the hatred of the Arians, who succeeded in deposing him at a synod in 376, and driving him into exile. But two years later, when the emperor Valens died and Gratian revoked the sentences of banishment, Gregory recovered his bishopric.

Now other trials came upon him. His brothers and sisters died in rapid succession. He delivered a eulogy upon Basil, whom he greatly venerated, and he described the life and death of his beautiful and noble sister Macrina, who, after the death of her betrothed, that she might remain true to him, chose single life, and afterwards retired with her mother into seclusion, and exerted great influence over her brothers.

Into her mouth he put his theological instructions on the soul, death, resurrection, and final restoration.1959  She died in the arms of Gregory, with this prayer: "Thou, O God, hast taken from me the fear of death. Thou hast granted me, that the end of this life should be the beginning of true life. Thou givest our bodies in their time to the sleep of death, and awakest them again from sleep with the last trumpet .... Thou hast delivered us from the curse and from sin by Thyself becoming both for us; Thou hast bruised the head of the serpent, hast broken open the gates of hell, hast overcome him who had the power of death, and hast opened to us the way to, resurrection. For the ruin of the enemy and the security of our life, Thou hast put upon those who feared Thee a sign, the sign of Thy holy cross, O eternal God, to whom I am betrothed from the womb, whom my soul has loved with all its might, to whom I have dedicated, from my youth up till now, my flesh and my soul. Oh! send to me an angel of light, to lead me to the place of refreshment, where is the water of peace, in the bosom of the holy fathers. Thou who hast broken the flaming sword, and bringest back to Paradise the man who is crucified with Thee and flees to Thy mercy. Remember me also in Thy kingdom!... Forgive me what in word, deed, or thought, I have done amiss!  Blameless and without spot may my soul be received into Thy hands, as a burnt-offering before Thee!"1960

Gregory attended the ecumenical council of Constantinople, and undoubtedly, since he was one of the most eminent theologians of the time, exerted a powerful influence there, and according to a later, but erroneous, tradition, he composed the additions to the Nicene Creed which were there sanctioned.1961  The council intrusted to him, as "one of the pillars of catholic orthodoxy," a tour of visitation to Arabia and Jerusalem, where disturbances had broken out which threatened a schism. He found Palestine in a sad condition, and therefore dissuaded a Cappadocian abbot, who asked his advice about a pilgrimage of his monks to Jerusalem. "Change of place," says he, "brings us no nearer God, but where thou art, God can come to thee, if only the inn of thy soul is ready .... It is better to go out of the body and to raise one’s self to the Lord, than to leave Cappadocia to journey to Palestine."  He did not succeed in making peace, and he returned to Cappadocia lamenting that there were in Jerusalem men "who showed a hatred towards their brethren, such as they ought to have only towards the devil, towards sin, and towards the avowed enemies of the Saviour."

Of his later life we know very little. He was in Constantinople thrice afterwards, in 383, 385, and 394, and he died about the year 395.

The wealth of his intellectual life he deposited in his numerous writings, above all in his controversial doctrinal works: Against Eunomius; Against Apollinaris; On the Deity of the Son and the Holy Ghost; On the difference between ousia and hypostasis in God; and in his catechetical compend of the Christian faith.1962  The beautiful dialogue with his sister Macrina on the soul and the resurrection has been already mentioned. Besides these he wrote many Homilies, especially on the creation of the world, and of man,1963 on the life of Moses, on the Psalms, on Ecclesiastes, on the Song of Solomon, on the Lord’s Prayer, on the Beatitudes; Eulogies on eminent martyrs and saints (St. Stephen, the Forty Martyrs, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ephrem, Meletius, his brother Basil); various valuable ascetic tracts; and a biography of his sister Macrina, addressed to the monk Olympios.

Gregory was more a man of thought than of action. He had a fine metaphysical head, and did lasting service in the vindication of the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation, and in the accurate distinction between essence and hypostasis. Of all the church teachers of the Nicene age he is the nearest to Origen. He not only follows his sometimes utterly extravagant allegorical method of interpretation, but even to a great extent falls in with his dogmatic views.1964  With him, as with Origen, human freedom plays a great part. Both are idealistic, and sometimes, without intending it or knowing it, fall into contradiction with the church doctrine, especially in eschatology. Gregory adopts, for example, the doctrine of the final restoration of all things. The plan of redemption is in his view absolutely universal, and embraces all spiritual beings. Good is the only positive reality; evil is the negative, the non-existent, and must finally abolish itself, because it is not of God. Unbelievers must indeed pass through a second death, in order to be purged from the filthiness of the flesh. But God does not give them up, for they are his property, spiritual natures allied to him. His love, which draws pure souls easily and without pain to itself, becomes a purifying fire to all who cleave to the earthly, till the impure element is driven off. As all comes forth from God, so must all return into him at last.

