After the death of the Emperor Constantius ii, in 362 a decree was published in Alexandria by which the new emperor, Julian, authorised the return of the bishops exiled by his predecessor.Footnote 1 In 362, soon among these were the pro-Nicene bishops Lucifer of Calaris and Eusebius of Vercellae, both exiled to the Thebaid after long wanderings. This article focuses on the Egyptian activities of these two bishops between their recall from exile and the beginning of the council summoned by Athanasius in Alexandria a few months later. Privileging Theodoret's version of the events over that of other ancient authorities, it is argued that a small synod that assembled in the Thebaid in 362, commonly considered to have promoted a sectarian, uncompromising agenda, aimed instead to form a coalition between pro-Nicenes of different doctrinal orientations and backgrounds. The conciliatory politics promoted by the Council of the Thebaid were to be realised more fully by the Council of Alexandria of the same year. As such, the Council of the Thebaid initiated a consequential rift between hardliners and moderates within the old-Nicene front.
When the news of Julian's edict reached the exiled Athanasius, he hastily returned to his episcopal see and began to work toward solving two pressing issues. First, there was the disciplinary question of the readmission of clergy who had compromised with ‘Arianism’. On 31 December 359 the bishops who had gone on a mission from the Council of Seleucia to Constantius’ court at Constantinople had underwritten the homoian creed of the Council of Ariminum. As Jerome famously stated in reference to this moment, ‘the whole world groaned and was astonished to find out that it was Arian’.Footnote 2 Many of those same bishops who had reportedly been confounded by their own subscription to a heretical formula were now again supportive of the deliberations of the Council of Nicaea of 325. Under what conditions could these clergy be reintegrated into the Churches with which Athanasius was in communion?
The other issue that Athanasius needed to solve was a conflict in the pro-Nicene Church of Antioch, split between the communities of Bishop Meletius and of the Eustathian presbyter Paulinus. After the exile of Meletius, following his election as the successor to the heteroousian Eudoxius, the moderate pro-Nicenes of Antioch, galvanised by the heroic resistance of their champion, broke communion with anti-Nicene bishops, rejecting the leadership of the homoian Euzoius (360–75/6). Paulinus’ followers, in turn, still refused to hold communion with the Meletians, deploring their leader's recent subscription to the homoian creed at the Council of Constantinople (360) and contesting his ordination by bishops tainted by ‘Arianism’. The divide between Eustathians and Meletians had to be mended to strengthen the pro-Nicene coalition in the East.
To address these issues, Athanasius gathered a council in Alexandria, of which there remains no synodal letter. A document known as Tome to the Antiochenes, composed after the council by Athanasius in concert with Eusebius of Vercellae, Asterius of Arabia and other colleagues, contained instructions for reconciling the Antiochene pro-Nicene community.Footnote 3 The failure of the Tome's efforts to make peace between the two Antiochene factions is commonly blamed on the actions of Lucifer of Calaris.Footnote 4 The Sardinian bishop decided not to partake in the Alexandrian synod, instead sending there two delegates and travelling directly to Antioch. Lucifer then proceeded to ordain the Eustathian priest Paulinus bishop of Antioch, with the aid of two other bishops.Footnote 5 Once Lucifer's representatives arrived at Antioch, he rejected their subscriptions to the conciliatory Tome. Lucifer's fellow exile Eusebius, however, maintained a different attitude. Upon reaching Antioch from the Alexandrian council, Eusebius despaired of the possibility of reconciling the two anti-‘Arian’ communities and returned to the West.Footnote 6
The ways in which the old-Nicene exiles began to organise their efforts upon their recall from Egypt are described differently by the sources.Footnote 7 Both Socrates and Sozomen present Eusebius and Lucifer as holding onto a rigorist agenda with regard to the readmission of clergy who had lapsed doctrinally. The summoning of the Council of Alexandria also seems to be presented as inspired by the same objectives. Socrates has Lucifer and Eusebius consult about the best ways of preventing the continued violation of ecclesiastical canons and discipline; the pair agree on splitting – Lucifer to Antioch, Eusebius to Alexandria to hold a council with Athanasius.Footnote 8 Sozomen's account, which like Socrates's report makes no mention of an official meeting, has Eusebius go to Alexandria ‘for a restoration and a shared composition of ecclesiastical matters’Footnote 9 and to hold a council, in agreement with Athanasius, ‘for the purpose of the securing of the doctrines of Nicaea’.Footnote 10 Lucifer, we are told, travelled instead to Antioch to visit the troubled Church there, sending one deacon with Eusebius to Alexandria.
