Marcellus of Ancyra Deposed

At the same time, Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, was deposed and cast out of the church by the bishops gathered at Constantinople, because he had introduced some new teachings. He taught that the existence of the Son of God began when he was born of Mary, and that his kingdom would come to an end; and he had also drawn up a written work setting out these views. Basil, a man of great eloquence and learning, was given his see in Galatia. The bishops also wrote to the churches of the neighboring regions, asking them to search out the copies of the book Marcellus had written and destroy them, and to bring back any people they found who had taken up his views. They said the work was too long for them to copy it all into their letter, but that they had included quotations of certain passages to prove that it argued for the teachings they had condemned. Some people, however, maintained that Marcellus had only raised a few questions, which Eusebius’s followers had twisted and presented to the emperor as if they were his actual confession of faith. [a]

Eusebius and his supporters were very angry with Marcellus, because he had not agreed to the decisions put forward by the synod in Phoenicia, nor to the arrangements made in favor of Arius at Jerusalem, and he had also refused to attend the consecration of the Great Martyrium, to avoid being in communion with them. In their letter to the emperor they dwelt at length on this last point and made it a charge against him, claiming that to refuse to attend the consecration of the temple the emperor had built at Jerusalem was a personal insult to him. What led Marcellus to write this work was that Asterius, a sophist and a native of Cappadocia, had written a treatise defending the Arian teachings and had read it in various cities, to the bishops, and also at several synods he attended. Marcellus set out to refute his arguments, and while doing so he fell, either deliberately or without meaning to, into the opinions of Paul of Samosata. Afterward, however, the Synod of Sardica restored him to his bishopric, once he had shown that he did not hold such views.