Thursday, May 11, 2023

Revd Allen Brent on Eusebius, Pope Victor, and the Quartodeciman Controversy

  

 

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 τηςΡωμαιων 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 διεπιστολων) 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 θπεμ-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)

 

 

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