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By Archibald Robertson.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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128 Pages (Part I)
Page 100
Athanasius consecrated bishops not only for Egypt, but for the remote Abyssinian kingdom of Auxume as well. The visit of Frumentius to Alexandria, and his consecration as bishop for Auxume, are referred by Rufinus i. 9 (Socr. i. 19, &c.) to the beginning of the episcopate of Athanasius. But the chronology of the story (Gwatkin, pp. 93 sqq., D.C.B. ii. 236 where the argument is faulty) forbids this altogether, while the letter of Constantius (p. 250) is most natural if the consecration of Frumentius were then a comparatively recent matter, scarcely intelligible if it had taken place before the 'deposition' of Athan. by the council of Tyre. Athanasius had found Egypt distracted by religious dissensions; but by the time of the third exile we hear very little of Arians excepting in Alexandria itself (see p. 564); the 'Arians' of the rest of Egypt were the remnant of the Meletians, whose monks are still mentioned by Theodoret (cf. p. 299 sq.). An incident which shews the growing numbers of the Alexandrian Church during this period is the necessity which arose at Easter in one year of using the unfinished Church of the Caesareum (for its history cf. p. 243, note 6, and Hist. Aceph. vi., Fest. Ind. xxxvii., xxxviii., xl.) owing to the vast crowds of worshippers. The Church was a gift of Constantius, and had been begun by Gregory, and its use before completion and dedication was treated by the Arians as an act of presumption and disrespect on the part of Athanasius.
(2.) But while all was so happy in Egypt, the 'profound peace' of the rest of the Church was more apparent than real. The temporary revulsion of feeling on the part of Constantius, the engrossing urgency of the Persian war, the readiness of Constans to use his formidable power to secure justice to the Nicene bishops in the East, all these were causes which compelled peace, while leaving the deeper elements of strife to smoulder untouched. The rival depositions and anathemas of the hostile Councils remained without effect. Valens was in possession at Mursa, Photinus at Sirmium. Marcellus was, probably, not at Ancyra (Zahn 82); but the Arians deposed at Sardica were all undisturbed, while Athanasius was more firmly established than ever at Alexandria. On the whole, the Episcopate of the East was entirely in the hands of the reaction--the Nicene element, often large, among the laity was in many cases conciliated with difficulty. This is conspicuously the case at Antioch, where the temporising policy of Leontius managed to retain in communion a powerful body of orthodox Christians, headed by Diodorus and Flavian, whose energy neutralised the effect of his own steadily Arian policy (particulars, Gwatkin, pp. 133, sqq., Newman, Arians^4, p. 455--from Thdt. H. E. ii. 24). The Eustathian schism at Antioch was, apparently, paralleled by a Marcellian schism at Ancyra, but such cases were decidedly the exception.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/athanasius-life-arianism.asp?pg=100
