Caesarea, they must have followed very soon after him, and when they got to Antioch, they took up their quarters in Evagrius' house.

S. Basil could not help feeling vexed and hurt by the treatment which Damasus meted out,1 not only to himself, but to the whole Eastern Church, at a time when the persecutions which that Church was enduring at the hands of the heretical Emperor gave it a special claim to the sympathy of all right-minded Catholics. The action of Damasus seems to have put a stop for a time to the preparations which had been begun early in the year, for sending a fresh deputation to the West. S. Basil had not been very hopeful in regard to any good which was likely to result from these preparations, and had refused to draw up the letters, which would have to be written, if a deputation was to be organized. However, S. Eusebius of Samosata was urgent that something should be done, and he drafted a paper of suggestions, which he sent to S. Basil. The latter transmitted this paper to S. Meletius, and requested him to indite the letter which was to be sent to the West. But in a second letter to S. Meletius, S. Basil does call attention to a subject which he thinks it might be well to urge on the Westerns. He says, "One subject did appear to me to be hitherto untouched, and to furnish a reason for writing; and that was an exhortation to them not to accept indiscriminately the communion of men coming from the East; but after once choosing one side, to receive the rest on the testimony of those first admitted to communion; and not to associate themselves with every one who sends them a written creed, on the ground that it appears to be orthodox. If they do so, they will be found in communion with men at war with one another, who often put forward the same formularies, and yet battle as vehemently against one another as those who are most widely separated." 8 The matter on which S. Basil dwells in this passage was indeed one of very great importance. There is, however, no allusion to it in the letters which were finally drawn up and sent to the West by the hands of Dorotheus and Sanctissimus in 374. Possibly those envoys may have been instructed to

1 S. Basil manifests his feelings very clearly in a letter written to Evagrius in the latter part of the year 373 (cf. S. Basil. Ep. clvi.).

2

Cf. S. Basil. Epp. cxx. et cxxix. It should be noted that S. Basil's 120th Epistle was undoubtedly written towards the end of the winter. Merenda is therefore wrong in supposing that it was written after Evagrius' stay in Caesarea (cf. Merend., De S. Damasi Opuscc. et Gestt., cap. viii. § 3, P. L., xiii. 160), for that took place in August.

3 S. Basil. Ep. cxxix. ad Meletium, § 3, Opp., iii. 221. It is interesting to notice that in this letter, which may have been written in May or June, 373, S. Basil speaks of "the charge which has lately sprung up against the loquacious Apollinarius.'

Cf. S. Basil. Epp. ccxlii. et ccxliii.

X

urge the point by word of mouth. If so, it was not till 375 that the Westerns paid any attention to their arguments, and then unfortunately they granted their communion to the wrong side at Antioch, and so the confusions of the sorely tried East were intensified rather than assuaged by their intervention.

On the 2nd of May in this year 373 S. Athanasius died. Peter, one of his priests, succeeded him, but was driven away from his see by the Arians, who, during the reign of Valens, were backed by the civil power. Peter took refuge at Rome with Damasus; and he stayed there for five years. He was in communion with S. Basil, and on very friendly terms with him, but he followed his predecessor in recognizing Paulinus at Antioch.

As I have already intimated, the Antiochene priests, Dorotheus and Sanctissimus, were sent to the West in 374,1 with letters from the Eastern bishops. One of these letters has unfortunately lost its inscription, and it has merely a brief heading-Toîç AVTIKOîç 2 (To the Westerns), perhaps inserted by a scribe. There can, I think, be no doubt that it was a general letter from all the Eastern Catholic bishops who were in communion with S. Meletius and S. Basil. The other letter was a personal one from S. Basil, addressed to the bishops of Gaul and Italy. It is noteworthy that in the inscription S. Basil names Gaul before Italy, although among the bishops of Italy and at their head was numbered Damasus of Rome; so absolutely unconscious was the great Bishop of Caesarea of that "lordship over the universal Church which Dr. Rivington attributes to the Roman bishops of that age.5

In S. Basil's letter to the bishops of Gaul and Italy a new request occurs, which had not been made before. S. Basil says, "One chief object of our desire is that through you the state of confusion in which we are situated should be made known to the ruler of the world in your parts.""

