THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 073

The Council of the Dedication

5-7. The Council of the Dedication

Constantine died 22 May 337, and his sons at once restored the exiles. Presently things settled down in 340 with the second son Constantius master of the East, and Constans the youngest holding the three Western praefectures. So Eusebian intrigues were soon resumed. Constantius was essentially a little man, weak and vain, easy-tempered and suspicious. He had also a taste for church matters, and without ever being a genuine Arian, he hated first the Nicene Council, and then Athanasius personally. The intriguers could scarcely have desired a better tool.

They began by raising troubles at Alexandria, and deposing Athanasius afresh (late in 338) for having allowed the civil power to restore him. In Lent 339 Athanasius was expelled, and Gregory of Cappadocia installed by military violence in his place. The ejected bishops — Athanasius, Marcellus and others — fled to Rome. Bishop Julius at once took up the high tone of impartiality which became an arbiter of Christendom. He received the fugitives with a decent reserve, and invited the Easterns to the council they had asked him to hold. After long delay, it was plain that they did not mean to come; so a council of fifty bishops met at Rome in the autumn of 340, by which Athanasius and Marcellus were acquitted. As Julius reported to the Easterns, the charges against Athanasius were inconsistent with each other and contradicted by evidence from Egypt, and the proceedings at Tyre were a travesty of justice. It was unreasonable to insist on its condemnation of Athanasius as final. Even the great council of Nicaea had decided (and not without the will of God) that the acts of one council might be revised by another: and in any case Nicaea was better than Tyre.

As for Marcellus, he had denied the charge of heresy and presented a sound confession of his faith (our own Apostles' Creed, very nearly) and the Roman legates at Nicaea had borne honourable witness to the part he had taken in the council. If they had complaints against Athanasius, they should not have neglected the old custom of writing first to Rome, that a legitimate decision might issue from the apostolic see.

The Eusebians replied in the summer of 341, when some ninety bishops met to consecrate the Golden Church of Constantine at Antioch. Hence it is called the Council of the Dedication. Like the Nicene, it seems to have been in the main conservative; but the active minority was Arianising, not Athanasian; and it was not quite so successful. The bishops began as at Nicaea by rejecting an Arian creed. They next approved a creed of a conservative sort, said to be the work of Lucian of Antioch, the teacher of Arius. The decisive clause however was rather Nicene than conservative. It declared the Son "morally unchangeable, the unvarying image of the deity and essence of the Father." The phrase declares that there is no change of essence in passing from the Father to the Son, and is therefore equivalent to komoousion. Athanasius might have accepted it at Nicaea, but he could not now; and the conservatives did not mean “of the essence” — only the illogical “of like essence”. So they were satisfied with the Lucianic creed: but the Arianisers endeavoured to upset it with a third creed, and the council seems to have broken up uncertainly, though without revoking the Lucianic creed.

A few months later, another council met at Antioch and adopted a fourth creed, more to the mind of the Arianisers. In substance it was less opposed to Arianism than the Lucianic, its form is a close copy of the Nicene. In fact, it is the Nicene down to the anathemas, but the Nicene with every sharp edge taken off. So well did it suit the Arianisers that they reissued it (with ever-growing anathemas) three times in the next ten years.

Western suspicion became a certainty, now that the intriguers were openly tampering with the Nicene faith. Constans demanded a general council, and Constantius was too busy with the Persian war to refuse him. So it met at Sardica, the modern Sofia, in the summer of 348. The Westerns were some 96 in number with Hosius of Cordova “for their father.” The Easterns, under Stephen of Antioch, were about 76. They demanded that the condemnation of Athanasius and Marcellus should be taken as final, and retired across the Balkans to Philippopolis when the Westerns insisted on reopening the case. So there were two contending councils. At Sardica the accused were acquitted, while the Easterns confirmed their condemnation, denounced Julius and Hosius, and reissued the fourth creed of Antioch with some new anathemas. The quarrel was worse than ever.

But next year came a reaction. When the Western envoy Euphrates of Cologne reached Antioch, a harlot was let loose upon him; and the plot was traced up to bishop Stephen. The scandal was too great: Stephen was deposed, and the fourth creed of Antioch reissued, but this time with long conciliatory explanations for the Westerns. The way was clearing for a cessation of hostilities. Constans pressed the decrees of Sardica, Ursacius, and Valens recanted the charges against Athanasius, and at last Constantius consented to his return. His entry into Alexandria (31 Oct. 346) was the crowning triumph of his life.

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