Rufinus’ account introduces a difference between the programmes of Eusebius and of Lucifer, the former inclined to consult with Athanasius, the latter keener on springing into action. Rufinus makes no mention of an official meeting in the Thebaid (nor of one in Alexandria). He reports instead that Eusebius asked Lucifer to accompany him to Alexandria to confer with Athanasius about the situation of the Church, but the Sardinian bishop preferred to travel to Antioch, sending his deacons to represent him at Alexandria. Once in Antioch, he hastily ordained the divisive Paulinus, instead of choosing someone agreeable to both factions.Footnote 11 We are not told whether Lucifer conveyed to Eusebius his intentions of ordaining Paulinus before leaving the Thebaid. Regardless, their different travelling plans in Rufinus’ account reflect divergent ecclesiastical platforms, seemingly later realised at the Council of Alexandria and in Paulinus’ ordination respectively.
All that Rufinus, Socrates and Sozomen (the latter two depending on the formerFootnote 12) report is a conversation between Eusebius and Lucifer. Theodoret, however, apprises us of an official meeting taking place in the Thebaid:
But the Italian Eusebius and Hilary, as well as Lucifer, who happened to be the shepherd of the Sardinian island, were staying in the Thebaid, next to Egypt; for Constantius had relegated them. These, meeting [κατὰ ταὐτὸν γενόμενοι] with the others of the same mind [τοῖς ἄλλοις ὁμόφροσι], declared it necessary to bring back the Churches into harmony. For not only did those of opposite mind [οἱ τἀναντία φρονοῦντες] besiege them [the Churches], but they themselves quarrelled with one another. For indeed [καὶ γὰρ] in Antioch the sound body of the Church was split asunder: those who, for the sake of the all-praiseworthy Eustathius, had separated from the remainder since the beginning were gathering by themselves; and those who had separated from the Arian company with the admirable Meletius were performing the divine liturgies in what is called the Palaea.Footnote 13
The phrase κατὰ ταὐτὸν γενόμενοι clearly designates a purposeful coming together. In Theodoret's Commentary on Isaiah, the expression indicates the forming of a coalition.Footnote 14 Elsewhere in Church history, Theodoret employs it to describe a reunion of bishops.Footnote 15 The meeting described by Theodoret was not the private conversation between Euebius and Lucifer of which the other three authorities speak.
