says:

"On the return of the confessors it was determined, in a synod afterwards held at Alexandria, that with the exception of the authors of the heresy, who could not be excused on the ground of having made a mistake, those who repented should be admitted to communion with the Church: not that those, who had been heretics, could be bishops; but because it was clear that those, who were received, had not been heretics. The West assented to this decision; and it was by means of this most necessary decree that the world was snatched from the jaws of Satan." Here the whole merit of initiating the salutary policy, which the Church adopted, is ascribed to the Council of Alexandria. All that the West did was to assent to what S. Athanasius and his fellowconfessors had determined.2

From what has been said it seems to result that, after the death of Constantius, the great work of extricating the Church from the miserable condition, into which she had lapsed, was not initiated by Pope Liberius of Rome, but rather by Pope S. Athanasius of Alexandria. Now, this fact is very noteworthy. Under ordinary circumstances one would expect the bishop of the first see rather than the bishop of the second to take the lead in a matter of this kind; and one cannot help asking the question-Why did not Liberius come to the front in the year 362? I have already suggested the answer. Liberius' own fall precluded him from taking the first steps in the work of rehabilitating his fallen brethren. The fact was that, before he could intervene with effect, he needed to be rehabilitated himself. Unfortunately, we have no certain knowledge about the details connected with his rehabilitation. Letters no doubt passed between Rome and Alexandria, but they have not been preserved, or at any rate they have not as yet been discovered. In 357 Liberius had withdrawn from the communion of S. Athanasius, and in May or June, 358, he had made matters worse by signing a

1 S. Hieron. Dialog. adversus Luciferianos, § 20, P. L., xxiii. 174, 175. A still stronger argument might, perhaps, be derived from a passage in S. Jerome's 15th Epistle, which was addressed to Pope Damasus (Ep. xv. § 3, P. L., xxii. 356). He begins a sentence thus: "Nunc igitur proh dolor! post Nicaenam fidem, post Alexandrinum juncto pariter Occidente decretum." Here, in a letter addressed to the pope, not a word is said about the papal origin of the Alexandrine decrees. The assent of the West is evidently posterior and secondary.

2 I have already pointed out (see p. 261, n. 1) that S. Hilary had anticipated the Alexandrine policy six years before the Council of Alexandria. But S. Hilary's action was confined to Gaul. It was local. Whereas S. Athanasius and his band of confessors set forth a line of action which was intended to be ecumenical in its application, and was in fact accepted by the whole Church. Rufinus (H. E., i. 29, P. L., xxi. 499) tells us that the council appointed S. Asterius to superintend the execution of its decrees in the East, and that it committed to S. Eusebius a similar function in the West.

See p. 259.

repudiation of the ouoovolov, and by communicating with Ursacius and Valens,1 In August, 358, took place that triumphal entry of his into Rome, which had been so shamefully purchased. From that time onward until the death of Constantius, and one may add until the year 363, very little is known of the history of the Roman Church. There appear to have been serious contests between the partisans of Liberius and those of his rival, Felix II. Duchesne says, "Sozomen testifies that on the return of Liberius disorders broke out. . . . The existence of these disorders is corroborated indirectly by the fact that in the following year, 359, the Roman Church was represented at the Council of Ariminum neither by Liberius nor by Felix nor by any legate. Such a complete abstention points most clearly to a very disturbed state of things at Rome." After the conclusion of the Council of Ariminum, almost all the Western bishops signed the heterodox formula, which the council had sanctioned. It must be mentioned to the credit of Liberius that he did not sign. As a rule, those who refused to sign were banished. How Liberius escaped banishment is not clear. Certain Gesta Liberii of very small historical value assert that he hid himself in the catacombs until the death of Constantius." It is just possible that these Gesta preserve in this case a true tradition.

5

It would seem that in 362, when the Council of Alexandria met, Liberius was still out of communion with S. Athanasius. Reference has already been made to the fact that the council, in its tome to the Antiochenes, made no allusion to the Roman pope; and the same silence about that personage was observed, as we have seen,8 by S. Athanasius in his letters to S. Basil and to Rufinianus. Moreover, the council appointed S. Eusebius of Vercellae to superintend

1 In Appendix G, on Sozomen's account of Liberius' fall (pp. 275-287), I have discussed the details and stages of that sad transaction. The reader is specially referred to pp. 279-281, and to p. 283, note 2.

