ON ST. ANATOLIUS THE BISHOP AND HIS PREDECESSOR ST. EUSEBIUS,
AT LAODICEA IN SYRIA.
THIRD CENTURY.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY
On the cult, the connection with Eusebius, his deeds, writings, and age.
Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea in Syria (S.)
Eusebius, Bishop of Laodicea in Syria (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Among the most ancient Fathers of the Church, and without doubt among the glorious confessors of the faith of the third century, is to be numbered St. Anatolius, an Egyptian and an Alexandrian by origin, a man most learned in his time, first ordained Bishop by Theotecnus of Caesarea, In the calendars Anatolius is known; then compelled to take up the care of the Church of Laodicea, most highly praised by Eusebius and St. Jerome, as will presently appear. From that source he was received by the author of the Little Roman Martyrology, published by Rosweyd, hence by Ado; finally announced by Usuard thus: At Laodicea of Syria, St. Anatolius the bishop, who left behind admirable writings not only for religious men but also for philosophers: which is the very phrase of the present Roman. Nor does he seem to have been unknown to Wandelbert, unless he sang of another Anatolius; but by the other more recent Martyrologists he is marked with emulation, so that it can by no means be doubted that his memory is received in the sacred calendars. But why he is placed on the tenth of March by some more recent Italian Martyrologists—Maurolyco, Felicio, Galesinius, Ferrari—there is no need to inquire at length; we do not depart from the ancient sources.
[2] The learned wonder why Eusebius has no place in the Martyrology, the friend of Anatolius, his predecessor in the same Laodicean chair, and joined with him in Eusebius the historian, in the same book and chapter, so Eusebius not so expressly, that he could scarcely have been passed over by the author of the Little Roman, since from that very place he took the famous Theodotus, concerning whom see our Usuard on the second of November. A wonder indeed, that so notable a confessor of the faith should be neglected, celebrated by the testimony of Dionysius of Alexandria, and venerated by the Greeks on the fourth of October, from whose Menologium, with only the title of Deacon, he was inserted into the Roman by Baronius with others, concerning whom see Eusebius in the edition of Valesius, book 7, chapter 11, where especially of him toward the end Dionysius thus speaks: Eusebius, I say, whom God from the very beginning strengthened and impelled to exhibit strenuously the ministries to the confessors placed in custody, and to bury the bodies of the consummated and blessed Martyrs, not without peril to his own head. The last words of Eusebius the historian have not been observed, these: It is further to be known that Eusebius indeed, whom Dionysius calls a Deacon, was a little afterward constituted Bishop of Laodicea in Syria.
[3] praised in the ecclesiastical history. The praised compiler of the Little Roman could therefore, without any scruple, have joined together those two Bishops of the same city, even on the same day, which he chose at mere discretion, for nothing certain can be established concerning the year or day of death of either: and this was the more easy, since the one is connected to the other in the cited book, also in Rufinus, chapter 28, and some singular intimacy between the two is shown, of which we made mention above. To us at least it was no doubt that the title of saint was owed to Eusebius too, who therefore could have his place here with St. Anatolius. Hear now Eusebius speaking, in the edition of Valesius, chapter 32: At Laodicea, after Socrates, the Bishop was Eusebius, an Alexandrian by household. The affair of Paul of Samosata gave him occasion to migrate from his homeland. On whose account, when he had come into Syria, he was detained by those who there burned with love of heavenly things, and prohibited from returning home. He indeed was, in our memory, a certain lovable treasure of religion, as can easily be recognized also from the words of Dionysius, cited above. These things concerning St. Eusebius separately, whose other deeds are henceforth mingled with those of Anatolius. For Eusebius the historian proceeds to narrate of him thus.
[4] To this man Anatolius was next substituted, a good successor, as they say, Anatolius's notable learning, of a good man: he too an Alexandrian by household. He held without controversy the chief place among the most learned men of our time, both in the liberal disciplines and in philosophy: inasmuch as he had reached the highest summit of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy; and besides, the supreme height of dialectic, physics, and rhetoric. For which cause he is said to have been asked by the Alexandrians to establish there a school of the Aristotelian succession. To this Valesius observed that this our St. Anatolius is probably the same of whom Eunapius makes mention in the life of Iamblichus, where he says that Iamblichus was at first a hearer of Anatolius, who at that time held the second place in philosophy after Porphyry, and which the praised Valesius demonstrates to agree entirely with the facts and times. But this is not the greatest praise of St. Anatolius: Eusebius pursues others, though cursorily, which commend his sanctity and glory more.