In writing his Church history, Theodoret had at his disposal sources that he found in the archives of the Antiochene episcopate. Those included the synodal collections created under Euzoius and Meletius, preserving imperial and episcopal acts and letters, as well as written and oral testimonies from Meletian bishops such as Eusebius of Samosata and Acacius of Beroea.Footnote 16 Theodoret also supplemented those materials with information about Antioch drawn from Theodore of Mopsuestia's lost work on Eunomius.Footnote 17
One detail in Theodoret's narrative about the events in the Thebaid strongly suggests that he was using a special Antiochene source for those events, which were influential upon the course of the schism in Antioch. The addition of one Italian Hilary to the Eusebius-Lucifer pair at the beginning of the passage excerpted above has been a stumbling block for historians. Armstrong, oddly, identifies him with the homoian Hilary of Jerusalem.Footnote 18 Some saw Theodoret's mention of a Hilary as a miswritten reference to Hilary of Poitiers, allegedly banished by Constantius to the Thebaid and allowed to return by Julian.Footnote 19 Others saw in this figure the Aquitanian bishop, but considered the mention of his presence in the Thebaid a mistake on Theodoret's part.Footnote 20 As a result of the Council of Béziers of 356, in fact, the bishop of Poitiers was famously exiled to Phrygia, and, after several travels, in 360 Constantius had authorised him to return to Gaul.Footnote 21 He had no reason to be in Egypt, and was certainly not relegated there. It is difficult to imagine that Theodoret committed here a blunder of this size. It appears much more likely that the Hilary referenced by Theodoret is the deacon Hilary of Rome, the author of pamphlets (libelli)Footnote 22 on the need to rebaptise those who had received their baptism from heretical clergy.Footnote 23
This is the same Hilary who was at some point identified with the elusive Ambrosiaster.Footnote 24 He travelled to Milan in 355 with Lucifer of Calaris and the presbyter Pancratius, in order to deliver to Constantius a missive on behalf of Bishop Liberius of Rome.Footnote 25 In the letter Liberius besought the gathering of a council that would reexamine the case of Athanasius, whose condemnation, issued by the Council of Tyre of 335, had been ratified at the Council of Arles of 353 by the action of Valens of Mursia. Liberius also wrote to Eusebius of Vercellae and Fortunatian of Aquileia asking them to join the delegation in Milan, as we learn from three letters of Liberius to Eusebius contained in an ancient Life of the latter.Footnote 26
As a result of the embassy a council did gather in Milan in 355, but it did not go the way that Liberius had hoped.Footnote 27 Eventually the legates were enjoined to underwrite Athanasius’ condemnation, and were exiled for their refusal.Footnote 28 Athanasius informs us also about some gruesome tortures that Hilary had to undergo.Footnote 29 Within a span of seven years, Eusebius and Lucifer were transferred to three different locations. Lucifer reached the Thebaid from Germanicia in Syria, via Eleutheropolis in Palestine. Eusebius was banished first to Scythopolis of Palestine, then to Cappadocia, and eventually in the Thebaid.Footnote 30 We know Hilary of Rome had died by 382,Footnote 31 but are not informed about the date of his return or death.Footnote 32 The sources are also silent about his place of exile. It is most likely that he followed Lucifer, with whom he had travelled to Milan, to Palestine, Syria and eventually Egypt.
Was Theodoret simply speculating about the presence of Hilary of Rome in the Thebaid on the basis of the exile that he shared with Lucifer at the Council of Milan? More plausibly, the historian received this bit of information from a particular source that included a narrative of the events immediately preceding Lucifer's – and, most likely, Hilary's – travel to Antioch. From the same source Theodoret might have received his knowledge of the gathering of a small synod proper in the Thebaid.
The nature of the synod can be further investigated. Scholarship tends to merge Socrates and Sozomen's account with Theodoret's by accepting the historicity of a council in the Thebaid while painting it as of a piece with the rigorist platform that Socrates and Sozomen attribute to Eusebius and Lucifer's private confabulations.Footnote 33 But the terms through which Theodoret characterises the events in the Thebaid, if read closely, are instructive with regard to the true nature of the council. Theodoret names some ‘others of the same mind’ (‘ἄλλοι ὁμόφρονες’) with whom Eusebius and Hilary met, resolving to return harmony to a divided Church. If Socrates and Sozomen's narrative is overlaid on Theodoret's, these subjects will be understood as fellow unfaltering old-Nicenes. However, Theodoret's phrasing suggests that these need not have been exclusively bishops of an old-Nicene ilk. As much is indicated by the contrastive use, in the following sentence, of the expression ‘those of an opposite mind’ (‘οἱ τἀναντία φρονοῦντες’), both antonymous and cognate to ὁμόφρονες. This phrase is clearly used in reference to the anti-Nicene opponents of the aggregate of old-Nicene and non-old-Nicene pro-Nicene Churches.Footnote 34 The designation ὁμόφρονες may well have included fellow Nicenes of a different kind, i.e. homoiousians.