See the observations of Duchesne, in his edition of the Liber Pontificalis (tom. i. p. 209).

Lib. Pont., edit. Duchesne, u.s.

Vincent of Capua, who had fallen at the Council of Arles in 353, shared with Liberius the honour of refusing to sign the formula of Ariminum. Liberius, however, though he might have done worse, cannot be excused from blame. He ought to have protested against the decrees of Ariminum at once, and, so far as in him lay, rescinded them. There is good reason for thinking that he did not take this bold line, so long as Constantius lived, nor indeed until after the Council of Alexandria in 362 (see pp. 272-274).

5

Migne has printed them (P. L., viii. 1387–1395). of apocryphal acts, which were concocted at Rome, Symmachus, about the year 501 (see Lib. Pont., edit. cxxii. and cxxxiii.).

Cf. Baron. Annall., ad ann. 359, § 48. • See p. 267. See pp. 267, 268.

They belong to a group in the interest of Pope Duchesne, Introd., pp.

• See p. 269.

the execution of its decrees in the West-a fact which, taken in connexion with its silence about Liberius, points very significantly to the conclusion that the Fathers of the council did not recognize the Roman bishop as being in communion with themselves.

We may, perhaps, be justified in supposing that some expression of penitence for the past, together with some clear confession of the ouоovotov and some explicit condemnation of all Arians, was sent by Liberius to S. Athanasius soon after the conclusion of the Council of Alexandria. Athanasius would no doubt gladly welcome any such advance, and in accordance with the decrees of the council about the treatment of fallen bishops, he would feel no difficulty in recognizing the penitent Liberius as the canonical occupant of the Roman see. During the course of the following year S. Athanasius, in a letter to Jovian, mentions that he had received letters from the churches of Spain and Britain and the Gauls, and from those of "all Italy" and of Dalmatia and of other provinces of both East and West; and he assures the Emperor that all these churches have expressed their assent to the faith of Nicaea. Assuredly S. Athanasius would never have said that he had received letters from the churches of "all Italy" unless he had received a communication from the Church of Rome. Unfortunately, the whole of this large correspondence has perished. We have neither the letters from the churches nor S. Athanasius' replies.

When good relations had been re-established between the churches of Alexandria and Rome, S. Athanasius must have sent the decrees of the Alexandrine Council to Liberius ; and some months later the pope received also a report of the confirmation of those decrees by the episcopate of Greece. It was after the receipt of the communication from Greece that Liberius wrote the letter to the Catholic bishops of Italy, which S. Hilary has preserved for us in his twelfth Fragment. In that letter Liberius defends the generous policy which had been adopted by the Council of Alexandria,

1 Cf. S. Athan. Ep. ad Jovianum, § 2, Opp., ed. Ben., 1777, i. 623.

2 Cf. S. Hilar. Fragm. xii., P. L., x. 714–716. In this letter Liberius refers explicitly to the Greek synod as well as to the Council of Alexandria. He says nothing about the previous adoption of the Alexandrine policy by S. Hilary in Gaul. Probably he knew nothing about it officially. One may feel fairly certain that there was no communion between S. Hilary and Liberius during the interval which elapsed between the latter's fall in 357 and his reconciliation with S. Athanasius in the winter of 362-363. It was after the death of Constantius, in November, 361, that S. Hilary published his Liber contra Constantium, in which, apostrophizing Constantius on the subject of his treatment of Liberius, he says (cap. xi., P. L., x. 589), “O miserable man, in regard to whom I know not whether you committed the greater act of impiety, when you banished him [Liberius], or when you sent him back again [to Rome]."

