The Generosity and Death of Atticus

Meanwhile Atticus the bishop made the affairs of the church flourish in an extraordinary way, managing everything with good sense and urging the people on to virtue by his teaching. He saw that the church was on the point of being divided, since the Johannites were holding their assemblies apart. So he ordered that John should be mentioned in the prayers, as it was customary to do for the other bishops who had died, and he trusted that by this means many would be persuaded to return to the church. He was so generous that he not only provided for the poor of his own parishes but also sent gifts to meet the needs and ease the lives of the destitute in the neighboring cities. Once, when he sent three hundred pieces of gold to Calliopius, a presbyter of the church at Nicaea, he sent the following letter with them. [a]

“Atticus to Calliopius, greetings in the Lord. “I have been told that there are in your city ten thousand needy people whose condition calls for the compassion of the devout. And when I say ten thousand, I mean a great multitude rather than an exact number. I have received a sum of money from him who with a generous hand is accustomed to supply faithful stewards. And since some are pressed by want so that those who have means may be tested, though they still do not help the needy, take, my friend, these three hundred pieces of gold, and use them as you think best. “You will take care, I have no doubt, to give to those who are ashamed to beg, and not to those who all their lives have tried to live at other people’s expense. In giving these alms, make no distinction on religious grounds, but feed the hungry, whether they agree with us in belief or not.”

In this way Atticus cared even for the poor who were far away from him. He also worked to put an end to the superstitions of certain people. He was told that those who had separated from the Novatians over the Jewish Passover had brought the body of Sabbatius from the island of Rhodes, where he had died in exile, had buried it, and were in the habit of praying at his grave. So he had the body dug up at night and laid in a private tomb. When those who had been paying their adoration at that place found that the tomb had been opened, they stopped honoring it from then on. He also showed great taste in giving names to places. A port at the mouth of the Black Sea had long been called Pharmaceus, and he gave it the name Therapeia, because he did not want a place where religious assemblies were held to be dishonored by a name of ill omen. Another place, a suburb of Constantinople, he named Argyropolis, for this reason. Chrysopolis is an ancient port at the head of the Bosporus, mentioned by several of the early writers, especially Strabo, Nicolaus of Damascus, and the famous Xenophon in the sixth book of his Anabasis of Cyrus. And again, in the first book of his Hellenica, Xenophon says of it that “Alcibiades walled it round and set up a toll station there, for all who sailed out of the Black Sea used to pay a tenth there.” Atticus saw that the other place lay directly opposite Chrysopolis and was very pleasantly situated, and he declared that it was most fitting for it to be called Argyropolis. As soon as he said it, the name took hold for good. [c]

Some people told him that the Novatians ought not to be allowed to hold their assemblies within the cities. He replied: “Do you not know that they suffered persecution along with us under Constantius and Valens? Besides, they are witnesses to our creed. For although they separated from the church a long time ago, they have never introduced any innovations about the faith.” Once, when he was at Nicaea for the ordination of a bishop, he saw there Asclepiades, the bishop of the Novatians, who was by then very old, and he asked him: “How many years have you been a bishop?” When he was told fifty years, he said: “You are a happy man, to have had charge of so ‘good a work’ for so long a time.” To the same Asclepiades he remarked: “I commend Novatian, but I can by no means approve of the Novatians.” Asclepiades was surprised at this strange remark and said: “What do you mean by that, bishop?” Atticus gave him this reason for the distinction: “I approve of Novatian for refusing communion to those who had sacrificed to idols, for I myself would have done the same. But I cannot praise the Novatians, because they exclude lay people from communion for very trivial offenses.” Asclepiades answered: “There are many other ‘sins that lead to death,’ as the Scriptures call them, besides sacrificing to idols. For these even you excommunicate only the clergy, but we exclude lay people too, leaving to God alone the power to forgive them.”

Atticus also had a foreboding of his own death. When he was leaving Nicaea, he said to Calliopius, a presbyter of that city: “Hurry to Constantinople before autumn if you want to see me alive again. If you put it off beyond that time, you will not find me living.” Nor was he wrong in this prediction. For he died on the tenth of October, in the twenty-first year of his time as bishop, in the eleventh consulship of Theodosius and the first of Valentinian Caesar. The emperor Theodosius, who was then on his way back from Thessalonica, did not reach Constantinople in time for his funeral, for Atticus had been laid in the grave one day before the emperor arrived. Not long afterward, on the twenty-third of the same month of October, the young Valentinian was proclaimed Augustus.