1 I unhesitatingly assign to the year 374 this mission of Dorotheus and Sanctissimus, though Dom Maran (Vit. S. Basil., cap. xxxv. § 5, S. Basil. Opp., tom. iii. p. clix.) argues in favour of 376. Tillemont, Merenda, and Hefele agree in favour of 374. The arguments in favour of that date can be best read in Merenda (De S. Damasi Opuscc. et Gestt., cap. ix. §§ 3, 4, P. L., xiii. 164, 165). The envoys seem to have started on their journey to Rome early in the year (cf. Merend., u.s.).

2 Ep. ad Occidentales, inter Basilianas ccxlii., S. Basil. Opp., iii. 371. This is also Dom Maran's view (cf. Vit. S. Basil., cap. xxxv. § 5, S. Basil. Opp., tom. iii. p. clix.).

S. Basil. Ep. ccxliii. ad Episcopos Italos et Gallos, Opp., iii. 372.

Prim. Ch., p. 222.

S. Basil. Ep. ccxliii. ad Episcopos Italos et Gallos, § 1. Apart from any other argument, this sentence justifies the view that this 243rd letter of S. Basil belongs to the year 374, and not to the year 376. In 376 Valentinian was dead, and Gratian,

S. Basil wished that Valentinian, the senior Emperor, who was a Catholic, should be induced to put pressure on his Arian brother, Valens, with the object of stopping the persecution which was going on in the East in favour of Arianism. He goes on to request that, if this cannot be done, envoys from the West shall be sent to comfort the Easterns in their affliction, and to carry back to the West a report of their sufferings. He says nothing this time about the troubles at Antioch. Of course, he wrote a letter of his own, and did not adopt the formula sent to him from Rome through Evagrius.

We may assume, I think, that Dorotheus and Sanctissimus journeyed straight to Rome; and on their arrival Damasus seems to have convoked a council. The Eastern envoys brought back from Rome, probably in the autumn of 374, a synodical epistle, part of which is still extant.1 In that epistle the suburbicarian bishops,2 with Damasus at their head, made a full declaration of their faith; and in their declaration, though they mention no names of heresiarchs, they condemn very clearly the heresies of Arius, Marcellus, Apollinarius, and Macedonius. Then they say, "This, most beloved brethren, is our belief; and whoever follows

8

a boy of seventeen years, was Emperor in the West. What could he do to help the Eastern Catholics? On the other hand, Valentinian could and would have done a great deal if he had lived. He spent the summer and autumn of 375 in Western Illyricum, and ordered a council to be held there. The council deposed six Arianizing bishops, and wrote a synodical epistle in favour of the Nicene faith to the bishops of Proconsular Asia and Phrygia, two of the most heretical provinces in the Eastern empire. The council also sent a priest, Elpidius, to instruct the Asian bishops how to teach the true doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This priest carried a letter from Valentinian, addressed to the same Asian and Phrygian bishops. The Emperor warns the Arianizing bishops in his letter not to persecute the Catholics (compare Theodoret. H. E., iv. 7, 8). It was very unusual for the Western Emperor to interfere in this way directly with the Eastern bishops, so that I can hardly doubt that Valentinian's action in 375 was the result of S. Basil's letter of 374. However, Valentinian died in November 375, and the persecution in the East was resumed. It should be noted that the Fathers of the Roman Council of 374, in their synodical letter to the Easterns (P. L., xiii. 352) say, "With respect to the remedying of the wrongs, from which your charities are suffering our efforts, as [Dorotheus] himself can testify, have not been wanting." What were these efforts? I suggest that, in compliance with S. Basil's request, the council wrote a letter to Valentinian, asking him to intervene in the East in favour of the persecuted Catholics. S. Basil seems to have been very much cheered when he heard that the Western Church had taken such a definite step. See his 253rd, 254th, and 255th letters.

3

It is the fragnient Ea gratia, P. L., xiii. 350-352.

I say "suburbicarian," because the Roman synods were, after the formation of the province of Milan, normally suburbicarian synods; and we have no reason to suppose that on this occasion there were any North Italian bishops present. Although the members of the Roman Council very clearly condemn the errors taught by Apollinarius, yet they did not take account of the subtlety of that heretic and of his followers. The Apollinarians, by putting their own interpretation on the council's words, were able to accept them. Later on, Damasus had to devise another formula, which did not admit of being explained away.

it is received by us to communion. A party-coloured body disfigures its members. We give our communion to those who approve in all things our definition." In this way Damasus and his brethren made an earnest attempt to prove to the Eastern Catholics that they meant to be very careful as to the belief of such Easterns as they admitted to communion. This had been urged upon them, no doubt, by Dorotheus,1 for it was a matter on which S. Basil felt very strongly. But S. Basil had wished the Westerns to choose a certain number of Eastern bishops, whom they could trust, and then leave it to them to decide as to the qualifications of other Easterns claiming to be orthodox, and to be worthy of being admitted to the communion of the Church. We can hardly doubt that this point was also set before the members of the Roman Council of the year 374, by Dorotheus; but the time did not seem to those Western bishops to have come for acting on the principle proposed by S. Basil. The result was that a state of great confusion followed, especially at Antioch. In order that the reader may the better understand this state of confusion, it will be necessary to speak of a new cause of discord which was making itself felt in that unfortunate city.

