Macarius, bp. of Jerusalem
Macarius (1) 1., bp. of Jerusalem, the 39th from the Apostles, Hermon being his predecessor. His accession is placed by Tillemont in 311 or 312. In a list of defenders of the faith, Athanasius (Orat. I. adv. Arian, p.291) refers to Macarius as exhibiting "the honest and simple style of apostolical men." A letter was addressed to him and other orthodox bishops by Alexander of Alexandria (Epiph. Haer. lxix.4, p.730). He attended the council of Nicaea in 325 (Soz. i.17; Theod. H. E. i.15). During his episcopate, a.d.326 or 327, [373]HELENA paid her celebrated visit to Jerusalem. Macarius was commissioned by the emperor Constantine, a.d.326, to see to the erection of a basilica on the site of the Holy Sepulchre. The emperor's letter is given by Eusebius (de Vita Const. iii.29-32), Socrates (H. E. i.9) and Theodoret (H. E. i.17). Constantine subsequently (c.330) wrote to Macarius with the other bishops of Palestine about the profanation of the sacred terebinth of Mamre by idolatrous rites (Euseb. u.s.52, 53). The emperor also presented Macarius with a vestment of gold tissue for the administration of the sacrament of baptism, as a token of honour to the church of Jerusalem (Theod. H. E. ii.27). The death of Macarius is placed by Sozomen (H. E. ii.20) between the deposition of Eustathius, a.d.331, and the council of Tyre, a.d.335. He was succeeded by Maximus.

[E.V.]

Macarius Magnes, a writer
Macarius (9) Magnus, a writer of the end of the 4th cent. Four centuries after, his name had sunk into almost complete oblivion, when in the course of the image controversy a quotation from him was produced on the iconoclastic side. Nicephorus, then or afterwards patriarch of Constantinople, had never heard of him, and only after long search could he procure a copy of the work containing the extract (Spicilegium Solesmense, i.305). Nicephorus evidently had no knowledge of the author except from the book itself. The words Macarius Magnes may be both proper names, or else may be translated either as the blessed Magnes or as Macarius the Magnesian. Nicephorus understood Macarius as a proper name, and so he found it understood in the title of the extract which he discusses, but will not undertake to say whether Magnes is a proper name or a geographical term. He concludes that Macarius was a bishop, because the title described the author as hierarches and the very ancient MS. from which his information was derived contained a portrait of the author in a sacerdotal dress. He dates Macarius as 300 years later than the "Divine and Apostolic preaching," as could be gathered from two passages in the work. The work, called Apocritica, was addressed to a friend named Theosthenes, and contained objections by a heathen of the school of Aristotle, together with replies by Macarius. Nicephorus finds that the extract produced by the Iconoclasts had been unfairly used, the context shewing that Macarius referred only to heathen idolatry and not to the use of images among Christians. But Nicephorus had no favourable opinion of him on the whole, thinking he discerned Manichean, Arian, or Nestorian tendencies, and especially agreement with "the impious and senseless Origen" as to the non-eternity of future punishments. Macarius again sank into obscurity, only some very few extracts from his writings being found in MSS. of succeeding centuries. Near the end of the 16th cent. he became again the subject of controversy through the Jesuit Turrianus, who had found a copy of the Apocritica in St. Mark's Library at Venice, which when afterwards sought for had disappeared. In 1867 there was found at Athens what there is good reason to believe was this copy, which, by theft or otherwise, had found its way to Greece. This was pub. by Paul Foucart (Paris, 1876). Shortly after Duchesne pub. a dissertation on Macarius (Paris, 1877) with the text of all the attainable fragments of Macarius's homilies on Genesis. The Apocritica consisted of five books: of these we have only the third complete, but enough remains to shew that the work purports to contain a report of a viva voce discussion between the author and a Grecian philosopher. In form it is perhaps unique. It is not a mere dialogue; nor does it proceed in the Platonic method of short questions and answers. Each speech of the heathen objector is made up of some half-dozen short speeches, each dealing with different objections. To these Macarius severally replies, and then follow a few lines of narrative introducing a new set of objections. We doubtless have here a unique specimen of genuine heathen objections of the 4th cent. The blows against Christianity are dealt with such hearty goodwill and with so little restraint of language that a Christian would certainly have regarded it as blasphemous to invent such an attack. That Macarius did not invent the objections is further shewn by his sometimes missing their point, and by his answers being often very unsatisfactory. There is also a clear difference in style between the language of the objector and of the respondent. It has therefore been inferred that Macarius reproduces the language as well as the substance of the arguments of a heathen, and then arises the question, "Does the dialogue record a real viva voce discussion with a heathen objector, or are the heathen objections from a published work against Christianity, and if so, whose?"

