ON ST. LEONTIUS, BISHOP OF CAESAREA IN CAPPADOCIA.
Circa A.D. 337
CommentaryLeontius, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia (St.)
From various sources.
[1] The three hundred and eighteen holy Fathers who took part in the Council of Nicaea were praised in a historical oration both by an anonymous writer found in Metaphrastes under July 10, and by Gregory, a Presbyter of the Church of Caesarea (or, as it is in the Greek, The holy Fathers of the Council of Nicaea praised by Gregory the Presbyter. George), who shows that he lived at the beginning of the seventh century in these words: "And now Nicaea is celebrated and named among all those by whom the synod of these holy three hundred and eighteen Fathers is honoured. How much they laboured for it, and how great a care they took of it, one may infer from that admirable thing which happened in our own age. For when the Assyrians had been ungrateful and had ravaged and harassed the Roman Empire, by which their salvation had been secured, and were consuming all things (for what else is to be said?) with barbarian insolence, it remained untouched by all Babylonian insult," etc. He speaks of Chosroes the Younger, who, restored to his kingdom by the Emperor Maurice, afterwards wore down the Romans with many disasters, until at last he was defeated by Heraclius. Gregory wrote this praise of the holy Fathers at the request of Theophilus, Bishop of Nicaea.
[2] Among these Fathers, moreover, certain ones receive particular veneration in the Church. The feast of St. Leontius. Leontius, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who was one of the foremost, is commemorated on the Ides of January. On which day the following is recorded in the Roman Martyrology: "At Caesarea in Cappadocia, St. Leontius the Bishop, who contended greatly under Licinius against the pagans and under Constantine against the Arians."
[3] His many labours indeed, says Gregory the Presbyter, even before he came to the Council of Nicaea, were poured forth for the faith; Labours for the faith. and many Martyrs and victorious athletes through him overthrew the adversary; and many, having made use of his guidance in life, became citizens of heaven — among whom was that great one among the victors, Gregory, who both discovered the relics of the holy Martyrs Rhipsime and Gaiane and first cast down the incontinent Tiridates and afterwards brought him to the faith.
[4] We shall give the Life of St. Gregory of Armenia on September 30, in which both the slaying, discovery, and honours of Saints Rhipsime and her companions — who are venerated on September 29 by the Latins and on September 30 by the Greeks — and the ordination of St. Gregory are treated. The deeds of St. Gregory of Armenia. After his father Anak and his entire family were killed, he had been deported to Caesarea, where he also imbibed the Christian religion. Afterwards, returning to Armenia with Tiridates, he suffered many things from him for the sake of the faith, and was sustained for many years in the depths of a pit by the wondrous providence of God. Then, in order to free Tiridates and his nobles from the madness divinely sent upon them on account of the slaughter of Rhipsime and her companions, he was brought forth and also instructed him and nearly the entire kingdom in the mysteries of the faith. Therefore he was at last sent by Tiridates to Caesarea to Leontius, to be consecrated Bishop by him, with an accompanying letter that the King had written with great humility of spirit. When he had received this letter, says the author of the Life of St. Gregory, Consecration by Leontius. Leontius received the great Gregory and the legates honourably, and when he had consecrated him together with the other Bishops who were present, he dismissed him with equal kindness and honour. When this may have occurred can be inferred from the fact that Rhipsime had fled to Armenia to escape the lust of the Emperor Diocletian, and not many years seem to have intervened until the conversion of Tiridates. Perhaps this happened at the time when Licinius, in favour of Constantine, granted the Christians some respite. Baronius refers it to the year of Christ 311, where at number 23 and following he treats of Gregory.
[5] At the same time, perhaps also by St. Leontius himself, and certainly in the Church of Caesarea, Orthanes and Arostanes — Sons. whom Gregory had begotten of his lawful wife when he was formerly a young man — were trained to the complete perfection of Christian virtue. The former was already a Presbyter in rank and an Ecclesiast in office, while the latter, having embraced the solitary life, devoted himself to God. Both were brought to Armenia by Tiridates, who sent three illustrious legates to summon them. Arostanes afterwards took part in the Council of Nicaea; and he appears to be the one who is called Aristaeus in the subscriptions, Bishop of Diospontus in Greater Armenia — called by others Acrites and Aristarces.
[6] Thenceforward, as Gregory was consecrated by Leontius, so the Bishop of Greater Armenia customarily received his consecration from the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. So writes the Greek author Nicon (whom Baronius, vol. 3, at the year 311, number 24, and others call a Saint, The chief Bishop of Armenia was to be consecrated by the Bishop of Caesarea. thinking him to be that holy monk who is venerated on November 26) in a fragment of his book On the Errors of the Armenians: "Furthermore, since the great Gregory, who was Bishop of Greater Armenia, had stipulated that the Bishop of Armenia should be ordained by none other than the then Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he himself also was ordained, and terrible execrations and anathemas were directed against those who do otherwise — these things indeed they transgress; and their universal Bishop is ordained by Ameranus of Syria. But if the great Gregory established these things, let them show us his constitutions addressed to his sons, and their mouth will be stopped."
[7] In the year of Christ 325, in the consulship of Paulinus and Julian, the first ecumenical synod was held at Nicaea. [In Leontius's presence, the father of St. Gregory the Theologian requests baptism.] When Leontius set out for it, he passed through Nazianzus (which is a town of Cappadocia Secunda) with other Bishops, and appears to have visited the parents of Gregory the Theologian, and in his presence either baptized or prepared through catechetical instruction the father of Gregory the Theologian, later Bishop of that place. So the son writes in his funeral oration of January 1, number 13: "And accordingly, when the occasion had so arisen that to confound the recently sprung-up mad doctrine of Arius, by which the Divinity was being rent asunder, very many Bishops were hastening to Nicaea, he gave himself to God and to the heralds of the truth, and professes his desire and seeks from them the aid of the common salvation — among whom the illustrious Leontius also was numbered, who then governed our metropolis."