[5] Very many things too were splendidly done by him at Alexandria in the siege of Bruchium, and things splendidly done inasmuch as he obtained by the consent of all a special prerogative of honor among the leading men of the city. The siege and destruction of Bruchium Eusebius related in his Chronicle under the second year of Claudius, in which he was reprehended by Scaliger, who contended from Ammianus Marcellinus that it happened in the times of Aurelian. But Valesius defends the opinion of Eusebius. For, he says, while Bruchium was besieged by the Romans, Eusebius testifies that Eusebius the most holy man and Anatolius were still at Alexandria, and did not migrate into Syria until after the siege of Bruchium was raised. And yet Eusebius set out into Syria for the Synod of Antioch, which we demonstrated above to have been convened in the second year of Claudius. And while he was returning from Antioch, he was detained by the Laodiceans and made Bishop of that place in the first year of the Emperor Aurelian, as it is permitted to suppose; and so Eusebius rightly writes in the Chronicle under the second year of Aurelian: Eusebius of Laodicea is held distinguished. That the assumed proposition is to be denied, we shall show below, and that the Chronicle of Eusebius is to be abandoned, that his history may be saved. Now let us return to the elogium of St. Anatolius.
[6] But I shall commemorate only one deed by way of example. When grain, as they say, failed the besieged, so that they endured the assault of the enemy more easily than famine; Anatolius, who was with the besieged, in the siege of Alexandria, providently devised something of this kind. One part of the city was joined in alliance with the Roman army, and therefore was by no means besieged. In this Eusebius was staying (for he had not yet migrated to the parts of Syria), whose celebrated name and notable glory had reached even the ears of the Roman General. This man Anatolius, by a messenger sent secretly, informs of the number of those who were perishing of famine in the siege. When this was learned, Eusebius requested of the Roman General, as a very great favor, that he grant safety to those who wished to desert from the enemy. When he had obtained this, he immediately indicated it to Anatolius. He, gladly accepting the general's promise, convokes the Alexandrian senate. And first indeed he began to persuade all to return into grace with the Roman. But when he saw them exasperated by such words: But at least this, he said, I think you will by no means refuse, if I persuade you to allow the superfluous and useless crowd—old women, that is, and infants and old men—to go out of the gate, wherever they will. For why do we retain with us these who are just about to die? Why do we, besides, consume with famine those who are utterly weak and maimed of body? Since we ought to feed only men and the young, and dispense the necessary grain to those who are fit for the guarding of the city.
[7] Eusebius also helping. When by reasonings of this kind he had drawn the senate into his opinion, he himself rising first proposes that all the unwarlike multitude, both of the male and of the female sex, be sent out of the city, since, if they remained longer, being in no way useful to the commonwealth, no hope of safety would remain for them, being sure to perish of famine. When all who were in the senate had approved this opinion, Anatolius saved almost all the besieged. For first he gave his effort that the men of our religion; then that others too of every age; and not only those to whom the senate had given leave, but also many others, under this pretext, might secretly flee away, clothed in women's dress, and by night led out beyond the gates of the city by his labor, and pass over to the camp of the Romans. There Eusebius, receiving all, worn down by the long siege, like a certain father and physician refreshed them with all care and providence. Two such shepherds, succeeding one another in continuous series, the Church of Laodicea by divine nod obtained, since both of them, after the times of the aforesaid war, had migrated from the city of Alexandria into Syria. Either I am greatly mistaken, or those err who defer these last events to the second Council of Antioch, that is, to the year 269, since the reckoning of the times and of the whole Eusebian history demands that we place the end of the aforesaid war and the migration of both Saints in the year 264, as must again be said below.
