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CHAPTER XVI.

THE COUNCIL AND CREED OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

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Ir may be interesting in connection with the history of the early Creeds to add an account of the circumstances under which they came into existence. Of the Apostles' Creed we have already spoken.' The Nicene Creed was the result of the Council of Nicæa, and this, though in a form totally different from that which now bears the name, is the original Creed of the Empire, and its formation has been described in the Lectures on the Eastern Church.' 2 The Athanasian Creed is of much later date, and has also been the subject of a separate treatise. There remains therefore only the Creed commonly called the Creed of Constantinople, which is now adopted by the Churches of Rome and England, and the Lutheran Churches, and through the whole of the Eastern Church, with the exception of the Coptic, Nestorian, and Armenian branches. In order to do this, it will be necessary to describe the Council, with which its composition is traditionally connected, the more so as the assembly has never yet been adequately portrayed. After this description it will be our object to examine into the nature and pretensions of the Creed which is usually supposed to have sprung out of it.

The city of Constantinople had been almost ever since the

1 Lecture XIV.

2 Lectures on the Eastern Church, Lecture iv.

3 The Athanasian Creed, with a Preface.

The usual authorities which describe the Council are the ecclesiastical historians of the following century-Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret. But far more important than these are the letters, orations, and autobiographical poems of Gregory Nazianzen, who was not only a contemporary

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Council of Nicæa in the hands of the great party which was called by the name of the heresiarch Arius, and which embraced all the princes of the Imperial House from Constantine the Great to Valens (with the exception of the 'apostate' Julian), as well as the Gothic tribes on the frontier. But the orthodox' or so-called Catholic' party, to which the name of Athanasius still gave life, struggled on; and when the rude Spanish soldier Theodosius restored peace to the Empire, his known opinions in favour of the orthodox doctrine gave a hope of returning strength to the cause which had vanquished at Nicæa. Under these circumstances, the little community which professed the Athanasian belief at Constantinople determined on the step of calling to their assistance one of the leaders of those opinions from the adjacent province of Asia Minor. Basil would have been the natural choice; but his age and infirmities rendered this impossible. Accordingly, they fixed on Gregory, commonly called of Nazianzus.' UnNazianzen. like the school in the English Church which, in the time of the Nonjurors, and afterwards, sanctions the intrusion of new bishops into places already pre-occupied by lawful prelates, the orthodox community at Constantinople showed a laudable moderation. Gregory was already a bishop, but a bishop without a diocese. Appointed to the sée of Sasima, he had never undertaken its duties, but contented himself with helping his aged father in the bishopric of his birthplace Nazianzus. Accordingly he was ready to the hands of the minority of the Church of Byzantium, without any direct infringement of the rights and titles of Demophilus, the lawful bishop of Constantinople.

Gregory

He was

He came from his rustic retreat reluctantly. prematurely old and infirm. His bald head streaked with a few white hairs, and his bent figure, were not calculated to

but an eyewitness of most of what he describes. We must add from modern times the learned Tillemont, the exact Hefele, and the elaborate and for the most part impartial narrative of the Duc de Broglie, all of them belonging to the more moderate school of the Roman Church.

command attention. He was retiring, susceptible, and, in his manners, simple to a fault. It is this contrast with the position which was forced upon him that gives the main interest to the curious cycle of events of which he thus became the centre.

Constantinople was crowded with the heads of the different ecclesiastical parties, awaiting the arrival of the new Emperor. There were the Arian bishops in possession of the Imperial sees. There were the semi-Arians, who by very slight concessions on both sides might be easily included in the orthodox community. There were the liberal Catholics, who were eager to grant such concessions. There were the Puritan Catholics, who rigidly spurned all conpromise. With these divisions there was a vast society, hardly less civilised, less frivolous, less complex, than that of our great capitals now, entering into those abstract theological questions as keenly as our metropolitan circles into the political or ecclesiastical disputes which form the materials of conversation at the dinner-tables of London or in the saloons of Paris. Everywhere in that new capital of the world at the races of the Hippodrome, at the theatres, at feasts, in debauches," the most sacred names were bandied to and fro in eager disputation. Every corner, every alley of the city, the streets, the markets, the drapers' shops, the tables of moneychangers and of victuallers, were crowded with these offhand dogmatisers.' If a trader was asked the cost of such an article, he answered by philosophising on generated and ungenerated being. If a stranger inquired the price of bread, he was told the Son is subordinate to the Father.' If a traveller asked whether his bath was ready, he was told the Son arose out of nothing.'

