Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

By Archibald Robertson.

St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print

128 Pages (Part I)

Page 63

Their nucleus consisted of the able and influential circle of 'Lucianists;' it has been remarked by an unprejudiced observer that, so far as we know, not one of them was eminent as a religious character (Harnack, ii. 185); their strength was in fixity of policy and in ecclesiastical intrigue; and their battery was the imperial court. Within three years of the Council, Constantine had begun to waver, not in his resolution to maintain the Nicene Creed, that he never relaxed, but in his sternness toward its known opponents. His policy was dictated by the desire for unity: he was made to feel the lurking dissatisfaction of the bishops of Asia, perhaps as his anger was softened by time he missed the ability and ready counsel of the extruded bishop of his residential city. An Arian presbyter ('Eustathius' or 'Eutokius'?), who was a kind of chaplain to Constantia, sister of Constantine and widow of Licinius, is said to have kept the subject before the Emperor's mind after her death (in 328, see Socr. i. 25). At last, as we have seen, first Eusebius and Theognis were recalled, then Arius himself was pardoned upon his general assurance of agreement with the faith of the Synod.

The atmosphere of a court is seldom favourable to a high standard of moral or religious principle; and the place-hunters and hangers-on of the imperial courts of these days were an exceptionally worthless crew (see Gwatkin, p. 60, 100, 234). It is a tribute to the Nicene cause that their influence was steadily on the other side, and to the character of Constantine that he was able throughout the greater part of the period to resist it, at any rate as far as Athanasius was concerned. But on the whole the court was the centre whence the webs of Eusebian intrigue extended to Egypt, Antioch, and many other obscurer centres of attack.

The influences outside the Church were less directly operative in the campaign, but such as they were they served the Eusebian plans.

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