Eusebius of Vercelli, Letter 2, to the People (355-361 AD)
[As I have posted periodically on this blog, here is a translation of a historical document, in this case a letter written by Eusebius of Vercelli to the people of his diocese from exile c. 355-361 AD. This document provides an important firsthand account of episcopal exile under the Roman Emperor Constantius II, and I am using it as such for a current academic project.
St. Eusebius of Vercelli is one of the more obscure members of the group of exiled Nicene bishop-ascetics from the mid-4th century of the Arian Controversy, but perhaps one of the most important. A prominent Italian bishop and ally of the bishop of Rome Liberius, he was exiled by the Emperor Constantius II at the Council of Milan in 355 AD after refusing to subscribe to the condemnation of Athanasius of Alexandra and the Creed of Sirmium offered by the Emperor. According to our one contemporary narrative, this happened after Eusebius arrived late to the Council and demanded that everyone present sign the Creed of Nicaea before proceeding with any more business. He remained in exile in the East until the death of Constantius in 361 AD, when he played a key role in the Council of Alexandria chaired by Athanasius upon the Emperor's death and attempted without success to resolve the bitter schism in Antioch. He then returned home and died circa 370. He also played an important role, like his close ally Hilary of Poitiers, in establishing early monastic and ascetic institutions in the West, likely inspired by Athanasius' ally Anthony of Egypt.]
To my most beloved brothers, and very much desired priests, but also to the holy peoples of Vercelli, Novarium, Hippo Regius, and also Dertonium who stand firm in the Faith: Eusebius the bishop in the Lord wishes eternal salvation.
1. Although our Lord comforts us, separated in body from you, with many good things, and shows your presence to us at least through the arrival and visits of very many brothers; nevertheless we were sorrowful and sad and not without tears; because for a long interval of time we did not receive writings from Your Holinesses. Indeed we were afraid that either some diabolical subtlety had taken hold of you, or human power had subjugated the unfaithful.
Therefore, while we were afflicted with these thoughts, and I was turning all the consolation of brothers who were coming to us from various provinces more to sorrow at your absence than to joy: the Lord thought it right to bestow this, that I was able to learn the very thing about which I was worried, not only by the letters of your sincerity, but also by the presence of our dear ones Syrus the deacon and Victorinus the exorcist.
And so I have come to know, dearest brothers, that you, as I desired, are unharmed. And, as though I was suddenly snatched up through all the breadth of the earth (as happened to Habakkuk, who was carried by an angel all the way to Daniel [cf. Daniel 14:33-36]), I judged that I had come to you, while I was receiving the letters of each person, while I was racing to your holy friends and the love found in your writings.
2. Tears were mingling for me with joy: and my mind, eager to read, was constrained by being occupied with tears. And both things were necessary, as each of my senses was desiring to anticipate its duties of loving for this fulfillment of desire. Thus each day while occupied with this I was judging that I was spending time with you, and I was forgetting my past labors: in this way truly joys were encompassing me on every side, offering from here stable faith, from here love, from here fruitfulness; so that in so many and so great established goods, suddenly I was judging, as I said above, that I was not in exile, but with you.
I rejoice therefore, dearest brothers, in your faith: I rejoice in your salvation which follows faith: I rejoice in your fruits, because from this they have not only been established, but also have travelled far. As indeed the farmer has grafted on that good tree, which does not suffer the axe, is not given up to flames, for the sake of its fruits; so also we want and desire not only to show to Your Holinesses service according to the flesh, but also to spend our lives for your salvation.
You have extended, as I said, branches strong with fruit, and you have labored to reach through such long spaces of the earth to touch me. I rejoice as a farmer, and gladly pluck the apples of your labor, because you wanted to do so much: not only I, or those very holy priests and deacons or other brothers who are with me, but also all of us who are longing for you.
For you filled up, as the most blessed Apostle says, my heart when you fulfilled the divine commandments which it is right that Christians fulfill towards a bishop or ecclesiastical men who you know labor in exile because of the Faith. You have fulfilled the things which it is right for brothers to do for brothers, and for sons to show for a father.
But when we were wanting you, according to divine commandments, to produce heavenly fruit from earthly things, stable fruit from fleeting things, eternal fruit from fragile things; in suffering by necessity we began to sow seeds daily. The poor were rejoicing at your fruits: not only were the people of the city itself glorifying God, but also everyone: and these people were able to see from the fruits themselves the love you have for me, and in seeing were glorifying God, and naming us with all honor with your blessing.
