Oratio Synodi Sardicensis ad Constantium Imperatorem

The address of the synod of Sardica to the Emperor Constantius, with a narrative text by Saint Hilary (Book I to Constantius). Letter of the Synod of Sardica (343/4). Your benign nature, most blessed Augustus, is in harmony with your benevolent will, and since mercy flows abundantly from the font of your paternal piety, we trust that we can easily obtain what we ask. We beseech you not only with words but also with tears, that the catholic church may no longer be afflicted with the gravest injuries and suffer intolerable persecutions and insults, and—what is unspeakable—from our own brothers. May your clemency provide and decree that all judges everywhere, to whom the administration of the provinces has been entrusted, and to whom alone the care and concern for public business ought to pertain, shall abstain from religious observance, and shall no longer presume, usurp, or think themselves competent to hear the cases of clerics, or to break and harass innocent men with various afflictions, threats, violence, and terror.

Your singular and admirable wisdom understands that it is not fitting, not proper, for the unwilling and the resistant to be forced and compelled to subject themselves and to commit themselves, oppressed by violence, to those who do not cease to scatter the corrupted seeds of adulterous doctrine. For this reason you labor and with salutary counsels you govern the state; you also keep watch and are vigilant, so that all over whom you rule may enjoy the sweetest liberty. The things that have been disturbed cannot be settled, the things that have been torn apart cannot be held together, on any other principle than that each person, bound by no necessity of servitude, should have complete freedom of living. Certainly the cry of those who exclaim ought to be heard by your clemency: "I am a Catholic, I do not wish to be a heretic; I am a Christian, not an Arian; and it is better for me to die in this world than, with the dominating power of some private individual, to corrupt the chaste virginity of truth." And it ought to seem just to your holiness, most glorious Augustus, that those who fear the Lord God and divine judgment should not be polluted or contaminated by abominable blasphemies, but should have the power to follow those bishops and prelates who both preserve the inviolate bonds of charity and desire to have perpetual and sincere peace. Neither can it happen, nor does reason permit, that things which are opposed should agree, that dissimilar things should be glued together, that true and false should be mixed.

light and darkness be confounded, day and night also have some union. Therefore, if—as we undoubtedly both hope and believe—these things move not your acquired but your inborn goodness, command that the rulers of places do not give study, favor, or support to the most grievous heretics. Let your leniency permit the peoples, whom they have wished, whom they have thought fit, whom they have chosen, to hear the teachers and to celebrate together the divine solemnities of the mysteries, and to offer prayers for your safety and blessedness. Let no perverse or envious person speak evil. Indeed, there will be no suspicion, not only of sedition, not even of harsh murmuring. All things are quiet and modest. And now, those who are polluted with the Arian and pestilential contagion do not cease, with impious mouth and sacrilegious mind, to corrupt the sincerity of the Gospels and to deprave the right rule of the apostles. They do not understand the divine prophets. They use a certain crafty and cunning artifice, so that they may conceal the enclosed pernicious corruption under a veil of exquisite words, and do not pour out the poisoned venom until they have seized and ensnared the simple and innocent under the pretext of the Christian name, so that they do not perish alone, but make them participants in their horrible crime, and render them guilty.

And this we entreat of your Piety, that you order those who are still held—namely, the distinguished priests who excel in the dignity of such a name—either in exile or in desolate places, to return to their sees, so that everywhere there may be grateful freedom and joyful gladness. Who does not see, who does not understand? After nearly four hundred years, after the only-begotten Son of God deigned to come to the aid of the perishing human race, as if before that there were no apostles, no Christians after their martyrdoms and deaths, a new and most foul plague—not of corrupted air, but of abominable blasphemies—the Arian, has been poured forth. Did those who believed before, then, hold a vain hope of immortality? We have only recently learned that these fabrications were invented by the two Eusebii, and by Narcissus, and by Theodorus, and by Stephanus, and by Acacius, and by Menophantus, and by the inexperienced and wicked two youths, Ursacius and Valens. Their letters are produced, and they are also convicted by suitable witnesses who heard them barking more than disputing. Those who imprudently and incautiously mingle their communion with them—because they will become partners in crimes, sharers in offenses—must necessarily, since they are already cast out and rejected in this world, suffer eternal punishments when the day of judgment arrives.