 § 166. Gregory Nazianzen.

I. S. Gregorius Theologus, vulgo Nazianzenus: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat. opera et studio monachorum S. Benedicti e congreg. S. Mauri (Clemencet). Paris, 1778, tom. i. (containing his orations). This magnificent edition (one of the finest of the Maurian editions of the fathers) was interrupted by the French Revolution, but afterwards resumed, and with a second volume (after papers left by the Maurians) completed by A. B. Caillau, Par. l837–’40, 2 vols. fol. Reprinted in Migne’s Patrolog. Graec. (tom. 35–38), Petit-Montrouge, 1857, in 4 vols. (on the separate editions of his Orationes and Carmina, see Brunet, Man. du libraire, tom. ii. 1728 sq.)

II. Biographical notices in Gregory’s Epistles and Poems, in Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Rufinus, and Suidas (s. v. Grhgovrio"). Gregorius Presbyter (of uncertain origin, perhaps of Cappadocia in the tenth century): Bivo" tou' Grhgorivou (Greek and Latin in Migne’s ed. of the Opera, tom. i. 243–304). G. Hermant: La vie de S. Basile le Grand et celle de S. Gregoire de Nazianz. Par. 1679, 2 vols. Acta Sanctorum, tom. ii. Maji, p. 373 sqq. Bened. Editores: Vita Greg. ex iis potissimum scriptis adornata (in Migne’s ed. tom. i. pp. 147–242). Tillemont: Mémoires, tom. ix. pp. 305–560, 692–731. Le Clerc: Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. xviii. pp. 1–128. W. Cave: Lives of the Fathers, vol. iii. pp. 1–90 (ed. Oxf. 1840). Schröckh: Part xiii. pp. 275–466. Carl Ullmann: Gregorius von Nazianz, der Theologe. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte des 4ten Jahrhunderts. Darmstadt, 1825. (One of the best historical monographs by a theologian of kindred spirit.)  Comp. also the articles of Hefele in Wetzer und Welte’s Kirchenlexikon, vol. iv. 736 ff., and Gass in Herzog’s Encykl. vol. v. 349.

Gregory Nazianzen, or Gregory the Theologian, is the third in the Cappadocian triad; inferior to his bosom friend Basil as a church ruler, and to his namesake of Nyssa as a speculative thinker, but superior to both as an orator. With them he exhibits the flower of Greek theology in close union with the Nicene faith, and was one of the champions of orthodoxy, though with a mind open to free speculation. His life, with its alternations of high station, monastic seclusion, love of severe studies, enthusiasm for poetry, nature, and friendship, possesses a romantic charm. He was "by inclination and fortune tossed between the silence of a contemplative life and the tumult of church administration, unsatisfied with either, neither a thinker nor a poet, but, according to his youthful desire, an orator, who, though often bombastic and dry, labored as powerfully for the victory of orthodoxy as for true practical Christianity."1965

Gregory Nazianzen was born about 330, a year before the emperor Julian, either at Nazianzum, a market-town in the south-western part of Cappadocia, where his father was bishop, or in the neighboring village of Arianzus.1966