The earliest Christian apologists defended their religion against men who had a very vague knowledge of it. But towards the close of the 3rd cent, a systematic attack was made on our religion by its most formidable adversary, Porphyry, founded on a careful study of our sacred books. Three or four of the Macarian objections have been at least ultimately derived from Porphyry. They do not appear to be verbally copied from him; and the Macarian objector places himself 300 years after St. Paul's death, which, with every allowance for round numbers, is too late for Porphyry. Again, there is scarcely any resemblance between the objections in Macarius and what we know of those of the emperor Julian. Great part of these last is directed against the O.T., those of Macarius almost exclusively against the New; and the Macarian objections are not attacks of a general nature on the Christian scheme, but rather attempts to find error or self-contradiction in particular texts e.g. how could Jesus say, "Me ye have not always," and yet "I am with you always, even to the end of the world"? Intermediate in time between Porphyry and Julian was Hierocles, and Duchesne ably advocates the view that the discussion in Macarius is fictitious, and that his book contains a literal transcript of parts of the lost work of Hierocles. We are ourselves inclined to believe that while no doubt Macarius or the heathen philosophers whom he encountered drew the substance of their arguments, and even in some cases their language, from previous heathen writings, yet on the whole the wording is Macarius's own. We give a few specimens of the objections with Macarius's solutions, with a warning that the selection is scarcely fair to Macarius, since it is not worth while printing such of his answers as an apologist of to-day would give.

Ob. Jesus told His disciples "Fear not them who can kill the body," yet when danger was threatening Himself, He prayed in an agony that the suffering might pass away. His words then were not worthy of a Son of God, nor even of a wise man who despises death.

Sol. We must see what it was our Lord really feared, when He prayed. The devil had seen so many proofs of His divinity that he dared not assault Him again, and so there was danger that that Passion which was to be the salvation of the world should never take place. Our Lord dissembles, therefore, and pretends to fear death, and thus deceiving the devil, hastens the hour of his assault; for when He prayed that His cup might pass, what He really desired was that it should come more speedily. He thus caught the devil by baiting the hook of His divinity with the worm of His humanity, as it is written in Ps. xxii., "I am a worm, and no man," and in Job xli., "Thou shalt draw out the dragon with a hook." -- The doctrine that the devil was thus deceived is taught by many Fathers, e.g. Gregory Nyssen. Gregory the Great, commenting on Job xli.1, uses language strikingly like that of Macarius; but the common source of Macarius and the rest was Origen's Comm. on Ps. xxii.

Ob. How can Jesus say "Moses wrote of Me," when nothing at all of the writings of Moses has been preserved? All were burnt with the temple, and what we have under the name of Moses was written 1,180 years after his death by Ezra and his company.

Sol. When Ezra rewrote the books of Moses, he restored them with perfect accuracy as they had been before: for it was the same Spirit Who taught them both.

Ob. "If they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." If so, candidates for bishoprics ought to be tested by offering them a cup of poison. If they dare not drink, they ought to own that they do not really believe the words of Jesus; and if they have not faith for the cures promised in the same context and the power to remove mountains, no ordinary Christian is now a believer, nor even any bishops or presbyters.

Sol. -- Christ's words are not to be understood literally. Working cures is no test of faith: for such are often performed by unbelievers or atheists. It is not to be supposed Christ intended His disciples to do what He never did Himself, and He never moved a literal mountain. What He meant by mountains was demons, and we have in Jer. li.25 this metaphorical use of the word mountain. -- Here we have another coincidence with Ambrose (in Ps. xxxvi.35 (Vulg.); Migne, i.1000), both no doubt being indebted to Origen.

It is important to note that St. Mark, as read by the objector and by Macarius, contained the disputed verses at the end, as is seen also from his mentioning that out of Mary Magdalen had been cast seven devils (see Orig. Adv. Cels. ii.55). He speaks of the author of Hebrews as the Apostle, no doubt intending St. Paul. He appears to have used II. Peter (see p.180). The phrase "the canon of the N.T." occurs p.168.