Now there is no doubt that those holy men undertook the care of absolving Athanasius in such a way that, after the synod’s sentences, which it had been proper to keep within priestly or ecclesiastical conscience out of reverence for the priestly judgment, it became necessary to write to the emperor and to instruct an embassy. But what else do these letters seek than that the freedom of faith be freed from the contagion of the Arian name, and they pray that chains, prisons, tribunals, and all that funereal apparatus, and even new tortures for the accused, be forbidden? God taught the knowledge of himself rather than demanded it, and, conciliating authority for his precepts by the admiration of heavenly works, he spurned a will compelled to confess. If such force were applied to the true faith, episcopal teaching would go to meet it and say: ‘God is the lord of the universe; he does not need forced obedience; he does not require compelled confession; he is not to be deceived, but to be merited; he is to be venerated for our sake, not his own; I cannot receive anyone except the willing, hear anyone except the one praying, sign anyone except the one professing; he is to be sought with simplicity, learned with confession, loved with charity, venerated with fear, retained with probity of will.’

But what is this, that priests are forced to fear God through bonds, commanded through punishments? Priests are confined in prisons, the people are arranged in custody bound by a chain of order, virgins are stripped for punishment, and bodies consecrated to God, exposed to public view, are fitted for the fruit of spectacle and torture. They compel, indeed, not that all should be Christians, but that they should be Arians, and they drive the faith confessed in God into the fellowship of their own crime by wickedness. Moreover, by the authority of their own name, they lead the emperor into error, affirming what is crooked as straight, so that under the appearance of fear of God they may hand over their subjects to themselves in this perversity. They demand investigations, they desire the aids of judicial proceedings, they implore royal authority. And not even thus do they blush at the perversity of their own crime, which they could not extort by the right of compulsion from the connivance of the people. If these things, brought forth from ancient documents, were to instruct the time of our age, there would, I think, have been doubt about such great matters. And when from any others the accused was demanded to be pronounced upon, inquiry would be made into the trustworthiness of the letters, into the life of the judges, into the credibility of the accusers, into the character and deeds of the man himself. For the condemnation of the Arians joined to his absolution would have moved one, and a judgment would have been of great danger, when the case of both guilt and innocence was not again taken up.

inquisition to dissolve, and the whole authority of antiquity stood by them in support of their own cause, together with the teaching of the faith. But since those who were then condemned as Arian heretics now disturb the realm, throw everything into confusion, and corrupt all through power and ambition, if Athanasius was ever guilty, he could still be a defendant. Let witnesses speak, let judges see, let the teaching of the faith shine forth through the precepts of the Gospels and the Apostles. What dullness of understanding is this? What obtuseness of heart? What forgetfulness of hope? What love of crimes? What hatred of truth? They transfer the love of God into favor for the condemned. I come now to what has recently been done, in which even the profession of crime has disdained to be contained within the secrecy of its own craft. Eusebius, bishop of Vercelli, is a man serving God in his entire life. After the Synod of Arles, when Bishop Paulinus had come into conflict with such great crimes of these men, he is ordered to come to Milan. The synagogue of the malignant, already gathered there, was forbidden to approach the church for ten days, while perverse malice consumed itself against so holy a man. Then, after all plans had been lulled to sleep, he is summoned when it pleased them. He appears together with Roman clerics and Lucifer, bishop of Sardinia; the assembly, in order to subscribe against Athanasius, says:

It was necessary first to be certain concerning the priestly faith; some of those who were present were found by them to be polluted with the stain of heresy. The faith set forth at Nicaea, which we mentioned above, was placed in their midst, with the promise that everything they demanded would be done, if they would write a profession of faith. Dionysius, bishop of Milan, first took the paper. When he began to write what was to be professed, Valens violently snatched the pen and paper from his hands, shouting that it could happen that something might be done from that. After much shouting, the matter was brought to the knowledge of the people; a great grief arose among all; the faith was assailed by the priests. Therefore, fearing the judgment of the people, they passed from the Lord’s house to the palace. What kind of sentence they wrote against Eusebius long before they entered the church, the sentence itself speaks concerning itself. . . .