The Council of Tyre and the Unlawful Deposition of Athanasius

The plots of Athanasius’s enemies drew him into fresh troubles. They stirred up the emperor’s hatred against him and raised up a crowd of accusers. Worn out by their pestering, the emperor called a council at Caesarea in Palestine, and Athanasius was summoned there. But he feared the schemes of Eusebius, the bishop of that city, of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, and of their party, and he refused to attend. For thirty months he kept refusing, although he was pressed to come. At the end of that time, however, he was compelled more urgently, and he went to Tyre, where a great number of the bishops of the East had gathered. They ordered him to answer the charges of his accusers. From John’s party, Callinicus, a bishop, and a certain Ischyras accused him of breaking a chalice of the mysteries and of throwing down a bishop’s chair. They charged him with often having Ischyras loaded with chains, although he was a presbyter, and with having him thrown into prison by falsely telling Hyginus, the governor of Egypt, that Ischyras had thrown stones at the emperor’s statues. They charged him with deposing Callinicus, bishop of the catholic church at Pelusium, and with saying that he would bar him from fellowship unless he cleared away certain suspicions that he had broken a chalice of the mysteries; with handing over the church of Pelusium to Mark, a deposed presbyter; and with putting Callinicus under a military guard and having him tortured by the courts. Euplus, Pachomius, Isaac, Achillas and Hermaeon, bishops of John’s party, accused him of beating people. They all agreed in maintaining that he had obtained the office of bishop through the perjury of certain people, although it had been decreed that no one should be ordained who could not clear himself of any crime laid to his charge. They further claimed that he had deceived them, and so they had separated themselves from communion with him; and that, far from satisfying their doubts, he had treated them with violence and thrown them into prison. [a]

Next, the affair of Arsenius was stirred up again. And as usually happens in a plot so carefully put together, many even of those thought to be his friends suddenly turned up as accusers. Then a document was read, setting out public complaints that the people of Alexandria could not keep attending church because of him. Athanasius was urged to defend himself, and he came before the court again and again. He successfully refuted some of the charges and asked for time to look into the others. He was deeply troubled when he considered how much favor his accusers enjoyed with his judges, how many witnesses from the sects of Arius and Melitius appeared against him, and how indulgently the informers were treated even when their charges had been overthrown. This was especially so in the charge about Arsenius, whose arm he was accused of having cut off for use in magic, and in the charge about a certain woman, to whom he was accused of having given gifts for immoral purposes and whom he was said to have violated by night against her will. Both these charges were shown to be ridiculous and full of false spying. When this woman gave her testimony before the bishops, Timothy, a presbyter of Alexandria who stood beside Athanasius, went up to her, as he had secretly planned beforehand, and said to her: “Woman, did I really violate you?” She answered: “But didn’t you?” And she named the place and the circumstances in which she had been forced. He also led Arsenius out into the middle of them, showed both his hands to the judges, and asked them to make the accusers account for the arm they had put on display. For it so happened that Arsenius, either moved by God or, as some say, hidden by Athanasius’s arrangement, had heard that the bishop was in danger on his account, slipped away by night, and reached Tyre the day before the trial. These charges were thrown out so quickly that no defense was needed. No mention of the first was made in the official record of the proceedings, most likely, I think, because the whole affair was thought too indecent and absurd to be written down. As for the second, the accusers tried to justify themselves by saying that a bishop under Athanasius’s authority, named Plusian, had on his superior’s orders burned Arsenius’s house, tied him to a pillar, beaten him with straps, and then chained him in a cell. They further said that Arsenius had escaped from the cell through a window, and that while he was being searched for he had stayed in hiding for a while. Since he did not appear, they naturally supposed he was dead. The reputation he had won, both as a man and as a confessor, had made him dear to the bishops of John’s party, and so they had searched for him and appealed to the magistrates on his behalf. [e]

Athanasius was filled with fear when he thought about these things, and he began to suspect that his enemies were secretly scheming to ruin him. After several sessions the synod was full of uproar and confusion, and the accusers and a crowd of people around the court were shouting that Athanasius ought to be deposed as a sorcerer and a thug, completely unworthy of the priesthood. So the officials whom the emperor had appointed to attend the synod and keep order made the accused leave the hall secretly, for they feared they might become his murderers, as so often happens when a riot breaks out. Finding that he could not stay in Tyre without danger to his life, and that there was no hope of getting justice against his many accusers from judges who were hostile to him, he fled to Constantinople. The synod condemned him in his absence, deposed him from his office as bishop, and forbade him to live at Alexandria, so that, as they put it, he would not stir up disturbances and riots. John and all his supporters were restored to communion, as though they had been suffering wrongs unjustly, and each of them was given back his own rank among the clergy. The bishops then reported what they had done to the emperor. They also wrote to the bishops of every region, telling them not to receive Athanasius into fellowship, and not to write to him or receive letters from him. He had been convicted, they said, of the crimes they had examined; and because he had fled, he was guilty also of the charges that had not been tried. They declared in this letter as well that they had been obliged to condemn him in this way because, when the emperor had ordered him the year before to go to the bishops of the East gathered at Caesarea, he had disobeyed the order, kept the bishops waiting for him, and treated the ruler’s commands with contempt. They also stated that when the bishops had gathered at Tyre, he had come to that city with a large following in order to stir up disturbances and uproar in the synod; and that once there, he sometimes refused to answer the charges brought against him, sometimes insulted the bishops one by one, and when they summoned him, sometimes did not obey and at other times did not consent to be judged at all. They stated in the same letter that he was plainly guilty of breaking a chalice of the mysteries, and that this was confirmed by Theognis, bishop of Nicaea; by Maris, bishop of Chalcedon; by Theodore, bishop of Heraclea; by Valens and Ursacius; and by Macedonius, who had been sent to the village in Egypt where the chalice was said to have been broken, to find out the truth. So the bishops set out each of the charges against Athanasius one after another, with the same skill sophists use when they want to make their slanders more effective. Many of the priests present at the trial, however, saw the injustice of the accusation. It is said that Paphnutius, the confessor, who was at the synod, stood up and took the hand of Maximus, the bishop of Jerusalem, to lead him out, as though those who were confessors, and had had their eyes dug out for the sake of godliness, ought not to take part in an assembly of wicked men. [g]