In the formation of his religious character his mother Nonna, one of the noblest Christian women of antiquity, exerted a deep and wholesome influence. By her prayers and her holy life she brought about the conversion of her husband from the sect of the Hypsistarians, who, without positive faith, worshipped simply a supreme being; and she consecrated her son, as Hannah consecrated Samuel, even before his birth; to the service of God. "She was," as Gregory describes her, "a wife according to the mind of Solomon; in all things subject to her husband according to the laws of marriage, not ashamed to be his teacher and his leader in true religion. She solved the difficult problem of uniting a higher culture, especially in knowledge of divine things and strict exercise of devotion, with the practical care of her household. If she was active in her house, she seemed to know nothing of the exercises of religion; if she occupied herself with God and his worship, she seemed to be a stranger to every earthly occupation: she was whole in everything. Experiences had instilled into her unbounded confidence in the effects of believing prayer; therefore she was most diligent in supplications, and by prayer overcame even the deepest feelings of grief over her own and others’ sufferings. She had by this means attained such control over her spirit, that in every sorrow she encountered, she never uttered a plaintive tone before she had thanked God."  He especially celebrates also her extraordinary liberality and self-denying love for the poor and the sick. But it seems to be not in perfect harmony with this, that he relates of her: "Towards heathen women she was so intolerant, that she never offered her mouth or hand to them in salutation.1967  She ate no salt with those who came from the unhallowed altars of idols. Pagan temples she did not look at, much less would she have stepped upon their ground; and she was as far from visiting the theatre."  Of course her piety moved entirely in the spirit of that time, bore the stamp of ascetic legalism rather than of evangelical freedom, and adhered rigidly to certain outward forms. Significant also is her great reverence for sacred things. "She did not venture to turn her back upon the holy table, or to spit upon the floor of the church."  Her death was worthy of a holy life. At a great age, in the church which her husband had built almost entirely with his own means, she died, holding fast with one hand to the altar and raising the other imploringly to heaven, with the words: "Be gracious to me, O Christ, my King!"  Amidst universal sorrow, especially among the widows and orphans whose comfort and help she had been, she was laid to rest by the side of her husband near the graves of the martyrs. Her affectionate son says in one of the poems in which he extols her piety and her blessed end: "Bewail, O mortals, the mortal race; but when one dies, like Nonna, praying, then weep I not."

Gregory was early instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the rudiments of science. He soon conceived a special predilection for the study of oratory, and through the influence of his mother, strengthened by a dream,1968 he determined on the celibate life, that he might devote himself without distraction to the kingdom of God. Like the other church teachers of this period, he also gave this condition the preference, and extolled it in orations and poems, though without denying the usefulness and divine appointment of marriage. His father, and his friend Gregory of Nyssa were among the few bishops who lived in wedlock.

From his native town he went for his further education to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he probably already made a preliminary acquaintance with Basil; then to Caesarea in Palestine, where there were at that time celebrated schools of eloquence; thence to Alexandria, where his revered Athanasius wore the supreme dignity of the church; and finally to Athens, which still maintained its ancient renown as the seat of Grecian science and art. Upon the voyage thither he survived a fearful storm, which threw him into the greatest mental anguish, especially because, though educated a Christian, he, according to a not unusual custom of that time, had not yet received holy baptism, which was to him the condition of salvation. His deliverance he ascribed partly to the intercession of his parents, who had intimation of his peril by presentiments and dreams, and he took it as a second consecration to the spiritual office.

In Athens be formed or strengthened the bond of that beautiful Christian friendship with Basil, of which we have already spoken in the life of Basil. They were, as Gregory says, as it were only one soul animating two bodies. He became acquainted also with the prince Julian, who was at that time studying there, but felt wholly repelled by him, and said of him with prophetic foresight: "What evil is the Roman empire here educating for itself!"1969  He was afterwards a bitter antagonist of Julian, and wrote two invective discourses against him after his death, which are inspired, however, more by the fire of passion than by pure enthusiasm for Christianity, and which were intended to expose him to universal ignominy as a horrible monument of enmity to Christianity and of the retributive judgment of God.1970

Friends wished him to settle in Athens as a teacher of eloquence, but he left there in his thirtieth year, and returned through Constantinople, where he took with him his brother Caesarius, a distinguished physician,1971 to his native city and his parents’ house. At this time his baptism took place. With his whole soul he now threw himself into a strict ascetic life. He renounced innocent enjoyments, even to music, because they flatter the senses. "His food was bread and salt, his drink water, his bed the bare ground, his garment of coarse, rough cloth. Labor filled the day; praying, singing, and holy contemplation, a great part of the night. His earlier life, which was anything but loose, only not so very strict, seemed to him reprehensible; his former laughing now cost him many tears. Silence and quiet meditation were law and pleasure to him."1972  Nothing but love to his parents restrained him from entire seclusion, and induced him, contrary to talent and inclination, to assist his father in the management of his household and his property.

But he soon followed his powerful bent toward the contemplative life of solitude, and spent a short time with Basil in a quiet district of Pontus in prayer, spiritual contemplations, and manual labors. "Who will transport me," he afterwards wrote to his friend concerning this visit,1973 "back to those former days, in which I revelled with thee in privations?  For voluntary poverty is after all far more honorable than enforced enjoyment. Who will give me back those songs and vigils? who, those risings to God in prayer, that unearthly, incorporeal life, that fellowship and that spiritual harmony of brothers raised by thee to a God-like life? who, the ardent searching of the Holy Scriptures, and the light which, under the guidance of the Spirit, we found therein?"  Then he mentions the lesser enjoyments of the beauties of surrounding nature.