[8] Anatolius's other elogia; Plain enough are the things which Eusebius has thus far narrated of the memorable deed of the Saints, not so those which, disputed by Anatolius concerning Easter, he here collected: For the rest, Anatolius did not compose very many books: but from those which have reached us, one may abundantly recognize at once his elegance and his manifold erudition; but especially from those in which he confirms his own opinion concerning Easter, etc., concerning which see Bucherius on the Canon of Victorius, from page 433 to 466, fully and learnedly explaining all these things, which by no means pertain to our design in this place. You have there also a briefer elogium of St. Anatolius from the Chronicle under the second year of Probus, of Christ 277: Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, learned in the disciplines of the philosophers, is celebrated with much discourse. Likewise St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 73: Anatolius of Alexandria, Bishop of Laodicea of Syria, flourished under the Emperors Probus and Carus. He was a man of wonderful learning; in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, dialectic. The greatness of whose genius we can understand from the volume which he composed on Easter, and from ten books on the institutions of arithmetic. To the same effect are the other elogia there exhibited, page 438. But what things were splendidly done by our Saints throughout the whole time of the episcopate, neither did Eusebius distinctly narrate, nor is it permitted to conjecture from elsewhere, so that it is necessary to embrace them all in a more general elogium.
[9] There remains a difficult place of the Eusebian history, page
288, at what time he succeeded Eusebius in the episcopate, which Valesius left unresolved. Upon this man (Anatolius) Theotecnus, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, first laid hands, and ordained him Bishop, destining him as the successor of his own church. Both certainly for some time governed the same church together. But afterward, when the Synod, gathered against Paul, had called him to Antioch, making his journey through the city of Laodicea, he was detained by the brethren of that place, Eusebius having then died. Concerning two bishops of one and the same see at once I do not dispute; see on that matter Valesius in his annotations, page 160: but in what way can it be understood that Eusebius the Alexandrian, as we said above from the history, migrated from his homeland on account of the affair of Paul of Samosata, but on his return from the Synod was detained, prohibited from returning home, and there ordained Bishop, while meanwhile, in this place, the very same is predicated of St. Anatolius and in exactly the same manner? Was each therefore at the same time Bishop of Laodicea? Or did Eusebius hold the see for only a few days, and did Anatolius soon succeed him? But the Chronicle contradicts, in which under the second year of Aurelian Eusebius of Laodicea is still held distinguished.
[10] This knot Baronius rather cut than untied, under the year of Christ 284, not rightly explained by others, number 13, writing thus: But as to what the (history) says, that Eusebius and Anatolius on the same occasion of confuting the error of Paul of Samosata were carried off to the governance of the Church of Laodicea, each event must be ascribed to different times; namely, that we may say that the ejection of Eusebius happened at the time of the earlier Council gathered, but that of Anatolius when the later assembly of Bishops was held. This knot, I say, Baronius here cut; for if the Chronicle rightly wrote that Eusebius was held distinguished in the second year of Aurelian, which is of the Christian epoch 271, then St. Eusebius survived by a whole two years the second Council of Antioch, and consequently St. Anatolius could not have succeeded him while that later assembly of Bishops was held. Again, if, with Valesius above, the siege and destruction of Bruchium, and so the migration of both Saints into Syria, be referred to the second year of Claudius, of Christ 269, no more can it be said that St. Anatolius was substituted for St. Eusebius when he returned from the Council of Antioch, since on that reckoning even the very ordination of Eusebius must be rejected to after the second Council of Antioch; whence the whole force of the difficulty remains in saving their succession in the same episcopate, so distinctly expressed in the Eusebian history on the same occasion.
[11] it is most probably established. A way of solving the matter aptly enough Tillemont most probably opened, when, the history of Eusebius accurately weighed, against the opinion of Valesius, and still more against that of Scaliger, he places the end of the Alexandrian tumults and the overthrow of Bruchium in the year 264, in which those holy men Eusebius and Anatolius migrated from Egypt into Syria—the former to the first Council of Antioch, held in that year, from which, on his return, he was substituted for the deceased Socrates at Laodicea; the other to Caesarea, where, created Bishop by Theotecnus, he for some time discharged with him the office of coadjutor, as we now speak. They remained further each in his own office up to the second Council of Antioch, convened in the year 269, at the time of which St. Eusebius departed from the living, and our holy Anatolius was compelled to succeed him, perhaps by the designation of Eusebius himself, who had held the see about five years, before his death. To this explanation of the Eusebian knot the Chronicle alone is opposed, more than once cited above, but in which an error must be admitted, since solid arguments prove that St. Eusebius could not have survived the second Council of Antioch, lest the history, which is to be preferred to the Chronicle, most openly contradict itself. Further, how long St. Anatolius sat at Laodicea, Eusebius being silent, let no one easily define; probable is the conjecture of Baronius, that he lived up to the time of the persecution of Diocletian, just about to begin.