Arius Returns, and Athanasius Is Accused

Having satisfied the emperor in this way, Arius returned to Alexandria. But his scheme for suppressing the truth did not succeed. When he arrived at Alexandria, Athanasius would not receive him but turned away from him as from a plague, and Arius tried to stir up fresh trouble in that city by spreading his heresy. Then Eusebius himself wrote, and also persuaded the emperor to write, so that Arius and his party might be admitted into the church again. Athanasius still refused outright to receive them. He wrote back to inform the emperor that those who had once rejected the faith and had been anathematized could not be received into communion again on their return. The emperor was provoked at this answer and threatened Athanasius in these words: [a] “Now that you know my will, give free access into the church to all who wish to enter it. For if I am informed that you have kept out any of those who ask to be united to the church again, or have hindered their admission, I will at once send someone who will depose you at my command and drive you into exile.”

The emperor wrote this out of a desire to promote the public good, and because he did not want to see the church torn apart; for he worked hard to bring everyone into harmony. Then the party of Eusebius, who were hostile to Athanasius, thought they had found their opportunity. They welcomed the emperor’s displeasure as an ally to their own purpose, and so they raised a great disturbance, trying to throw him out of his bishopric; for they hoped that the Arian doctrine would win only once Athanasius was removed. The chief conspirators against him were Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia; Theognis of Nicaea; Maris of Chalcedon; Ursacius of Singidunum in Upper Moesia; and Valens of Mursa in Upper Pannonia. These men bribed certain members of the Melitian heresy to invent various charges against Athanasius. First they accused him, through the Melitians Ision, Eudaemon and Callinicus, of having ordered the Egyptians to pay a linen garment as a tax to the church at Alexandria. But this slander was at once disproved by Alypius and Macarius, presbyters of the Alexandrian church, who happened to be at Nicomedia at the time; they convinced the emperor that these statements against Athanasius were false. So the emperor wrote to his accusers and sharply rebuked them, but he urged Athanasius to come to him. Before he came, however, the Eusebian party got in ahead of his arrival and added to their earlier accusation the charge of another crime, still more serious than the first. They charged Athanasius with plotting against his sovereign, and with having sent a chest full of gold to a certain Philumenus for treasonable purposes. But the emperor investigated this matter himself at Psamathia, in the suburbs of Nicomedia, found Athanasius innocent, and sent him away with honor. He also wrote with his own hand to the church at Alexandria to assure them that their bishop had been falsely accused. [c]

It would indeed have been right and desirable to pass over in silence the later attacks the Eusebians made on Athanasius, so that those who are hostile to the church of Christ might not judge it unfavorably because of them. But since these things have already been written down and have become known to everyone, I have thought it necessary to touch on them as briefly as possible, since the details would need a treatise of their own. So I will now state briefly where the slanderous accusation came from, and what sort of men devised it. Mareotis is a district of Alexandria. It contains a great many villages, a large population, and many splendid churches. These churches are all under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Alexandria and are subject to his city as parishes. In this region there was a man named Ischyras, who had committed a crime that deserved death many times over. Though he had never been admitted to holy orders, he had the audacity to take the title of presbyter and to perform sacred duties that belong to the priesthood. When he was found out in this sacrilegious career, he escaped from there and took refuge in Nicomedia, where he begged the protection of the party of Eusebius. Out of their hatred for Athanasius, they not only received him as a presbyter but even promised to raise him to the rank of bishop if he would bring an accusation against Athanasius; and as a pretext for it they listened to whatever stories Ischyras had made up. For he spread the story that he had suffered terribly from an assault: that Macarius had rushed furiously up to the altar, overturned the table, and broken a mystical cup. He added that Macarius had also burned the sacred books. As a reward for this accusation, as I have said, the Eusebian party promised him a bishopric. They foresaw that the charges against Macarius would bring down Athanasius along with the accused man, since Macarius would seem to have acted under his orders.

But this charge they drew up later. Before it they devised another, full of the bitterest malice, which I will now describe. By some means, I do not know what, they obtained a man’s hand. Whether they had murdered someone themselves and cut off his hand, or had cut it from some dead body, God knows, and those who did it. However that may be, they publicly displayed it as the hand of Arsenius, a Melitian bishop, while they kept its supposed owner hidden. This hand, they claimed, had been used by Athanasius in performing certain magic arts, and so it became the gravest charge these slanderers had put together against him. And, as generally happens, everyone who had any grudge against Athanasius came forward at the same time with a variety of other charges. When the emperor was told of these proceedings, he wrote to his nephew Dalmatius the censor, who was then living at Antioch in Syria. He directed him to have the accused brought before him and, after due investigation, to punish any who were convicted. He also sent Eusebius and Theognis there, so that the case might be tried in their presence. When Athanasius learned that he was to be summoned before the censor, he sent into Egypt to make a careful search for Arsenius. He found out that Arsenius was hidden there, but he could not catch him, because he kept changing his hiding place. Meanwhile the emperor called off the trial that was to have been held before the censor, for the following reason.