[8] What proofs of his erudition Leontius produced at the council, one may gather from the Acts of the council itself, such as they survive: Leontius takes part in the Synod of Nicaea. where his distinguished disputations on the most profound mysteries of our religion are found in book 2 of the edition of our Alfonso Pisano. And in book 4, in the Catalogue of the holy Bishops through whom the holy and great general synod of Nicaea transmitted what had been judged in it by the Holy Spirit to all the Churches of God upon the earth, Leontius of Caesarea in Cappadocia is placed among the foremost — as ornament of the Church of the Lord — to the Churches throughout the same Cappadocia, and Galatia, Pontus, Diospontus, Paphlagonia, Pontus Polemoniacus, and Armenia Minor and Major.
[9] And with him Hermogenes. It appears that, just as Athanasius the Archdeacon of the same Church attended the council with Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria the Great, and Eusebius (later of Caesarea) with Macarius of Jerusalem, so also Hermogenes was present with Leontius. For Basil, successor to both in the see of Caesarea, writes thus in Epistle 82 to Patrophilus the Bishop: "They first followed Arius, then changed their opinion and turned to Hermogenes, who was diametrically opposed to the condemned opinion of Arius, as is manifest from the creed which was first proclaimed by that man at Nicaea." Hermogenes was, as the same Basil shows in Epistle 74, Bishop of Caesarea after Leontius. Nor do we here agree with Baronius (at the year 325, number 33) in thinking that Basil's memory failed him here: for how could he not remember what his predecessors had done in a matter that he himself was dealing with daily?
[10] Leontius in old age. That Leontius survived for many years may be inferred from the oration of Gregory the Presbyter, who in what he writes indefinitely about the Fathers of Nicaea seems especially to have wished to assert it of the Bishop of the Church in which he himself was living. He writes thus: "They, moreover, like limpid rivers divided from the one fountain of Nicaea, reached each one his own flock, bearing the fruit of their blessed pilgrimage — the saving symbol of the world. And having illuminated the course of their diocese with venerable old age and with the advancement of a life built on virtue, they attained their blessed lot."
[11] "But the benign and merciful God, the beneficent lover of His servants, who glorifies those who glorify Him, when He had deemed their souls worthy to enjoy the delights stored up in heaven, did not dismiss their most chaste bodies without a gift and reward, but by a miracle beyond all expectation, through these also He honoured His ministers. For He brought upon them the common death as a natural sleep. Whence the bodies that received these Fathers remained undissolved in each one's diocese. His body remained incorrupt for a very long time after death. Of these, moreover, there are perhaps many other witnesses as well, who in the places saw what is described, and who, when the coffins of the Saints were at some time opened, embraced them in their coffins as if they were held by a kind of sleep. Indeed, we ourselves also are not false witnesses of this spectacle. For the precious relics of Leontius, the most holy Bishop of the Church of Caesarea, who was the equal of Angels" — (he interjects in a parenthesis what we related above concerning his labours before the Council of Nicaea) — "the precious relics, I say, of this man, many saw together with us, which had neither shed their hair nor lost their nails; and they were full of every fragrance of ointments."
[12] From this it is clear, first, that the body of the holy Bishop had remained incorrupt for about three hundred years, for Gregory wrote after that interval of time; and second, that he did not die immediately upon returning home from the Council of Nicaea. He was buried, moreover, in the basilica of St. Hesychius the Martyr. For it is said thus in the Life of St. Basil, June 14: "And when twelve Bishops had assembled together with the multitude of the city, His burial. they laid him in a marble sarcophagus in the church of the holy and glorious Martyr Hesychius, where also Leontius the Bishop before him sleeps with the rest." We judge this to be Hesychius the Martyr of Antioch, whom the Latins venerate on November 18 and the Greeks on May 10. Ghinius is grievously mistaken Ghinius corrected. when he writes that Leontius died around the year 311, and when he says that he baptized his father — he meant, no doubt, to say the father of St. Gregory the Theologian; but even him Leontius did not baptize, but rather was present at his baptism or catechesis, as we have said. Finally, Ghinius calls him an "Angel of peace" from the words, as he professes, of Gregory the Presbyter; but Gregory calls him isangelos, that is, "the equal of Angels."
[13] The relics of St. Leontius, as Saussay writes, having been translated from the East to Italy, were brought from Vicenza to Gaul under the Emperor Otto, Relics of St. Leontius. and deposited in the church of St. Vincent at Metz, where they are observed with fitting veneration. But Sigebert in his Chronicle at the year 970 writes that the body of St. Leontius, Bishop and Martyr, was transported to Metz by Bishop Theoderic. Another Leontius, a Martyr, is venerated at Vicenza on August 20, but he is not a Bishop.
[14] Leontius appears to have written certain works, as St. Athanasius attests in his first oration against the Arians: Writings. "If these writings came from orthodox authors, such as the great Confessor Hosius, or Maximinus of Gaul, or his successor, or Philogonius and Eustathius, Bishops of the East, or Julius and Liberius, the Roman Pontiffs, or Cyriacus of Moesia, or Pistus and Aristaeus, Bishops of Greece, or Silvester and Protogenes of Dacia, or Leontius and Eupsychius, Bishops of Cappadocia," etc., "there would be nothing to suspect in these writings: for the minds of apostolic men are sincere and simple." What those writings may have been, however, we have not been able to discover.