6-9. Doctrine and Organizational Development
But if the parochial system with its single rector was thus no part of Roman organisation as late as the end of the fifth century, it was in full vigour at Alexandria two centuries earlier. Epiphanius tells us that, though all the churches belonging to the catholic body in Alexandria (he gives the names of eight) were under one archbishop, presbyters were appointed to each of them for the ecclesiastical necessities of the inhabitants in the several districts. The history of Arius takes the parochial system fifty or sixty years behind Epiphanius: it was as parish priest of the church and quarter named Baucalis that he was enabled to organise his revolt against the theology dominant at head-quarters under the bishop Alexander. The failure of the presbyter and victory of the bishop may have reacted unfavourably upon the position of the Alexandrine presbyters generally; the historian Socrates expressly tells us that after the Arian trouble presbyters were not allowed to preach there. At any rate it is just down to the time of Alexander and his successor, Athanasius, that those writers who testify to peculiar privileges of the Alexandrine presbyterate in the appointment of the patriarch suppose them to have survived.
The most precise evidence comes from a tenth century writer, Eutychius, who relates that by ordinance of St Mark twelve presbyters were to assist the patriarch, and at his death to elect and lay hands upon one of themselves as his successor, Athanasius being the first to be appointed by the bishops. Severus of Antioch, in the sixth century, mentions that "in former days" the bishop was "appointed" by presbyters at Alexandria. Jerome (in the same letter that was cited above, but independent for the moment of Ambrosiaster) deduces the essential equality of priest and bishop from the consideration that the Alexandrine bishop "down to Heraclas and Dionysius" (232-265) was chosen by the presbyters from among themselves without any special form of consecration. Earlier than any of these is the story told in connexion with the hermit Poemen in the Apophthegms of the Egyptian monks. Poemen was visited one day by heretics who began to criticise the archbishop of Alexandria as having only presbyterian ordination. Unfortunately the hermit declined to argue with them, gave them their dinner, and promptly dismissed them.
It is clear that an Alexandrine bishop of the fourth century slandered by heretics can be no one but Athanasius; and therefore this, the earliest evidence for presbyterian ordination at Alexandria, is just that which is most demonstrably false. For Athanasius was neither elected nor consecrated by presbyters: not more than ten or twelve years after the event, the bishops of Egypt affirmed categorically that the electors were "the whole multitude and the whole people" and that the consecrators were "the greater number of ourselves." Yet this very emphasis on the part of the supporters of Athanasius reveals one line of the Arian campaign against him; and the conjecture may be therefore hazarded that it was by Arian controversialists that the allegations of Alexandrine "presbyterianism" were first circulated, and that their real origin lay in the desire to turn the edge of any argument that might be based upon the solidarity of the episcopate. If the Catholics called upon the bishops of the East not to champion a rebellious presbyter, their opponents would, on this view, "go one better" in their enthusiasm for episcopacy, and answer that Athanasius was no more than a presbyter himself.
It is difficult for us, who have to reconstruct the history of the fourth century out of Catholic material, to form any just conception either of the mass of the lost Arian literature — exegetical and historical, as well as doctrinal and polemical — or of its almost exclusive vogue for the time being throughout the East, and of the influence which, in a thousand indirect ways, it must have exerted upon Catholic writers of the next generations. Jerome, writing amid Syrian surroundings, would eagerly accept the there current presentation of the Alexandrine tradition, though his knowledge of the later facts caused him to throw back the dates from the known to the unknown, from Athanasius and Alexander to Dionysius and Heraclas. Of course there is no smoke without fire; and presumably the Alexandrine presbyterate, in the generations immediately preceding the Council of Nicaea, must have possessed some unusual powers in the appointment of their patriarch. But it seems as likely that these were the powers which elsewhere belonged to the people as that they were the powers which elsewhere belonged to the bishops
The explanation here offered would no doubt have to be disallowed, if it were true, as has sometimes been alleged, that Arianism all the world over stood for the rights of presbyters, while the cause of Athanasius was bound up with the aggrandisement of the episcopate. But the connexion was purely adventitious at Alexandria, or at any rate local, and the conditions did not reproduce themselves elsewhere. There is no reason at all to suppose any general alliance between presbyters and Arianism, or between the episcopate and orthodoxy: on the contrary, all the evidence goes to shew that in Syria and Asia Minor, and perhaps elsewhere, the bishops were less Catholic than their flocks. At Antioch, for instance, where Arian bishops were dominant during half a century, orthodox zeal was kept alive by the exertions of Flavian and Diodorus, originally as laymen, afterwards as priests.
In so far as the doctrinal issue affected the development of organisation at all, it must on the whole, both because of the general confusion of discipline and also because of the ill repute which the tergiversations of so many bishops earned for their order, have enhanced the tendency towards the emancipation of presbyters from episcopal control.
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