On a visit to his parents’ house, Gregory against his will, and even without his previous knowledge, was ordained presbyter by his father before the assembled congregation on a feast day of the year 361. Such forced elections and ordinations, though very offensive to our taste, were at that time frequent, especially upon the urgent wish of the people, whose voice in many instances proved to be indeed the voice of God. Basil also, and Augustine, were ordained presbyters, Athanasius and Ambrose bishops, against their will. Gregory fled soon after, it is true, to his friend in Pontus, but out of regard to his aged parents and the pressing call of the church, he returned to Nazianzum towards Easter in 362, and delivered his first pulpit discourse, in which he justified himself in his conduct, and said: "It has its advantage to hold back a little from the call of God, as Moses, and after him Jeremiah, did on account of their age; but it has also its advantage to come forward readily, when God calls, like Aaron and Isaiah; provided both be done with a devout spirit, the one on account of inherent weakness, the other in reliance upon the strength of him who calls."  His enemies accused him of haughty contempt of the priestly office; but he gave as the most important reason of his flight, that he did not consider himself worthy to preside over a flock, and to undertake the care of immortal souls, especially in such stormy times.

Basil, who, as metropolitan, to strengthen the catholic interest against Arianism, set about the establishment of new bishoprics in the small towns of Cappadocia, intrusted to his young friend one such charge in Sasima, a poor market town at the junction of three highways, destitute of water, verdure, and society, frequented only by rude wagoners, and at the time an apple of discord between him and his opponent, the bishop Anthimus of Tyana. A very strange way of showing friendship, unjustifiable even by the supposition that Basil wished to exercise the humility and self-denial of Gregory.1974  No wonder that, though a bishopric in itself was of no account to Gregory, this act deeply wounded his sense of honor, and produced a temporary alienation between him and Basil.1975  At the combined request of his friend and his aged father, he suffered himself indeed to be consecrated to the new office; but it is very doubtful whether he ever went to Sasima.1976  At all events we soon afterwards find him in his solitude, and then again, in 372, assistant of his father in Nazianzum. In a remarkable discourse delivered in the presence of his father in 372, he represented to the congregation his peculiar fluctuation between an innate love of the contemplative life of seclusion and the call of the Spirit to public labor.

"Come to my help," said he to his hearers,1977 "for I am almost torn asunder by my inward longing and by the Spirit. The longing urges me to flight, to solitude in the mountains, to quietude of soul and body, to withdrawal of spirit from all sensuous things, and to retirement into myself, that I may commune undisturbed with God, and be wholly penetrated by the rays of His Spirit .... But the other, the Spirit, would lead me into the midst of life, to serve the common weal, and by furthering others to further myself, to spread light, and to present to God a people for His possession, a holy people, a royal priesthood (Tit. ii. 14; 1 Pet. ii. 9), and His image again purified in many. For as a whole garden is more than a plant, and the whole heaven with all its beauties is more glorious than a star, and the whole body more excellent than one member, so also before God the whole well-instructed church is better than one well-ordered person, and a man must in general look not only on his own things, but also on the things of others. So Christ did, who, though He might have remained in His own dignity and divine glory, not only humbled Himself to the form of a servant, but also, despising all shame, endured the death of the cross, that by His suffering He might blot out sin, and by His death destroy death."

Thus he stood a faithful helper by the side of his venerable and universally beloved father, who reached the age of almost an hundred years, and had exercised the priestly office for forty-five; and on the death of his father, in 374, he delivered a masterly funeral oration, which Basil attended.1978  "There is," said he in this discourse, turning to his still living mother, "only one life, to behold the (divine) life; there is only one death—sin; for this is the corruption of the soul. But all else, for the sake of which many exert themselves, is a dream which decoys us from the true; it is a treacherous phantom of the soul. When we think so, O my mother, then we shall not boast of life, nor dread death. For whatsoever evil we yet endure, if we press out of it to true life, if we, delivered from every change, from every vortex, from all satiety, from all vassalage to evil, shall there be with eternal, no longer changeable things, as small lights circling around the great."