and which was being attacked by the narrow-minded Lucifer and his adherents; and he refers to a previous letter of his, in which the Alexandrine decrees had been fortified by the authority of his apostolic see. Here, again, it is unfortunate that that previous letter has not been hitherto discovered. S. Hilary, in the same twelfth Fragment, preserves a letter addressed by the bishops of Italy to the orthodox bishops throughout Illyricum.1 This letter contains a formal abrogation of the decrees of the Council of Ariminum. The Italian bishops say, "With the consent of all the provinces, we justly rescind the decrees of the Council of Ariminum, which were corrupted through the shuffling conduct of certain persons." 2 They go on to inform the Illyrian bishops that, if any bishop wishes to hold communion with the bishops of Italy, he must send to them unambiguously worded documents containing the applicant's subscription to the Nicene Creed, and his abrogation of the Council of Ariminum. It seems, therefore, that in 363 there was a general abrogation of the Council of Ariminum by the Western bishops; for what was exacted from the bishops of Illyricum was doubtless also exacted from the bishops in other regions of the West. Pope Siricius, in his letter to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona in Spain, records the fact that "after the abrogation of the Council of Ariminum," "general decrees" against rebaptizing Arians were "sent to the provinces by Liberius, my predecessor of venerable memory." "4 The promulgation of these general decrees against rebaptizing Arians may be probably assigned to the year 364, or else to 365.5 That promulgation, and

1 Tillemont (vii. 459) gives reasons for supposing that the letter of the Italian bishops to the Illyrians was written in reply to a letter from the bishops of Illyricum to the Italians. The Illyrian letter may very probably have been written by the council of Greek and Macedonian bishops, at which the decrees of Alexandria were confirmed. Macedonia and Greece formed part of Eastern Illyricum. It seems to me to be also probable that both the Greek and the Italian councils acted under the guidance of S. Eusebius of Vercellae.

2 S. Hilar. Fragm. xii., § 3, P. L., x. 716: "Ariminensis concilii statuta quorumdam tergiversatione corrupta, consensu omnium provinciarum, jure rescindimus." The context makes it clear that "the provinces" here mentioned are the provinces of Italy.

3 It was in the early part of 363 that S. Hilary and S. Eusebius of Vercellae were labouring in Italy for the overthrow of Arianism. Before the end of 363 S. Athanasius was able to assure the Emperor Jovian that he had received letters from the churches planted in Eastern Illyricum and in part of Western Illyricum, informing him that they assented to the creed of Nicaea.

Siricii Ep. i. ad Himerium, cap. i., P. L., xiii. 1133. The "provinces " would, I imagine, be in this case also the provinces of Italy (compare note 2 above).

5 S. Jerome (Dial. adv. Lucif., § 21, P. L., xxiii. 175) lets us know that the more extreme Luciferians, under the leadership of Hilary the deacon, refused to recognize the validity of Arian baptism. It was probably the rise of this party which gave occasion to the decrees promulgated by Liberius. Lucifer broke away from the Church in the latter part of the year 362; and Hilary may have separated from Lucifer in 363 or 364.

T

also the abrogation of the Council of Ariminum, which preceded it, were in any case subsequent to the Council of Alexandria.

My readers will, I hope, consider that good reasons have been given for believing that it was S. Athanasius and not Liberius, who took the initiative and had the main share in the work of restoring the Church after it had been thrown into confusion during the disastrous reign of Constantius.1 I trust also that I have succeeded in explaining in some measure how it came to pass that the Church, during this terrible crisis, looked for guidance rather to Alexandria than to Rome. The whole history makes it clear that the leadership of Rome is not a vital element in the constitution of the Church. During certain periods, and under certain circumstances, that leadership was the natural outcome of the situation. But there is no divine guarantee that Rome will be always faithful. If she withdraws her communion from this or that portion of the Church, it does not follow that she is to be regarded as being necessarily in the right. Our Lord will find means of restoring His Church through other champions, if the bishop of the first see fails. The Roman primacy is not a matter of divine institution, but of ecclesiastical appointment and recognition. When Liberius and the great mass of bishops had succumbed, it became all the more needful that S. Athanasius should stand up alone, or almost alone, against the world. The truth involved in the adage, Athanasius contra mundum, is one which the Church needs to cherish in every age, and not least in our own; and she will do well to remember that the mundus sometimes includes the Bishop of Rome.

1 Duchesne, in an article entitled L'Église d'Orient de Diocletien à Mahomet (Revue du Monde Catholique, tom. Ixiv. p. 539), speaking of the great recovery from Arianism which took place in 362 and the years which followed, sums up the situation very fairly. He says, "Athanase siège un moment à Alexandrie entre deux exils; il fixe les conditions de la paix qu'il faut bien accorder à tant de faillis. Eusèbe de Verceil, Hilaire de Poitiers, Libère lui-même, diminué dans son prestige personnel, mais non dans l'autorité de son siège, travaillent avec succès à la réhabilitation de l'Occident."