3. The devil seeing this, the enemy of innocence, the rival of justice, the opponent of faith, because God was being blessed in this work, inflamed against us his Ariomaniacs, who now for a long time were raging not only over this work, but also over their own infidelity, to which they were not able to persuade us, so that they violently erupted; in this way that he has always used, those whom he was not able to persuade, he terrified with force and power.
And so he gathered the multitude of his own people, who seize and bring us to the factory of their infidelity and mock us: and they say that all this power has been handed over to them by the Emperor. Therefore when they were saying many things and boasting about their power, in this I wanted to show them that the things they were able to do are nothing, while I handed over in silence as though to executioners my body, which the Lord was saying was able to be handed over in persecutions. How free in mind I was, while I am suffering from these things, and am imprisoned, and am preserved through four days, and hear the insults and persuasions of different kinds of people: in this I have shown that I have not spoken even one word.
They wanted to add to their malice, that my brothers would depart from me, that is, priests and deacons: but also they said they were going to prevent the rest of the people from coming to me. I, in order to not accept food from the hands of unbelievers, or rather of transgressors (which is worse) who are unbelievers, as the Apostle says, made a petition to them in this way.
‘The Servant of God Eusebius with his fellow servants who labor with me for the Faith, to Patrophilus the prison-guard with his people:
With what violence and rage of many people you carried me off, not only dragged across the ground, but at times even prostrate with a naked body, from this guest-house which you gave to me through your people and agentes in rebus, which I have never left except through your violence, both God knows, and the city knows, nor are you able to deny it now and in the future.
Therefore I reserve my case for God, so that, inasmuch as he himself has ordained it, he may be able to undertake the end. Meanwhile, I want you to know that I have decreed this (so that the reason may be able to stand now and in the future, even here), in the guest-house where you are holding me imprisoned, in which after first carrying me and thrusting me inside very cruelly, you dared to carry me from there in the same way, and to throw me into a single cell, that I will not eat bread nor drink water, until each of you have promised, not only by word, but also by hand, that you will not prevent my brothers who are willingly suffering these things with me from offering me necessary food from the guest-house where they are staying–and also others who have thought it worthy to ask for it.
Indeed, it was right to go out from the body, so that I would not be compelled to often tell those who want to know what a great crime you all have committed against divine and public law. But so that no one from among the unbelievers may call you cruel towards us, and think that we are ignorant of the divine commandments and did not want to avoid confusion more than to obey the Lord, for this reason we wanted to presume this: again I say that unless you make a promise by word and in writing, you will be murderers by preventing [food from being brought to me].
5. The omnipotent God knows this: also his Only-Begotten Son, indescribably born from him, knows, who as God of eternal virtue for our salvation put on a perfect man, wanted to suffer, triumphed over death and rose on the third day, sits on the right hand of the Father, is going to come to judge the living and the dead: also the Holy Spirit knows: the Catholic Church is witness, which confesses like this: because I will not be liable in myself, but you all, who have wanted to prevent my fellow-servants from ministering necessary things.
And if you have prepared this, you ought to despise yourselves: not as though I fear death, but so that after my departure you may not say that I wanted to depart by a voluntary death and may not find a certain cloud of accusation for us. Know that I am going to communicate with the Churches which I am able to reach with letters that have been for a time locked up; I am going to communicate also with the servants of God, so that the whole world might be able to recognize, through these persons running together, how the complete faith which has been approved by all the Catholic bishops is suffering from the Ariomaniacs, which it condemned before. I, Eusebius the bishop, have subscribed in the same way [i.e. to the Nicene Creed].
I adjure you who read this letter, through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that you not suppress it but [allow] it to be be read by others.”
6. Therefore these men, softened on barely the fourth day from this letter [libellus] compelled us, hungry, to return to the guest-house in which we had stayed. They saw from within how the people, returning, received us with joy. They surrounded our guest-house with lights.
We begin, with the Lord approving, to again minister to the poor. Their inhumanity did not endure this, and they destroyed our love for their hatred. They were able to tolerate this for around nearly twenty-five days. They break out anew, and with the destroyed hand of many they come to our guest-house armed with clubs, they break the wall through other people’s doors, and they come to us with violence. Again they grab us, and they lock us up in a narrower guard-house with only our dear priest Tegrinus.