A short time after he had been invested with the vacant bishopric, he retired again, in 375, to his beloved solitude, and this time be went to Seleucia in Isauria, to the vicinity of a church dedicated to St. Thecla.

There the painful intelligence reached him of the death of his beloved Basil, a.d. 379. On this occasion be wrote to Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa: "Thus also was it reserved for me still in this unhappy life to hear of the death of Basil and the departure of this holy soul, which is gone out from us, only to go in to the Lord, after having already prepared itself for this through its whole life."  He was at that time bodily and mentally very much depressed. In a letter to the rhetorician Eudoxius he wrote: "You ask, how it fares with me. Very badly. I no longer have Basil; I no longer have Caesarius; my spiritual brother, and my bodily brother. I can say with David, my father and my mother have forsaken me. My body is sickly, age is coming over my head, cares become more and more complicated, duties overwhelm me, friends are unfaithful, the church is without capable pastors, good declines, evil stalks naked. The ship is going in the night, a light nowhere, Christ asleep. What is to be done?  O, there is to me but one escape from this evil case: death. But the hereafter would be terrible to me, if I had to judge of it by the present state."

But Providence had appointed him yet a great work and in exalted position in the Eastern capital of the empire. In the year 379 he was called to the pastoral charge by the orthodox church in Constantinople, which, under the oppressive reign of Arianism, was reduced to a feeble handful; and he was exhorted by several worthy bishops to accept the call. He made his appearance unexpectedly. With his insignificant form bowed by disease, his miserable dress, and his simple, secluded mode of life, he at first entirely disappointed the splendor-loving people of the capital, and was much mocked and persecuted.1979  But in spite of all he succeeded, by his powerful eloquence and faithful labor, in building up the little church in faith and in Christian life, and helped the Nicene doctrine again to victory. In memory of this success his little domestic chapel was afterwards changed into a magnificent church, and named Anastasia, the Church of the Resurrection.

People of all classes crowded to his discourses, which were mainly devoted to the vindication of the Godhead of Christ and to the Trinity, and at the same time earnestly inculcated a holy walk befitting the true faith. Even the famous Jerome, at that time already fifty years old, came from Syria to Constantinople to hear these discourses, and took private instruction of Gregory in the interpretation of Scripture. He gratefully calls him his preceptor and catechist.

The victory of the Nicene faith, which Gregory had thus inwardly promoted in the imperial city, was outwardly completed by the celebrated edict of the new emperor Theodosius, in February, 380. When the emperor, on the 24th of December of that year, entered Constantinople, he deposed the Arian bishop, Demophilus, with all his clergy, and transferred the cathedral church1980 to Gregory with the words: "This temple God by our hand intrusts to thee as a reward for thy pains."  The people tumultuously demanded him for bishop, but he decidedly refused. And in fact he was not yet released from his bishopric of Nazianzum or Sasima (though upon the latter he had never formally entered); he could be released only by a synod.

When Theodosius, for the formal settlement of the theological controversies, called the renowned ecumenical council in May, 381, Gregory was elected by this council itself bishop of Constantinople, and, amidst great festivities, was inducted into the office. In virtue of this dignity he held for a time the presidency of the council.

When the Egyptian and Macedonian bishops arrived, they disputed the validity of his election, because, according to the fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, he could not be transferred from his bishopric of Sasima to another; though their real reason was, that the election had been made without them, and that Gregory would probably be distasteful to them as a bold preacher of righteousness. This deeply wounded him. He was soon disgusted, too, with the operations of party passions in the council, and resigned with the following remarkable declaration:

"Whatever this assembly may hereafter determine concerning me, I would fain raise your mind beforehand to something far higher: I pray you now, be one, and join yourselves in love!  Must we always be only derided as infallible, and be animated only by one thing, the spirit of strife?  Give each other the hand fraternally. But I will be a second Jonah. I will give myself for the salvation of our ship (the church), though I am innocent of the storm. Let the lot fall upon me, and cast me into the sea. A hospitable fish of the deep will receive me. This shall be the beginning of your harmony. I reluctantly ascended the episcopal chair, and gladly I now come down. Even my weak body advises me this. One debt only have I to pay: death; this I owe to God. But, O my Trinity! for Thy sake only am I sad. Shalt Thou have an able man, bold and zealous to vindicate Thee?  Farewell, and remember my labors and my pains."

