Then began an extraordinary campaign of calumny against the Patriarch, who was accused of taxing Egypt in order to buy a supply of linen garments, called “sticharia,” for his church; of instigating one Macarius to upset a communion table and break a sacred chalice; of murdering a Meletian bishop named Arsenius, who was presently found alive and well; and of other crimes equally preposterous and unfounded. It was the Meletian irreconcilables in Egypt who brought these calumnies forward, but Athanasius had no doubt that the moving spirit was none other than Eusebius himself. And his enemies, whoever they were, were untiring and implacable. As soon as one calumny was refuted, they were ready with another, and all this time there was Eusebius at the Emperor’s side, continually suggesting that with so much smoke there needs must be some fire, and that Athanasius ought to be called upon to clear himself, lest the scandal should do injury to the Church. Constantine summoned a council to try Athanasius in 333, and fixed the place of meeting in Cæsarea,—a tolerably certain proof that the two Eusebii were acting in concert. For some reason not stated the bishops did not assemble until the following year, and then Athanasius refused to attend. Not until 335 did Athanasius stand before his episcopal judges at Tyre.
Accompanied by some fifty of his suffragans, Athanasius had made the journey, only to find himself confronted by a packed council. All his bitterest enemies were there; all the old unsubstantiated charges were resuscitated. His election was said to be uncanonical; he was charged with personal unchastity and with cruelty towards certain Meletian bishops and priests; and, most curious of all, the ancient calumnies of “The Broken Chalice” and “The Dead Man’s Hand” were revived and pressed, as though they had never been confuted. With respect to the latter charge, Athanasius enjoyed one moment of signal triumph. After his accusers had caused a thrill of horror to pass through the Council by producing a blackened and withered hand, which they declared to belong to the missing Bishop Arsenius, who was supposed to have suffered foul play, Athanasius asked whether any of those present had known Arsenius personally. A number of bishops claimed acquaintance, and then Athanasius gave the signal for a man, who was standing by closely muffled in a cloak, to come forward. “Lift up your head!” said Athanasius. The unknown did so, and lo! it was none other than Arsenius himself. Athanasius drew aside the cloak, first from one hand and then from the other. “Has God given to any man,” he asked quietly, “more hands than two?” His enemies were silenced, but only for the moment. One of them, cleverer than the rest, immediately exclaimed that this was mere sorcery and devil’s work; the man was not Arsenius; in fact, he was not even a man at all, but a mere counterfeit, an illusion of the senses produced by Athanasius’ horrible proficiency in the black art. And we are told that this ingenious explanation proved so convincing to the assembly, and created such a fury of resentment against Athanasius, that Dionysius, the Imperial officer who had been deputed by Constantine to represent him at the Council, had to hurry Athanasius on shipboard to save him from personal violence.
There was clearly so little corroborative evidence against Athanasius that the Council dared not convict him. But, as they were equally determined not to acquit him, they appointed a commission of enquiry to collect testimony on the spot in the Mareotis district of Egypt with respect to the story of the Broken Chalice. The six commissioners were chosen in secret session by the anti-Athanasian faction. Athanasius protested without avail against the selection: they were all, he said, his private enemies. The commission sailed for Egypt, and Athanasius determined, with characteristic boldness, to go to Constantinople, confront the Emperor, and appeal for justice and a fair trial at the fountainhead. Athanasius met the Emperor as he was riding into the city, and stood before him in his path. What followed is best told by Constantine himself in a letter which he wrote to the Bishop of Tyre.[[123]] Here are his own words:
“As I was returning on horseback to the city which bears my name, Athanasius, the Bishop, presented himself so unexpectedly in the middle of the highway, with certain individuals who accompanied him, that I felt exceedingly surprised on beholding him. God, who sees all, is my witness that at first I did not know who he was, but some of my attendants, having ascertained this and the subject of his complaint, gave me the necessary information. I did not accord him an interview, but he persevered in requesting an audience, and, although I refused him and was on the point of ordering that he should be removed from my presence, he told me, with greater boldness than he had previously manifested, that he sought no other favour of me than that I should summon you hither, in order that he might, in your presence, complain of the injustice that had been done to him.”
Such boldness had the success it deserved. Constantine evidently made enquires from Count Dionysius, and, discovering that the Council at Tyre was a mere travesty of justice, ordered the bishops to come forthwith to Constantinople. But before these instructions reached them they had received the report of the Egyptian commissioners, and, on the strength of it, had condemned Athanasius by a majority of votes, recognised the Meletians as orthodox, and, adjourning to Jerusalem for the dedication of the new church, had there pronounced Arius to be a true Catholic and in full communion with the Church. The Emperor’s letter, which began with a reference to the “tumults and disorders” which had marked their sessions, was a plain intimation that he disapproved of their proceedings, and only six bishops, the two Eusebii and four others, travelled up to Constantinople. Arrived there, they changed their tactics, and recognising that the old charges against Athanasius had fallen helplessly to the ground, they invented another which was much more likely to have weight with the Emperor. They accused him of seeking to prevent the Alexandrian corn ships from sailing to Constantinople. Egypt was the granary of the new Rome as well as of the old, and upon the regular arrival of the Egyptian wheat cargoes the tranquillity of Constantinople largely depended. Athanasius protested that he had entertained no such designs. He was, he said, simply a bishop of the Church, a poor man with no political ambition or taste for intrigue. His enemies retorted that he was not poor, but wealthy, and that he had gained a dangerous ascendency over the turbulent people of Alexandria. Constantine abruptly ended the dispute by banishing Athanasius to Treves, and the Patriarch had no choice but to obey. He arrived at his city of exile in 336, and was received with all honour by the Emperor’s son Constantine, then installed in the Gallic capital as the Cæsar of the West. This is tolerably certain proof that the Emperor did not regard him as a very dangerous political opponent, but banished him rather for the sake of religious peace. Constantine was weary of such interminable disputations and such intractable disputants.
