Macedonius’s Persecution, and the Church the Novatians Carried Away

While the events I have related were taking place in Italy, the East too, even before the Council of Seleucia had met, was the scene of great disturbances. The party of Acacius and Patrophilus drove out Maximus and handed the church of Jerusalem over to Cyril. Macedonius harassed Constantinople and the neighboring cities, and Eleusius and Marathonius aided him. Marathonius had first been a deacon in Macedonius’s own church, a zealous overseer of the poor in the monastic houses of men and women, and Macedonius raised him to be bishop of Nicomedia. Eleusius had once served, not without distinction, in the military service of the palace, and had been ordained bishop of Cyzicus. It is said that Eleusius and Marathonius were both good men in their conduct, but that they were zealous in persecuting those who held that the Son is of one substance with the Father, though they were not as openly cruel as Macedonius. He not only drove out those who refused to hold communion with him, but imprisoned some and dragged others before the courts. In many cases he forced the unwilling into communion. He seized children and women who had not been initiated and initiated them, and he destroyed many churches in various places, on the pretext that the emperor had ordered the demolition of all houses of prayer in which the Son was acknowledged to be of one substance with the Father. [a]

On this pretext the church of the Novatians at Constantinople, in the part of the city called Pelargus, was destroyed. It is told that these heretics did a courageous thing with the help of the members of the catholic church, with whom they made common cause. When the men employed to destroy the church were about to begin the demolition, the Novatians gathered together. Some pulled down the materials and others carried them to a suburb of the city called Sycae. They finished the task quickly, for men, women and children all took part, and in offering their labor to God they were filled with extraordinary spirit. By this zeal the church was soon rebuilt, and from this it received the name Anastasia. After the death of Constantius, his successor Julian gave the Novatians back the ground they had held before and allowed them to rebuild their church. The people took up this permission with spirit and carried the very same materials of the former building back from Sycae. But this happened later than the period we are now reviewing. [d]

At this time a union between the Novatian and catholic churches was very nearly achieved. Since they held the same beliefs about the Godhead and suffered a common persecution, the members of both churches met and prayed together. The Catholics then had no houses of prayer, for the Arians had taken them away. It seems, too, that through constant dealings with one another the members of each church reasoned that the differences between them were empty, and they resolved to take communion with one another. A reconciliation would certainly have come about, I think, had not the wish of the people been defeated by the slander of a few, who claimed that there was an ancient law forbidding the union of the churches.