Eudoxius at Constantinople, and a Persecution within the Church

After being driven out of the church of Constantinople, Macedonius withdrew to one of the suburbs of the city, where he died. Eudoxius took over his church in the tenth consulship of Constantius and the third of Julian, who bore the title of Caesar. It is reported that at the dedication of the great church called Sophia, when he stood up to teach the people, he began his sermon with this statement: “The Father is impious; the Son is pious.” When these words caused a great commotion among the people, he added: “Be calm. The Father is impious because he worships no one; the Son is pious because he worships the Father.” With this explanation he set his audience laughing. [a]

Eudoxius and Acacius together did everything in their power to make the decrees of the Nicene council sink into oblivion. They sent the creed read at Ariminum, with various explanations of their own added to it, to every province of the empire, and obtained from the emperor an edict banishing everyone who refused to sign it. But this undertaking, which seemed to them so easy to carry out, was the beginning of the greatest calamities. It stirred up unrest throughout the empire, and brought upon the church in every region a persecution more grievous than those it had suffered under the pagan emperors. For although this persecution did not inflict such tortures on the body as the earlier ones, to everyone who thought rightly it seemed more grievous because of its shameful nature. Both the persecutors and the persecuted belonged to the church; and it was all the more shameful that men of the same religion treated their fellows with a cruelty that the laws of the church forbid people to show even toward enemies and strangers.