Persecution under Valens; the Macedonians Send to Rome

About this time a son was born to Valentinian in the West, and the emperor gave him his own name. Not long afterward he proclaimed his son Gratian emperor; this prince had been born before his father came to power. [a]

Meanwhile, although hailstones of extraordinary size fell in various places, and many cities, especially Nicaea in Bithynia, were shaken by earthquakes, Valens the emperor and Eudoxius the bishop did not stop in their course, but went on persecuting all Christians who disagreed with them. Their schemes against those who held to the Nicene doctrines succeeded as fully as they could have hoped. For during most of Valens’s reign, especially in Thrace, Bithynia and the Hellespont, and still further beyond, these Christians had neither churches nor priests. Valens and Eudoxius then turned their resentment against the Macedonians, who in that region outnumbered the Christians just mentioned, and persecuted them beyond all measure. [b]

The Macedonians, fearing worse suffering, sent envoys to various cities, and in the end agreed to turn to Valentinian and to the bishop of Rome rather than share the faith of Eudoxius and Valens and their followers. When the time seemed right to carry this out, they chose three of their own number, Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, Silvanus, bishop of Tarsus, and Theophilus, bishop of Castabala, and sent them to the emperor Valentinian. They also entrusted them with a letter addressed to Liberius, bishop of Rome, and to the other priests of the West. In it they begged them, as leaders of the church who had held fast to the faith approved and confirmed by the apostles, and who ought before all others to watch over religion, to receive their envoys with every assurance, and to confer with them about what should be done in the meantime, until the affairs of the church could be set in proper order. [c]

When the envoys arrived in Italy, they found that the emperor was in Gaul, at war with the barbarians. Since they thought it would be dangerous to go to the seat of war in Gaul, they delivered their letter to Liberius. After conferring with him about the purpose of their mission, they condemned Arius and those who held and taught his doctrines. They renounced all heresies opposed to the faith established at Nicaea, and they accepted the term “of one substance” as a word that carries the same meaning as the expression “of like substance.” When they had presented a confession of faith to this effect to Liberius, he received them into communion with himself, and wrote to the bishops of the East, praising the orthodoxy of their faith and setting out what had passed in his meeting with them. The confession of faith made by Eustathius and his companions was as follows. [d]