It stands to reason that, preparing for the launching of a global pro-Nicene campaign, Eusebius and his allies may have wished to sit down also with local homoiousian bishops and with homoiousian exiles. The homoian Council of Constantinople of 360 had deposed a dozen bishops.Footnote 35 While some of them had not been removed until a later council, a good number of them had been exiled. Philostorgius also informs us that the deposed bishops withdrew their signatures from the Ariminum creed, reverting to their original homoousian or homoiousian stance.Footnote 36 Some of those restored pro-Nicenes may well have been exiled to the Thebaid, an area whose imperviousness made it apt for the relegation of recalcitrant clergy.Footnote 37
It is known that Theodoret constructed in Church history an ideological version of the ecclesiastical events of the fourth century. His narrative obscures Meletius’ early years in Eusebian circles and his homoian career, grafting instead his belatedly-found Nicene faith onto the unwavering Nicenism of the Eustathians.Footnote 38 However, Theodoret's attitude toward the historical problem represented by the Meletians’ homoiousianism was not to gloss over the split between the two communities, but rather to downplay its doctrinal significance, depicting it as a petty disagreement over personalities. In the passage referenced above – wherein the homoiousians are qualified as ὁμόφρονες – the schism between Eustathians and Meletians is brought to the fore. The Council of the Thebaid is presented as a first attempt at solving a schism perceived as a disgraceful quarrel among siblings.
The irenic agenda of the council promoted by Eusebius of Vercellae found Lucifer of Calaris and his men unwilling to cooperate. Rufinus attributed to Eusebius a more conciliatory approach toward the non-old-Nicene pro-Nicenes than Lucifer's. Theodoret's account similarly seems to allude to a disagreement between Lucifer and Eusebius, and conveys the unviability of a rapprochement:
The Eusebians and Luciferians [οἱ περὶ τὸν Εὐσέβιον καὶ Λουκίφερα] strove [ἐπεζήτουν] to find the means of just this union [between Eustathians and Meletians]. Eusebius requested Lucifer to go to Alexandria and consult about this with the great Athanasius, whereas he himself wanted to take up the labour concerning the reconciliation. But Lucifer did not go to Alexandria, and arrived instead at the city of Antioch. Having adduced many arguments for the reconciliation with the ones and the others, and yet seeing that those of Eustathius' party expressed opposition – Paulinus, being a priest, led it – he, acting incorrectly, elected for them Paulinus as bishop.Footnote 39
The departure for Antioch of Lucifer and his men – Hilary of Rome and whoever else might have been with him – was the product of disagreement with Eusebius’ policies. But what was the exact nature of the opposition of ‘the Luciferians’ (‘οἱ περὶ τὸν Λουκίφερα’) to the plan of reconciliation proposed by ‘the Eusebians’ (‘οἱ περὶ τὸν Εὐσέβιον’)? While a doctrinally-motivated opposition toward the restoration of relations of communion with the homoiousian coalition must have been part of the issue, the events ought also to be considered from the oft-neglected angle of disciplinary policies. The two reservations – doctrinal and disciplinary – could of course at times also apply to the same subject (a lapsed homoiousian).
A testimony from Sulpicius Severus instructs us in terms comparable to Rufinus’ about Lucifer's disposition toward the disciplinary aspects of the Antiochene schism:
It is admitted by all that thanks to the intercession of Hilary alone our Gauls have been freed from the sin of heresy. On the other hand Lucifer, then in Antioch, was of a very different opinion. For he condemned to such an extent those who had been at Ariminum that he even dissociated himself from the communion of those who had received them under the condition of satisfaction or penance. I will not dare to say whether he acted rightly or wrongly.Footnote 40
By the reception granted to the lapsed Sulpicius means here not simply reacceptance into the community, but reintegration into the priesthood. Admittedly, Sulpicius might be projecting the schismatic positions of the rigorist communities known as Luciferians (possibly holding no historical connection to Lucifer)Footnote 41 onto Lucifer's activity during his short Antiochene stint. Against this possibility, however, stands Sulpicius' epoché with regard to Lucifer's posture, to which the ancient historian would have otherwise given a harsher judgement. Lucifer is known to have polemicised against Hilary of Poitiers after the latter's publication of On the synods, forcing Hilary to write his Apologetic responses.Footnote 42 It is likelier that Sulpicius intended to record Lucifer and Hilary's actual disagreement on Church discipline by highlighting the effects of their respective policies in two different ecclesiastical contexts.