With respect to idolatry the heathen apologist argues: None of us supposes wood or stone to be God, or thinks that if a piece be broken off an image, the power of the Deity represented is diminished. It was by way of reminder that the ancients set up temples and images, that those who come to them might think of God and make prayers according to their needs. You do not imagine a picture of your friend to be your friend; you keep it merely to remind you of him, and to do him honour. Our sacrifices are not intended to confer benefit on the Deity, but to shew the love and gratitude of the worshipper. We make our images of Deity in human form as being the most beautiful we know.

We have not space to give other answers of Macarius, though some are clever enough. Sufficient has been quoted to show the allegorical style of interpretation which Macarius used. Other examples could be easily added: e.g. the clouds by which Paul expected to be caught up mean angels (p.174); the three measures of meal (Matt. xiii.) mean time, past, present, and future; the thong (shoe-latchet) which could not be loosed is the tie between our Lord's humanity and divinity (p.93); the four watches of the night (Matt. xiv.25) mean the ages of the patriarchs, of the law, of the prophets, and of Christ; in Elijah's vision the strong wind was the patriarchal dispensation which swept away the worship of idols; the earthquake was the law of Moses, at the giving of which the mountains leaped like rams; the fire was the word of prophecy (Jer. xx.9); the still small voice was the message of Gabriel to Mary. Macarius thus belonged to the Alexandrian school of allegorical
interpretation, as might be expected from the great use he makes of Origen, not to the Syrian literal school. [[374]Diodorus.] Alexandria might also be suggested by the fact that Macarius has some scientific knowledge. He admires extremely (p.179) the skill of geometers in being able to find a square equal in area to a triangle; he knows the astronomical labours of Aratus, and is aware that in the discussion of celestial problems the earth is treated as a point. On the other hand, many indications point to the East as his abode. He measures distances by parasangs (p.138); when speaking (p.7) of the diversities which exist among the population of a great city, he chooses Antioch as his example. Speaking of the ascetic life, he draws his instances not from the celebrated solitaries of Egypt, but those of the East. In a short list of heretics the Syrian Bardesanes is included. The woman healed of an issue of blood is said to have been Berenice, queen of Edessa, a notion likely to have been derived from a local tradition. In a question of language which became the subject of much dispute in the East he sides with those who speak of trion hupostaseon en ousia mia.

Crusius pointed out, and the suggestion has been adopted by Möller (Schürer, Theol. Lit. Zeit.1877, p.521), that at the Synod of the Oak in 403, one of the accusers of Heracleidas of Ephesus was a Macarius, bp. of Magnesia. His identification with our Macarius seems highly probable. It is not a weighty objection that one of the charges brought against Heracleidas was Origenism, while Macarius, as we have seen, was largely indebted to Origen. Macarius had other grounds of hostility to Heracleidas, and we have no knowledge that his own admiration of Origen was such as to induce him to incur the charge of heresy for his sake, or to refrain from bringing the charge of Origenism against an opponent. The Magnesian Macarius sufficiently satisfies the conditions of time and place.

Duchesne conjectures that Macarius may probably have visited Rome. Of the heroes of the Eastern church he names only Polycarp, telling of him a story found elsewhere. Of Westerns he names Irenaeus of Lyons, Fabian of Rome, and Cyprian of Carthage. He has the story told in the Latin Abdias (Fabric. Cod. Ap. N. T. p.455) of flowing milk instead of blood from St. Paul's headless body (p.182). The duration of St. Peter's episcopate is made only a few months (p.102).

[G.S.]

Macarius, presbyter of Athanasius
Macarius (12), presbyter of Athanasius. Early in his episcopate, perhaps in 329 or 330 (if his consecration was on June 8, 328, as Hefele reckons, Councils, ii.4), [375]Athanasius, on a visitation in Mareotis, was informed that a layman named Ischyras was exercising priestly functions. Macarius was sent to summon the offender before the archbishop, but Ischyras being ill, his father was requested to restrain him from the offence. Ischyras, recovering, fled to the Meletians, who invented the accusation that Macarius, by order of Athanasius, had forced the chapel of Ischyras, overthrown his altar, broken the chalice, and burnt the sacred books (Athan. Apol. c. Ar. c.63; Socr. i.27; Hilar. Pict. Fragm. ii. § 18). Macarius is next found at the imperial court at Nicomedia on a mission with another priest, Alypius, when three Meletian clergy, Ision, Eudaemon, Callinicus, brought their accusation against Athanasius in reference to the linen vestments. Macarius and Alypius were opportunely able to refute the calumny (Socr. i.27; Soz. ii.22). This may have been late in 330 or early in 331; Pagi's date 328 seems too early. Macarius and the three Meletians were still there when Athanasius arrived (331) on a summons from Constantine; the Meletians brought against the archbishop the fresh charge of supplying money to Philumenus and Macarius was charged with the breaking of the chalice (Hefele, ii.13). The charge was easily disproved. Macarius again assisted Athanasius when charged with the murder of Arsenius. When Arsenius had been found alive and John Arcaph had confessed the fraud, Macarius was sent to Constantinople to inform Constantine of the collapse of the whole calumny (Athan. Apol. c. Ar. cc.65, 66). Macarius was dragged in chains before the council at Tyre in 335, and when the commission was sent by that council to Mareotis to investigate the affair of the chalice, which was still charged against Athanasius, Macarius was not allowed to accompany it, but was left in custody at Tyre. Athan. Apol. c. Ar. cc.71, 72, 73; Mansi, ii.1126, 1128, B, C; Hefele, ii.14-23; Tillem. viii.19-23.

