--- title: "Select Works and Letters" author: "Athanasius" translator: "Archibald Robertson" languages: [en] shelf: "Church Fathers" section: 121 of 146 url: https://scriptura.si/works/athanasius-select-works-and-letters/121/ cite: "Athanasius, tr. Archibald Robertson, Select Works and Letters, section 121. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/athanasius-select-works-and-letters/121/" --- # Select Works and Letters *Athanasius, tr. Archibald Robertson* Athanasius defends the Nicene faith: the Orations against the Arians, his letters and more. ## 121. Appendix. Exile of Athanasius under Julian, 362-363 Source: https://scriptura.si/works/athanasius-select-works-and-letters/121/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/athanasius-select-works-and-letters/121/#p-N [¶0] Appendix. [¶1] Exile of Athanasius under Julian, 362–363. [¶2] The fragment which follows, containing an interesting report of a story told by Athanasius to Ammonius, Bishop of Pachnemunis, is inserted here as furnishing undesignedly important details as to the movements of Athanasius in 363. See Prolegg. ch. v. §3 h, also ch. ii. §9. It is excerpted by Montfaucon from an account of the Abbat Theodore, written for Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria (385–412) by a certain Ammon (Acta SS. Maii, Tom. iii. Append., pp. 63–71). The writer was at that time a bishop (see unknown): he was born about 335, as he was seventeen years old when he embraced the monastic life a year ‘and more’ after the proclamation of Gallus as Cæsar (Mar. 15, 351). About the time of the expulsion of Athanasius by Syrianus he retired to Nitria, where he remained many years, and finally returned to Alexandria, where he appears (infra) as one of the clergy; the date of his elevation to the Episcopate cannot be fixed, but it obviously cannot be as early as 356–7 (so D.C.B. i. 102 (2), and probably is much later even than 362, in which year he would still be hardly twenty-eight. (He mentions the objections to the election of Athanasius, who was probably 30 in 328, on the ground of his youth.) Accordingly (apart from the different form of his name) he cannot be identified with either of the Ammonii referred to in Tom. ad. Ant. 1, note 3; Hist. Ar. 72, &c. The elder of the two does not concern us here: the younger (supr. pp. 483, 486), is the Ammonius to whom Athanasius told the story in the hearing of Ammon, and was now dead. Of Hermon, Bishop of Bubastis, mentioned as present along with Ammonius, Theophilus, and Ammon when the story was told, nothing is known (except that the date D.C.B. iii. 4 (2) is over 25 years too early). As he is not ‘of blessed memory,’ he was possibly still living during the Episcopate of Theophilus and Ammon. (There is nothing to identify him with the bishop of Tanes in Tom. Ant. 1, 10.) [¶3] The story itself is given at second-hand, from Ammon’s recollection of a statement by Athanasius some 12 to 15 years (at least) before he wrote. The prophetic details about Jovian may therefore be put down to natural accretion (Letter 56, note 2). But (apart from the fact that Julian’s death must have been rumoured long before the tardy official announcement of it, Tillem. Emp. iv. 449 sqq., Prolegg. ubi supr.) that Athanasius told of the φήμη of Julian’s death among the monks of the Thebaid need not be doubted. The story is one of a very large class, many of which are fairly authenticated. To say nothing of the φήμη at the battle of Mycale; we have in recent times the authority of Mr. R. Stuart Poole, of the British Museum, for the fact that on the night of the death of the Duke of Cambridge (July 9, 1850), Mr. Pooles’s brother ‘suddenly took out his watch and said, “Note the time, the Duke of Cambridge is dead,” and that the time proved to be correct;’ also the case of Mr. Edmonds who saw at Leicester, early in the morning of Nov. 4, 1837, an irruption of water into the works of the Thames tunnel, by which a workman was drowned; (other curious cases in ‘Phantasms of the Living’ vol. 2, pp. 367 sqq.). The letter or memoir from which this ‘Narratio’ is taken, was published by the Bollandists from a Medicean ms., and it bears every internal mark of genuineness. In what way it is integrally connected with the Vita Antonii (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 101), except by the fact that it happens to mention Antony, I fail to see. On the subject of Theodore of Tabenne, the main subject of the memoir, see Amélineau’s S. Pakhôme ( ut supra, p. 188), also infr. Letter 58, note 3. [¶4] “As I think your holiness was present and heard, when his blessedness Pope Athanasius, in the presence of other clergy of Alexandria and of my insignificance, formerly related in the Great Church something about Theodorus, to the Ammonius of blessed memory, bishop of Elearchia, and to Hermon, bishop of the city of Bumastica; I write only what is necessary to put your reverence in mind of what he said. When the famous bishops were wondering at the Blessed Antony, Pope Athanasius—for Antony was often with him—said to them:— [¶5] I saw also at that season great men of God, who are lately dead, Theodorus chief of the Tabennesian monks, and the father of the monks around Antinoopolis, called Abbas Pammon. For when I was pursued by Julian, and was expecting to be slain by him—for this news was shewn me by good friends—these two came to me on the same day at Antinoopolis. And having planned to hide with Theodorus, I embarked on his vessel, which was completely covered in, while Abbas Pammon accompanied us. And when the wind was unfavourable, I was very anxious and prayed; and the monks with Theodore got out and towed the boat. And as Abbas Pammon was encouraging me in my anxiety, I said ‘Believe me when I say that my heart is never so trustful in time of peace as in time of persecution. For I have good confidence that suffering for Christ, and strengthened by His mercy, even though I am slain, I shall find mercy with Him.’ And while I was still saying this, Theodorus fixed his eyes on Abbas Pammon and smiled, while the other nearly laughed. So I said to them, ‘Why have you laughed at my words, do you convict me of cowardice?’ and Theodorus said to Abbas Pammon, ‘Tell him why we smiled.’ At which the latter said, ‘You ought to tell him.’ So Theodorus said, ‘in this very hour Julian has been slain in Persia’ for so God had declared beforehand concerning him: ‘the haughty man, the despiser and the boaster, shall finish nothing. But a Christian Emperor shall arise who shall be illustrious, but shall live only a short time. Wherefore you ought not to harass yourselves by departing into the Thebaid, but secretly to go to the Court, for you will meet him by the way, and having been kindly received by him, will return to your Church. And he soon shall be taken by God.’ And so it happened. From which cause I believe, that many who are well pleasing to God live unnoticed, especially among the monks. For those men unnoticed also, such as the blessed Amun and the holy Theodorus in the mountain of Nitria, and the servant of God, the happy old man Pammon.” ### Introduction [¶7] Introduction to Ad Afros Epistola Synodica. [¶8] (Written About 369.) [¶9] The synodical letter which follows was written after the accession of Damasus to the Roman see (366). Whether it was written before any Western synod had formally condemned Auxentius of Milan (see Letter 59. 1) may be doubted: the complaint (§10) is rather that he still retains possession of his see, which in fact he did until 374, the year after the death of Athanasius. At any rate, Damasus had had time to hold a large synod, the letter of which had reached Athanasius. The history of the synods held by Damasus seems hopelessly obscure, and the date of our encyclical is correspondingly doubtful. Damasus certainly held at one time a synod of some 90 bishops from Italy and the Gauls, the letter of which was sent to Illyricum and to the East (Thdt. H. E. ii. 22; Soz. vi. 23; Hard. Conc. i. 771: the Latin of the copy sent to Illyricum is dated ‘Siricio et Ardabure vv. cl. coss.,’ an additional element of confusion). The name of Sabinus at the end of the Latin copy sent to the East seems to fix the date of this synod (D.C.B. i. 294) to 372. Thus the synod referred to §1 below must have been an earlier one, the acts of which are lost. It cannot have been held before the end of 367 or beginning of 368 (Montf. Vit. Ath.), as the earlier period of the episcopate of Damasus was fully occupied by different matters. Accordingly our encyclical falls between 368 and 372, probably as soon as Damasus had been able to assemble so large a synod, and Athanasius to write in reply (§10). It may be added that the letter of the Damasine synod of 372 refers in ambiguous terms to the condemnation of Auxentius as having already taken place, (‘damnatum esse liquet:’ was this because they felt unable to dislodge him? see Tillem. viii. 400). [¶10] The occasion of the letter is two-fold: principally to counteract the efforts that were being made in the West, and especially in Africa (still later in the time of S. Augustine, see Collat. cum Maximin. 4; and for earlier Arian troubles in Africa, Nicene Lib. vol. i. p. 287), to represent the council of Ariminum as a final settlement of the Faith, and so to set aside the authority of the Nicene definition. The second object is involved in the first. The head and centre of the dying efforts of Arianism in the Roman West was apparently Auxentius, ‘one of the last survivors of the victory of Ariminum.’ That he should be still undisturbed in his see, while working far and wide to the damage of the Catholic cause, was to Athanasius a distressing surprise, and he was urging the Western bishops to put an end to such an anomaly. [¶11] In the encyclical before us he begins (1–3) by contrasting the synod of Nicæa with that of Ariminum, and pointing out the real history of the latter, going over again to some extent the ground of the earlier sections of the de Synodis. He touches (3. end) on the disastrous termination of the Council. He then proceeds to vindicate the Nicene creed (4–8) as essentially Scriptural, i.e. as the only possible bar to the unscriptural formulæ of the Arians. This he illustrates (5, 6) by an account, substantially identical with that in the de Decretis, of the evasions of every other test by the Asian bishops at Nicæa. He repeatedly urges that the formula was no invention of the Nicene Fathers (6, 9), appealing to the admission of Eusebius to this effect. He attacks the Homœan position, shewing that its characteristic watchword merely dissembles the alternative between Anomœanism and the true co-essentiality of the Son (7). The most novel argument in the Letter is that of §4, where he refutes the repudiation of οὐσία and ὑπόστασις in the creed of Niké by an argument from Scripture, starting from Ex. iii. 14 (as de Decr. 22 and de Syn. 29), and turning upon the equivalence of the two terms in question. This would appeal to Westerns, and expresses the usual view of Ath. himself (Tom. ad Ant. Introd.) but would not have much force with those who were accustomed to the Eastern terminology. [¶12] The insistence (in §11) that the Nicene formula involves the Godhead of the Spirit should be noted. It seems to imply that, as a rule, such an explicit assurance as is insisted upon in Tom ad Ant. 3, would be superfluous. [¶13] The completeness of the work of Athanasius, now very near his end, in winning over all Egypt to unanimity in faith and in personal attachment to himself, is quaintly reflected in the naive assurance (§10) that the bishops of Egypt and the Libyas ‘are all of one mind, and we always sign for one another if any chance not to be present.’ [¶14] The translation has been carefully compared with that of Dr. Bright (supr. p. 482).