Eusebius on Pope
Victor: the Paschal Controversy
Eusebius, in his brief
description of the pontificate of Victor, describes him as acting like a pope
of the fourth century such as that other African, Miltiades against the
Donatists and under a Christian Emperor. The upshot of the exchange of letters
with Polycrates, who defended the Quartodecimans, he describes as follows:
Upon this Victor, who
presided at Rome (ο μεν της’ Ρωμαιων προεστως;)
attempted to cut off (αποτεμωειν) from the common unity (της κοινης ενωσεως;) the dioceses (παροικιας) of all Asia along with the adjacent churches on the
grounds that they were committing heterodoxy (ως αν ετεροδοξουσας) and he placarded the fact (στηλιτευει) by means of letters and proclaimed that the brethren
there were utterly excommunicate (ακοιωντητους
παντας αρδην τους εκεισς ανακηρυττων αδελφους). But all
the bishops were not pleased by these events.
H.E.
V, 24, 9
However, far from
Victor's attempt to act like a fourth-century pope having succeeded, Eusebius
goes on to record its failure. Irenaeus as bishop of the Gallican community
remonstrates with Victor on the grounds that a plurality of differing
traditional practices over the length of the Easter fast licensed
"personal preference (ιδιωτισμον συνηθειαν)." He then mentions "the presbyters before
Soter who presided over the church over which you are now leader οι προ Σωτηρος προεσβυτεροι
οι προσταντες της εκκλησιας ης συ νυν αφηγη), namely
Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesephorus, and Xystus." Polycarp had agreed to
differ with Anicetus on this matter after the former's visit to him in Rome.
Eusebius concludes with the description of Irenaeus as peacemaker (ειρηνοποιος), which presumably means that he had in fact
succeeded in mollifying Victor's demands (H.E. V, 24,10-16).
As McCue,
following Jalland and Boulet, points out, Eusebius has once again been
victim in this passage to his ideology which negates any idea of historical
development, and assumes that the Church Order of the fourth century was
unchanged since the time of the apostles. Eusebius admits that, in the written
letter of Irenaeus that was his source, the discussion between Papias and
Anicetus took place in Rome. The point about such a conversation was not to
renew the broken bond of communion between geographically distant dioceses, as
Eusebius assumes, but to reconcile to Victor a
group with whom he was
at variance within Rome itself.
In this connection, it
is important to note what was the due process of Victor's excommunication of
Asiatic communities (or an Asiatic community) in Rome following the practice of
Polycarp's Smyrna. No general council is held over which Victor presides, with
resultant anathemas. Indeed Eusebius might insist that "many meetings and
conferences were held (συνοδοι δη και συγκροτησεις επισκοπων),"
but he has no joint synodical letter and merely hypothesizes such synods from
the number of letters of various bishops (παντες τε μια γνωμη δι’ επιστολων)
expressing the conviction that the resurrection could only be celebrated on Sunday
(H.E. V, 23,2). Unanimity of opinion between different episcopal letters
in the archives at Aelia are sufficient for him to conclude that something like
a fourth century episcopal Synod had taken place.
Similarly with
Polycrates' letter which he quotes, Eusebius makes the author write as though
he were speaking for a Synod of bishops:
I could mention the
bishops who are present (των συμπαροντων μνημονευσαι) whom
you required me to summon (ους υμεις ηξιωσατε μετακληθξναι θπ’ εμ-ου και μετεκαλεσαμην), and
I did so. If I should write their names they would be many multitudes; and they
knowing my feeble humanity, agreed with the letter, knowing that not in vain is
my head grey, but that I have ever lived in Christ Jesus.
H.E.
V, 24,8
Eusebius here
overreaches himself in his demand for our credibility. We are to believe that a
second century bishop of Rome could require (ηξιωσατε) a bishop in Asia Minor to summon a Synod of his fellow bishops
consisting of "many multitudes of names." Furthermore, the function
of such a Synod was not to issue their own encyclical letter, but simply to
confirm Polycrates' personal reflections on the tradition followed by the seven
members of his family who had been bishops, and his account of the luminaries
who supported the Quartodeciman practice. Thus we may not unreasonably conclude
that a similar distortion of the background of a second century individual episcopal
letter into a fourth-century synodical form has also taken place elsewhere than
in Eusebius' account of the Paschal Controversy.
(Revd Allen Brent, Hippolytus
and the Roman Church in the Third Century: communities in Tension Before the
Emergence of a Monarch-Bishop [Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life
and Language 31; Leiden: Brill, 1995], 412-14)
