The Deputies Kept Waiting, and How Ariminum Gave Way

We have now copied out the letter of the Council of Ariminum. Ursacius and Valens and their followers, arriving ahead of the council’s deputies, showed the emperor the document they had read and slandered the council. The emperor was displeased that this statement had been rejected, since it had been drawn up in his presence at Sirmium. So he treated Ursacius and Valens with honor, while he showed great contempt for the deputies and even put off giving them an audience. At length, however, he wrote to the synod and told them that a campaign he was obliged to make against the barbarians kept him from meeting with the deputies. He had therefore ordered them to wait at Adrianople until his return, so that, when public business had been dealt with, his mind might be free to hear and examine what the deputies had to say. “For it is right,” he said, “to bring to the examination of divine matters a mind free of other cares.” That was the tone of his letter. [a]

The bishops replied that they could never depart from the decision they had reached, as they had already declared in writing and had charged their deputies to declare. They begged him to look on them with favor, to give their deputies a hearing, and to read their letter. They told him that it must surely grieve him that so many churches were deprived of their bishops, and that, if he agreed, they would return to their churches before winter. After writing this letter, which was full of pleas and entreaties, the bishops waited a while for a reply; but when no answer was given them, they afterward went back to their own cities. [b]

What I have related above clearly proves that the bishops gathered at Ariminum confirmed the decrees set out long before at Nicaea. Let us now consider how it came about that they finally agreed to the statement of faith compiled by Valens and Ursacius and their followers. I have been given various accounts of this affair. Some say that the emperor was offended that the bishops had left Ariminum without his permission, and allowed Valens and his party to govern the churches of the West as they pleased: to put out their own statement of faith, to expel from the churches those who refused to sign it, and to ordain others in their place. They say that Valens took advantage of this power to compel some of the bishops to sign the statement, and drove many who refused from their churches, first of all Liberius, bishop of Rome. It is further said that after Valens and his party had acted in this way in Italy, they decided to deal with the Eastern churches in the same way. As these persecutors were passing through Thrace, it is said, they stopped at Nicaea, a city of that province. There they convened a council and read the statement of Ariminum, which they had translated into Greek; and by claiming that it had been approved by a general council, they got it adopted at Nicaea. Then they cunningly called it the Nicene statement of faith, so that by the likeness of the names they might deceive the simple and have it mistaken for the ancient statement issued by the Council of Nicaea. That is the account some give. [c]

Others say that the bishops gathered at the Council of Ariminum grew weary of being kept in that city, since the emperor neither honored them with a reply to their letter nor gave them leave to return to their own churches. At this point, they say, those who held the opposite heresy argued to them that it was not right for the priests of the whole world to be divided for the sake of one word; it was only necessary to admit that the Son is like the Father to put an end to all disputes, for the bishops of the East would never rest until the term “substance” was rejected. By these arguments, it is said, the members of the council were at last persuaded to agree to the statement Ursacius had pressed on them so persistently. Ursacius and his party were afraid that the deputies the council had sent to the emperor would make known how firm the Western bishops had been at first, and would expose the real reason why the term “of one substance” had been rejected. So they kept these deputies at Nike in Thrace all through the winter, on the pretext that no public transport could be had then and that the roads were in bad condition for travel. Then, it is said, they persuaded them to translate the statement they had accepted from Latin into Greek and to send it to the Eastern bishops. In this way they expected the statement to make the impression they intended without the fraud being found out; for there was no one to testify that the members of the Council of Ariminum had not rejected the term “substance” of their own free will, out of deference to the Eastern bishops, who disliked the word. But this was clearly a false account. For all the members of the council, except a few, firmly maintained that the Son is like the Father in substance. The only difference of opinion among them was that some said the Son is of one substance with the Father, while others said he is of like substance with the Father. Some tell this matter in one form, others in another.