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The shyness as well as the piety of Gregory led him to confine his appearance in public to the pulpit. So completely had the orthodox party been depressed, that they

Gregory Naz. Or. 22-27.

6 avtoσxédio doyμatioтal. Gregory Nyssa, De Deitate Filii, vol. ii. p. 898.

had no church to offer him for his ministrations. They went back for the moment to the custom which, beginning at or before the first conversion of the Empire, was in fact the origin of all the early Christian churches. Every great Roman house had attached to it a hall, which was used by its owner for purposes of justice or of public assemblies, and bore (at least in Rome) the name of basilica.' Such a hall was employed by Gregory on this occasion in the house where he had taken up his quarters. An extempore altar was raised, and in accordance with the ancient Eastern practice of separating the sexes, a gallery was erected for the women, such as on a gigantic scale still exists in the Church of St. Sophia; showing at once the importance of the female element in these Byzantine congregations, and also the prominence given to an element in ecclesiastical architecture which is regarded by modern ecclesiologists as utterly incongruous. To this extemporised chapel he gave the name of the Anastasia, or Church of the Resurrection or Revival; in allusion to the resurrection, as he hoped, of the orthodox party in the Church, much as Nonconformists gave to their places of worship the names, not of the ancient saints, but of such events, or symbols, as seemed to indicate their solitary position in a corrupt world or church-Ebenezer, the stone of help;' Bethesda, the house of help.' The building was soon crowded; the crush at the entrance was often terrific; the rails of the chancel were broken down; the congregation frequently burst out into loud applause. It required a more than mortal not to be touched and elated by these signs of the effect produced by his oratory. As the aged Wilberforce used long after his retirement from public life to recall the results of his eloquence in the House of Commons-Oh! those cheers, See Chapter IX.

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8 It furnishes a curious example of the growth of a legend from a name. Socrates records the miracle of a woman falling from the gallery without injury to life, as the origin of the title. As we know the real meaning of the name, it is obvious that the reverse is the true account of the matter. A Novatian chapel had borne the same name for the same reason.

those delightful cheers!' so Gregory, years afterwards, used to be visited in his solitary dreams by visions of his beloved Anastasia; the church brilliantly illuminated; himself, after the manner of the ancient bishops, aloft on his throne at the eastern end, the presbyters round him, and the deacons in their white robes below; the crowd thronging the church, every eye fixed on him; the congregation sometimes wrapt in profound silence, sometimes breaking out into loud shouts of approbation.

But these bright days were destined to have a sad morrow. The sermons, which consisted usually of abstract disquisitions on the disputed doctrines, but sometimes of counsels towards moderation, veiled under a eulogy of the great Athanasius, provoked the jealousy or hostility of the opposite party, or perhaps of the more zealous members of his own. On one occasion a body of drunken artisans broke into the church, accompanied by an army of beggars, of furious nuns, and, the usual accompaniment of riots at that time, ferocious monks. A violent conflict ensued-some of the priests and neophytes were wounded. The police hesitated to interfere-ostensibly on the ground that it was impossible to decide which were the assailed and which the assailants. Gregory, with a questionable prudence, had surrounded himself with a body of orthodox fanatics, with whom he had but little sympathy, and whose hostility to the moderation of the venerable Basil might have well roused his suspicion. They slept in his house, they assisted him in preparing his sermons, they formed a guard about him in these tumults. One of them was no less a person than the youthful Jerome, then on his way from the farther East, whose fierce and acrid temper rendered him a staunch but perilous friend, and who lost no occasion of expressing his admiration of Gregory-his beloved master,'' to whom there

This is the date of the oration on Athanasius, according to M. de Broglie.

1 M. de Broglie says 'des femmes débauchées.' But it is clear from Gregory's account (Or. xxiii. 5, xxxv. 3; Ep. 77; Carm. de Vitá Suâ, 660, 670), that they were the nuns or consecrated virgins.

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