A series of councils summoned in the West shortly before the Council of the Thebaid had taken tolerant measures with regard to the readmission of those who had compromised with homoianism. Seeing the prevalence of rigorist postures, Sulpicius recounts, Hilary of Poitiers ‘thought that the best thing to be done was to call all back into correction and penance’. As a result, ‘there multiplied the councils in Gaul, and almost all the bishops confessed about their error’.Footnote 43 Under Hilary's inspiration, a Gallican council, traditionally referred to as the Council of Paris, took place in 360 or 361.Footnote 44 Athanasius, in his Letter to Rufinian (possibly a rigorist pro-Nicene), cites a council held by the Greek bishops and one held by the bishops of Spain and Gaul.Footnote 45 Basil of Caesarea mentions a letter of Athanasius’ in which the Alexandrian justified the conciliatory measures taken with regard to the lapsed by ‘offering to [him] all the bishops of both Macedonia and Achaea as partakers in this belief’.Footnote 46
Liberius of Rome, possibly after consulting with Hilary of Poitiers, was to take a similar initiative in Italy.Footnote 47 In his Letter to Rufinian Athanasius describes the agenda of the Council of Alexandria of 362 as fully in line with those western episcopal gatherings: ‘Those who had lapsed and were leaders of impiety’,Footnote 48 i.e. the active promoters of heresy, could be forgiven if they repented, but could not be reintegrated into the priesthood. On the other hand, ‘those who were not in charge over heresy’Footnote 49 – described in another passage of the letter as those who had been forced to accept heresy and acted in the interest of protecting the flock – after repenting could be reintegrated into the priesthood.
As Jerome explained in his Dialogue between a Luciferian and an Orthodox, the reason for the reinstatement of the lapsed bishops was not that those who had been heretics could be bishops, but rather that those who were being readmitted to the episcopacy were not considered heretics.Footnote 50 In short, the designation of heretic was being applied by Athanasius and like-minded pro-Nicenes, such as Jerome and Eusebius of Vercellae, only to the authors of heretical doctrines or the leaders of heretical groups.
In neither Sulpicius Severus’ nor Rufinus’ account does Lucifer's rigorist approach draw anything comparable to the Athanasian distinction between ‘those who have lapsed and were leaders of impiety’ and ‘those who were not in charge over heresy’. In 362 the difference between the position of the moderate old-Nicenes (among them Athanasius and perhaps Eusebius as well as Asterius) and that of their radical fellow party-members (epitomised by Lucifer) lay in amenability to making that distinction. Lucifer coherently stuck to his position after journeying back from Antioch to Italy: in Naples he refused to enter into communion with Bishop Zosimus, a repentant signatory of the formula of Ariminum but hardly a significant heretical thinker or influential ecclesiastical player.Footnote 51
Remarkably, the disciplinary disagreement between Athanasius and Lucifer revolved exclusively around the question of the readmission of the clergy. The readmission of lapsed laypeople was not an issue for either church leader.Footnote 52 It was Hilary, the Roman deacon, who first raised this disciplinary concern, making himself into the posthumous target of Jerome's lampooning. Footnote 53 In his Dialogue between a Luciferian and an orthodox Jerome called Hilary a latter-day Deucalion,Footnote 54 criticising in particular his alleged incoherence: though having been baptised in a Church that received heretics such as Manicheans or Ebionites, and having himself received believers who had been baptised by non-‘Arian’ heretics, Hilary now considered invalid the baptism of the ‘Arians’.Footnote 55
Lucifer's disciplinary policies were not as radical as Hilary's. Still, at the council in the Thebaid, or in the discussions that preceded it, his views clashed with those of Eusebius of Vercellae, who promoted an initiative of reconciliation with the homoiousians (whether with or without a delegation of the latter present). Javier Pérez Mas identified in the 384 Book of supplications – a list of grievances sent by the Roman Luciferian priests Faustinus and Marcellinus to Theodosius and Arcadius – a reference to the council in the Thebaid, and suggests that this gathering, at Eusebius’ urging, promulgated rigorist regulations about the readmission of the lapsed clergy:Footnote 56