In the celebrated valedictory which be delivered before the assembled bishops, he gives account of his administration; depicts the former humiliation and the present triumph of the Nicene faith in Constantinople, and his own part in this great change, for which he begs repose as his only reward; exhorts his hearers to harmony and love; and then takes leave of Constantinople and in particular of his beloved church, with this address:

"And now, farewell, my Anastasia, who bearest a so holy name; thou hast exalted again our faith, which once was despised; thou, our common field of victory, thou new Shiloh, where we first established again the ark of the covenant, after it had been carried about for forty years on our wandering in the wilderness."

Though this voluntary resignation of so high a post proceeded in part from sensitiveness and irritation, it is still an honorable testimony to the character of Gregory in contrast with the many clergy of his time who shrank from no intrigues and by-ways to get possession of such dignities. He left Constantinople in June, 381, and spent the remaining years of his life mostly in solitude on his paternal estate of Arianzus in the vicinity of Nazianzum, in religious exercises and literary pursuits. Yet he continued to operate through numerous epistles upon the affairs of the church, and took active interest in the welfare and sufferings of the men around him. The nearer death approached, the more he endeavored to prepare himself for it by contemplation and rigid ascetic practice, that he "might be, and might more and more become, in truth a pure mirror of God and of divine things; might already in hope enjoy the treasures of the future world; might walk with the angels; might already forsake the earth, while yet walking upon it; and might be transported into higher regions by the Spirit."  In his poems he describes himself, living solitary in the clefts of the rocks among the beasts, going about without shoes, content with one rough garment, and sleeping upon the ground covered with a sack. He died in 390 or 391; the particular circumstances of his death being now unknown. His bones were afterwards brought to Constantinople; and they are now shown at Rome and Venice.

Among the works of Gregory stand pre-eminent his five Theological Orations in defence of the Nicene doctrine against the Eunomians and Macedonians, which he delivered in Constantinople, and which won for him the honorary title of the Theologian (in the narrower sense, i.e., vindicator of the deity of the Logos).1981  His other orations (forty-five in all) are devoted to the memory of distinguished martyrs, friends, and kindred, to the ecclesiastical festivals, and to public events or his own fortunes. Two of them are bitter attacks on Julian after his death.1982  They are not founded on particular texts, and have no strictly logical order and connection.

He is the greatest orator of the Greek church, with the exception perhaps of Chrysostom; but his oratory often degenerates into arts of persuasion, and is full of labored ornamentation and rhetorical extravagances, which are in the spirit of his age, but in violation of healthful, natural taste.

As a poet he holds a subordinate, though respectable place. He wrote poetry only in his later life, and wrote it not from native impulse, as the bird sings among the branches, but in the strain of moral reflection, upon his own life, or upon doctrinal and moral themes. Many of his orations are poetical, many of his poems are prosaic. Not one of his odes or hymns passed into use in the church. Yet some of his smaller pieces, apothegms, epigrams, and epitaphs, are very beautiful, and betray noble affections, deep feeling, and a high order of talent and cultivation.1983

We have, finally, two hundred and forty-two (or 244) Epistles from Gregory, which are important to the history of the time, and in some cases very graceful and interesting.

 § 167. Didymus of Alexandria.

I. Didymi Alexandrini Opera omnia: accedunt S. Amphilochii et Nectarii scripta quae supersunt Graece, accurante et denuo recognoscente J. P. Migne. Petit-Montrouge (Paris), 1858. (Tom. xxxix. of the Patrologia Graeca.)

II. Hieronymus: De viris illustr. c. 109, and Prooem. in Hoseam. Scattered accounts in Rufinus, Palladius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. Tillemont: Mémoires, x. 164. Fabricius: Bibl. Gr. tom. ix. 269 sqq. ed. Harless (also in Migne’s ed. of the Opera, pp. 131–140). Schröckh: Church History, vii. 74–87. Guericke: De schola Alexandrina. Hal. 1824.

Didymus, the last great teacher of the Alexandrian catechetical school, and a faithful follower of Origen, was born probably at Alexandria about the year 309. Though he became in his fourth year entirely blind, and for this reason has been surnamed Caecus, yet by extraordinary industry he gained comprehensive and thorough knowledge in philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics. He learned to write by means of wooden tablets in which the characters were engraved; and he became so familiar with the Holy Scriptures by listening to the church lessons, that he knew them almost all by heart.