During the years 373 and 374 the erroneous teaching about our Lord's incarnation, put forth by the "loquacious Apollinarius, had been coming into prominence. In Antioch a great impulse to the spread of this new teaching was given by the perversion of Vitalis, who had been one of S. Meletius' priests. It seems that Vitalis was jealous of his fellow-priest, S. Flavian. Sozomen tells us that he seceded from communion with S. Meletius, joined Apollinarius, and presided over those at Antioch, who had embraced the Apollinarian tenets. Moreover, by the apparent sanctity of his life, he attracted to his party a great number of followers. The evidence seems to me to point to the year 374 as being the date of Vitalis' secession from the Church of Antioch.1 It was not, however, until 376 that Vitalis was consecrated to the episcopate by Apollinarius; so that for two years

1 Dorotheus must have told the Roman Council that, so far as heresy was concerned, the East was chiefly troubled by those four special forms of unsound teaching.

See the passage from S. Basil's 129th epistle, quoted on p. 305. 3 Cf. Sozom. H. E., vi. 25.

Compare Tillemont (viii. 369). If it were necessary to believe the report which Sozomen had heard, namely, that the immediate cause of Vitalis' secession was that S. Flavian had prevented him from holding his customary interview with S. Meletius, we should have to conclude that Vitalis seceded before Easter, 372. But that date is impossible; and the report is therefore unworthy of credit. 5 Cf. Dom Maran (Vit. S. Basil., cap. xxxvi. § 6, S. Basil. Opp., tom. iii. p. clxiv.). Merenda takes the same view as Maran (cf. Merend., De S. Damasi Opuscc. et Gestt., cap. x. § 2, P. L., xiii. 170).

after his secession from the great church, the head of the Apollinarian party in Antioch remained a presbyter. Similarly, the Eustathians had been headed by a presbyter, Paulinus, for thirty-one years, namely, from 331 to 362.

Thus it came to pass that those who in Antioch believed in our Lord's true Godhead were now divided into three separate communions: (1) the great church under its bishop, S. Meletius; (2) the Eustathians under their bishop, Paulinus; and (3) the Apollinarians under their priest, Vitalis. Neither of these three bodies had been directly recognized by Damasus as having been admitted to the communion of the Roman Church; but they all of them were able to claim that they accepted the declaration of faith which had been inserted by the Roman Council of the year 374 in the synodical letter brought to the East by Dorotheus and Sanctissimus; and the Fathers of that council had said in their letter, "We give our communion to those who approve in all things our definition." Thus it came to pass that, in the beginning of the year 375, all the three parties in Antioch, who were battling with each other in internecine strife, had some show of right on their side when they claimed that they enjoyed the communion of Damasus and of the whole West; and S. Jerome, writing in the course of the summer of 375 to Damasus, was able to report, " Meletius, Vitalis, and Paulinus all profess that they adhere to you." This state of confusion was exactly what S. Basil had foreseen would result from the method adopted by Damasus of proclaiming that he held communion with those who agreed with the Western dogmatic definitions. The unification of the East and its reunion with the West could never be brought about by declarations of that kind. It was evident that the West would have to change its method; and it did change its method, and adopted the method recommended by S. Basil. Only Damasus was very unfortunate in his application of that method, in fact, so unfortunate that the unification of the East and the reunion of considerable portions of it with the West were postponed for the space of twenty-three years, this postponement being the result of Damasus' action.

I proceed to trace the events which immediately brought about the change of method in Damasus' treatment of the East. Those events are closely connected with two persons, S. Jerome and Vitalis. Let us take S. Jerome first.

It will be remembered that, when S. Jerome arrived in Antioch towards the end of the summer of 373, he took up his residence at first in his friend Evagrius' house. He made 1 See pp. 307, 308.

2 S. Hieron. Ep. xvi. ad Damasum, § 2, P. L., xxii. 359.