The bishops execrating these acts of ungodliness, who on account of their faith underwent the punishments of exile or who fled, though physically separated by the distances between the regions, made none the less into one in the spirit [spiritu in unum positi], through mutual correspondences [per mutuas litteras], decree with apostolic vigor [apostolico vigore decernunt] that it is in no way possible to communicate with such bishops, who have betrayed the faith in that way we have reported above, unless they requested the lay communion, bemoaning their acts of ungodliness. But, once Constantius, the protector of the heretics, died, Julian held power alone.Footnote 57
While the Book of supplications does indicate that some exiled pro-Nicenes had come to a rigorist resolution, the latter cannot be ascribed to the Council of the Thebaid. Whether the phrase ‘through mutual correspondences’ (‘per mutuas litteras’) is understood as expressing the means through which the confessors’ decree was issued (thus modifying the clause ‘apostolico vigore decernunt’) or the tool through which their unity was maintained (modifying the clause ‘spiritu in unum positi’), it is clear that the sentence emphasises geographic dispersal. It could in principle be argued that the physical distance between the pro-Nicene exiles is being evoked as the state out of which they emerged when they supposedly assembled to issue their rigorist decree. But even if this were the case, the timeline established in the Book of supplications would prohibit this gathering from being identified with the synod of the Thebaid. In Faustinus’ and Marcellinus’ narrative the death of Constantius clearly follows the decree of the confessors, while all church historians have the events in the Thebaid unfold as a product of the emperor's demise.
Eusebius of Vercellae's later subscription to the Tome to the Antiochenes and his influence over the 363 letter of the Italian bishops disavowing the views of AriminumFootnote 58 suggest that he did not hold extremist views on the matter of the reintegration of the lapsed clergy. It is true that the Letter to Gregory of Elvira, attributed to Eusebius, voices sympathy for the refusal of this to-be Luciferian champion to communicate ‘with the hypocrites’.Footnote 59 This text, however, has been proved with solid arguments to be a Luciferian fake, and has nothing to contribute to our knowledge of Eusebius’ actual stance.Footnote 60
Scholars have affirmed that Eusebius was in agreement with the course of action that Lucifer was to take. These claims either attribute to Eusebius and Lucifer the intention to undermine, through a rigorist strategy, Athanasius’ activities aimed at reconciliation,Footnote 61 or make Athanasius himself into a proponent of a rigorist agenda, who was in on the plan to consecrate Paulinus.Footnote 62 But, even leaving aside Rufinus’ mention of Lucifer's disregard for Eusebius’ request to travel to Alexandria, this reconstruction clashes with the reports in ancient sources about Eusebius’ negative reaction to Lucifer's consecration of Paulinus upon arriving in Antioch, resulting in Lucifer's disgruntlement.Footnote 63 Surely Eusebius was acting in Antioch as an emissary of the Alexandrian council; rather than imagining that the synod changed his mind, it is more parsimonious to back-date his tolerant ecclesiastical politics to his time in the Thebaid.
Theodoret's narrative, if read closely, reveals the non-rigorist nature of the small upper-Egyptian synod organised by Eusebius of Vercellae. Lucifer of Calaris left for Antioch in disagreement with the conciliatory spirit of this gathering, either before or after its celebration. The clergy that did assemble in a synod in the Thebaid laid the groundwork for the Council of Alexandria. Their meeting may have also included lapsed pro-Nicenes who had reverted to their original views after being deposed at Constantinople in 360, and may have even seen the participation of members of the homoiousian alliance. As such, the Council in the Thebaid precipitated the emergence of a consequential rift between hardliners (‘οἱ περὶ τὸν Λουκίφερα’) and moderates (‘οἱ περὶ τὸν Εὐσέβιον’) within the old-Nicene front, a rift that was to manifest itself at the Council of Alexandria of 362, and also to live on in the Antiochene old-Nicene community.