Athanasius nominated him teacher in the theological school, where he zealously labored for nearly sixty years. Even men like Jerome, Rufinus, Palladius, and Isidore, sat at his feet with admiration. He was moreover an enthusiastic advocate of ascetic life, and stood in high esteem with the Egyptian anchorites; with St. Anthony in particular, who congratulated him, that, though blind to the perishable world of sense, he was endowed with the eye of an angel to behold the mysteries of God. He died at a great age, in universal favor, in 395.

Didymus was thoroughly orthodox in the doctrine of the Trinity, and a discerning opponent of the Arians, but at the same time a great venerator of Origen, and a participant of his peculiar views concerning the pre-existence of souls, and probably concerning final restoration. For this reason he was long after his death condemned with intolerant zeal by several general councils.1984

We have from him a book On the Holy Ghost, translated by Jerome into Latin, in which he advocates, with much discrimination, and in simple, biblical style, the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father, against the Semi-Arians and Pneumatomachi of his time;1985 and three books on the Trinity, in the Greek original.1986  He wrote also a brief treatise against the Manichaeans. Of his numerous exegetical works we have a commentary on the Catholic Epistles,1987 and large fragments, in part uncertain, of commentaries on the Psalms, Job, Proverbs, and some Pauline Epistles.1988

 § 168. Cyril of Jerusalem.

I. S. Cyrilus, archiepisc. Hierosolymitanus: Opera quae exstant omnia, &c., cura et studio Ant. Aug. Touttaei (Touttée), presb. et monachi Bened. e congreg. S. Mauri. Paris, 1720. 1 vol. fol. (edited after Touttée’s death by the Benedictine D. Prud. Maranus. Comp. therewith Sal. Deyling: Cyrillus Hieros. a corruptelis Touttaei aliorumque purgatus. Lips. 1728). Reprint, Venice, 1763. A new ed. by Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1857 (Patrol. Gr. tom. xxxiii., which contains also the writings of Apollinaris of Laodicea, Diodor of Tarsus, and others). The Catecheses of Cyril have also been several times edited separately, and translated into modern languages. Engl. transl. in the Oxford Library of the Fathers, vol. ii. Oxf. 1839.

II. Epiphanius: Haer. lx. 20; lxxiii. 23, 27, 37. Hieronymus: De viris illustr. c. 112. Socrates: H. E. ii. 40, 42, 45; iii. 20. Sozomen: iv. 5, 17, 20, 22, 25. Theodoret: H. E. ii. 26, 27; iii. 14; v. 8. The Dissertationes Cyrillianae de vita et scriptis S. Cyr. &c. in the Benedictine edition of the Opera, and in Migne’s reprint, pp. 31–822. The Acta Sanctorum, and Butler, sub mense Martii 18. Tillemont: tom. viii. pp. 428–439, 779–787. Also the accounts in the well-known patristic works of Dupin, Ceillier, Cave, Fabricius. Schröckh: Part xii. pp. 369–476.

Cyrilus, presbyter and, after 350, bishop of Jerusalem, was extensively involved during his public life in the Arian controversies. His metropolitan, Acacius of Caesarea, an Arian, who had elevated him to the episcopal chair, fell out with him over the Nicene faith and on a question of jurisdiction, and deposed him at a council in 357. His deposition was confirmed by an Arian council at Constantinople in 360.

After the death of the emperor Constantius he was restored to his bishopric in 361, and in 363 his embittered adversary, Acacius, converted to the orthodox faith. When Julian encouraged the Jews to rebuild the temple, Cyril is said to have predicted the miscarriage of the undertaking from the prophecies of Daniel and of Christ, and he was justified by the result. Under the Arian emperor Valens he was again deposed and banished, with all the other orthodox bishops, till he finally, under Theodosius, was permitted to return to Jerusalem in 379, to devote himself undisturbed to the supervision and restoration of his sadly distracted church until his death.

He attended the ecumenical council in Constantinople in 381, which confirmed him in his office, and gave him the great praise of having suffered much from the Arians for the faith. He died in 386, with his title to office and his orthodoxy universally acknowledged, clear of all the suspicions which many had gathered from his friendship with Semi-Arian bishops during his first exile.1989

From Cyril we have an important theological work, complete, in the Greek original: his twenty-three Catecheses.1990  The work consists of connected religious lectures or homilies, which he delivered while presbyter about the year 347, in preparing a class of catechumens for baptism. It follows that form of the Apostles’ Creed or the Rule of Faith which was then in use in the churches of Palestine and which agrees in all essential points with the Roman; it supports the various articles with passages of Scripture, and defends them against the hereti