Also our brothers, that is all the priests and deacons, they grab and lock up.
After three days by their own power they send them into exile throughout various places. Other brothers who had come to visit us they send in the public jail and hold them locked up through very many days. Rushing again to the guest-house, they destroy everything which had been prepared either for expenses or for the poor.
But because this their public crime was known by all the citizens, they used this argument, that they were returning some less important things, and were trying to return to us our own property. But they kept the expenses in their own possession: and after so great a crime they were seeking, if it was possible, to deny this, that they had permitted nothing from my property to come to me, I who was trying to bring necessary food to my body. Barely on the sixth day, with people everywhere shouting against them, they permitted one to come. In all that pertained to them, they showed that they had the minds of murderers. At first, they sent away this person, so as not to cease from their malice: afterwards, barely on the sixth day, when we were failing, they allowed him to come once with some food. And so these are the works of the Ariomaniacs.
7. See, most holy brothers, if this is not persecution, when we who keep the Catholic Faith suffer these things: and think more deeply whether this persecution is not very much even worse than that one which happened through the ones who serve idols. Those men were sending people into prison: nevertheless they were not preventing their own from coming to them.
How much, therefore, has Satan wounded the Churches through the cruelty of the Ariomaniacs! People who are obliged to free men send into public guard-houses. People who are taught to suffer for the sake of justice commit violence. People who are taught by the divine law not to demand back their own property when it is stolen steal others’ property. I pass over how much cruelty has invaded them, while they rejoice in their temporal ease. The ability to see their own people is not denied by torturers or judges to bandits shut up in prison: our people are kept from us: and not only are they forbidden from the guest house in which we are held, but they are terrified by threats so that they will not approach the prison. In this way they have subjugated everyone, as I have very plainly known.
I will begin from the bishops: while certain of them fear to lose their office, they themselves have lost the Faith; while they do not not want to lose their earthly faculties and immunities, they have judged the heavenly treasuries and true security to be nothing. In the same way also the rest have been led astray, while they see the bishops fearing these things perish, and have begun to love the things which they cannot have forever.
8. In this way the Ariomaniacs frighten the rich, since they threaten them with proscription: in this way they frighten the poor, since they have the power to shut them up in prison. And how great this insanity is! In the place in which we are held, they not only send the men who serve us into prison, but also they shut up the holy girls [sanctiominales=consecrated religious] in the public guard-houses without any fear of God. But as the the evil old men who sought to violate the chastity of Susanna did not rejoice: so neither will these rejoice always, who try to subject the Church to their infidelity with various persecutions and excessive oppressions. For the holy Daniel said to those men: ‘In this way, because they were afraid, the daughters of Israel slept with you’ [Daniel 13:57].
But let human fear, Most Holy ones, depart from your minds, since you have the consolation of the Lord, who says: ‘Do not fear those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul’ [Matthew 10:18]. This is the time of testing: the time exists so that those who have been tested and proved may be made known and manifest. Therefore they have received human help, because they do not have divine help: because if they did have it, they would never subjugate innocent souls to themselves with earthly power.
9. We were obliged to write many things about those men’s evil deeds, by which not I alone, but very many are oppressed: but it is so that we might not be able to do this, and communicate their cruelty by letters, that we are kept in this very confined guard-house by them. For this reason also our other people and friends are kept from approaching us.
But the Lord has granted to me to send this letter to you through our most dear deacon Syrus, whom we have in our power to send; because by the providence of our Lord at that time he approached to see the holy places and was not discovered with the rest of the brothers.
10. As for the rest, we have with difficulty written this letter in whatever way we could, always begging God that he would restrain our guards for a time, and grant that the deacon might bear more the announcement of our labors than what letters of greetings are usually like.
For this reason I beg you all sufficiently that you keep the Faith with all vigilance, that preserve harmony, that you lean on prayers, that you remember us without ceasing: so that the Lord might think it worthy to free his church which labors over the whole earth, and so that we who are oppressed might be able to be freed to rejoice with you: the Lord will think it worthy to grant this since you ask for it through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with him is blessed from the ages and into all the ages of ages. Amen.