The exile of Athanasius was of course a signal victory for the Eusebians and for Arius. With the Patriarch of Alexandria thus safely out of the way, they might look forward with confidence to gaining the entire court over to their side and still further consolidating their position in the East. Arius returned in triumph to Alexandria, where he had not set foot for many years. But his presence was the signal for renewed popular disturbance. The Catholics remained faithful to their Bishop in exile—St. Antony repeatedly wrote to Constantine, praying for Athanasius’ recall—and Alexandria was in tumult. Constantine refused to reconsider the sentence of banishment on Athanasius, but he checked the violence of the Meletian schismatics by banishing John Arcaph from Alexandria, and he hurriedly recalled Arius to Constantinople. The heresiarch was summoned into the presence of the Emperor, who by this time was once more uneasy in his mind. Constantine asked him point blank whether he held the Faith of the Catholic Church. “Can I trust you?” he said; “are you really of the true Faith?” Arius solemnly affirmed that he was and recited his profession of belief. “Have you abjured the errors you used to hold in Alexandria?” continued the Emperor; “will you swear it before God?” Arius took the required oath, and the Emperor was satisfied. “Go,” said he, “and if your Faith be not sound, may God punish you for your perjury.”
This strange scene is described by Athanasius himself, who had been told the details by an eyewitness, a priest called Macarius. According to Socrates, Arius subscribed the declaration of the Faith in Constantine’s presence, and the historian goes on to recount the foolish legend that Arius wrote down his real opinions on paper, which he carried under his arm, and so could truly swear that he “held” the sentiments he had written. Arius then demanded to be admitted to communion with the Church at Constantinople, as public testimony to his orthodoxy, and the Patriarch Alexander was ordered to receive him. Alexander was a feeble old man of ninety-eight but he did not lack moral courage. He told the Emperor that his conscience would not allow him to offer the sacraments to one whom, in spite of the recent declarations of the bishops at Jerusalem, he still regarded as an arch-heretic. He was not troubled, says Socrates,[[124]] at the thought of his own deposition; what he feared was the subversion of the principles of the Faith, of which he regarded himself as the constituted guardian. Locking himself up within his church—the Church of St. Eirene—he lay prostrate before the high altar and remained there in earnest supplication for many days and nights. And the burden of his prayer was that if Arius’s opinions were right he (Alexander) might not live to see him enter the church to receive the sacrament, but that, if he himself held the true Faith, Arius the impious might be punished for his impiety.
The aged Bishop was still calling upon Heaven to judge between Arius and himself and declare the truth by some manifest sign, when the time appointed for Arius to be received into communion was at hand. Arius was on his way to St. Eirene. He had quitted the palace—says Socrates—attended by a crowd of Eusebian partisans, and was passing through the centre of the city, the observed of all observers.[[125]] He was in high spirits—as well he might be, for it was the hour of his supreme triumph. Then the blow fell. As he drew near the Porphyry Pillar in the Forum of Constantine he was suddenly taken ill. There was a public lavatory close by and he withdrew to it. When he did not return his friends became alarmed. Entering the place, they found him dead of a violent hæmorrhage, with bowels protruding and burst asunder, like the traitor Judas in the Field of Blood. One can imagine the extraordinary sensation which the news must have caused in Constantinople as it flew from mouth to mouth. Not only the Patriarch Alexander, but all the orthodox, attributed Arius’ sudden and awful end to the direct interposition of Providence in answer to their prayers. In an instant, we are told, the churches were crowded with excited worshippers and were ablaze with lights as for some happy festival.
On the superstitious mind of the Emperor so tragic a death naturally made a deep impression. He was, says Athanasius, amazed. Doubtless he believed that Arius had deceived him and that God had answered his prayer to punish the perjurer. The Eusebians were “greatly confounded.” Some hinted at poison, others at magic; others were content to look no further than natural causes. The general verdict of antiquity, however, was almost unanimous in ascribing the death of Arius to the anger of an offended Deity. It is a view which still finds adherents. Cardinal Newman, for example, declares:
“Under the circumstances a thoughtful mind cannot but account this as one of those remarkable interpositions of power by which Divine Providence urges on the consciences of men in the natural course of things, what their reason from the first acknowledges, that He is not indifferent to human conduct. To say that these do not fall within the ordinary course of His governance is merely to say that they are judgments, which in the common meaning of the word stand for events extraordinary and unexpected.”