[C.H.]

Macarius, an Egyptian hermit or monk
Macarius (17). Two hermits or monks of this name both lived in Egypt in the 4th cent.; their characters and deeds are almost indistinguishable. The elder is called the Egyptian, the younger the Alexandrine. One of them was a disciple of Anthony and the master of EVAGRIUS, and one of them dwelt in the Thebaid. Jerome speaks of Rufinus (Ep. iii.2, ed. Vall. a.d.374) as "being at Nitria, and having reached the abode of Macarius." Yet Rufinus, who lived 6 years in Alexandria and the adjoining monasteries, describes the residence of Macarius (Hist. Mon.29) -- which he names Scithium and says was a day and a half's journey from the monasteries of Nitria -- from the accounts of others rather than as an eye-witness. Rufinus, however, seems to have seen both hermits (Apol. Ruf. ii.12). The stories about them are of a legendary character. Rufinus, Hist. Mon.28, 29, and Hist. Eccl. ii.4, 8; Palladius, 19, 20; Soz. iii.13; Socr. iv.18; Gennad. d. V. Ill.11; Martyrolog. Rom. Jan.5 and 15.

[W.H.F.]

Macarius, a Roman Christian
Macarius (24), a Christian of Rome who (end of 4th cent.) wrote on the divine providence in opposition to heathen notions of fate and astrology. Finding some difficulties, he dreamed of a ship bringing relief to his doubts. Rufinus just at this time arriving from Palestine, Macarius saw in this the interpretation of his dream and sought from him light from the Greek fathers. Rufinus trans. for him Origen's eulogy on the martyr Pamphilus (said by Jerome to be really by Eusebius) and also Origen's peri Apchon, the publication of which led to violent controversy. [[376]HIERONYMUS; [377]ORIGEN.] Jerome calls him Holbios, saying, "Tunc discipulus Olbios, vere nominis sui si in talem magistrum non impegisset" (Ep. cxxvii. ad Princ. ed. Vall.)

[W.H.F.]

Macedonius, bp. of Constantinople
Macedonius (2), bp. of Constantinople.

At bp. Alexander's death in 336 party feeling ran high. His orthodox followers supported Paul, the Arians rallied round Macedonius. The former was ordained bishop, but did not hold his bishopric long. The emperor Constantius came to Constantinople, convened a synod of Arian bishops, banished Paul, and, to the disappointment of Macedonius, translated Eusebius of Nicomedia to the vacant see (a.d.338). Eusebius's death in 341 restarted hostilities between the partisans of Paul and Macedonius. Paul returned, and was introduced into the Irene church of Constantinople; Arian bishops immediately ordained Macedonius in St. Paul's church. So violent did the tumult become that Constantius sent his general Hermogenes to eject Paul for a second time. His soldiers met with open resistance; the general was killed and his body dragged through the city. Constantius at once left Antioch, and punished Constantinople by depriving the people of half their daily allowance of corn. Paul was expelled; Macedonius was severely blamed for his part in these disturbances, and for allowing himself to be ordained without imperial sanction; but practically the Arians triumphed. Macedonius was permitted to officiate m the church in which he had been consecrated. Paul went to Rome, and he and Athanasius and other orthodox bishops expelled from their sees were sent back by Julius with letters rebuking those who had deposed them. Philip the prefect executed the fresh orders of the emperor in hurrying Paul into exile to Thessalonica, and in reinstating Macedonius, but not without bloodshed (Socr. ii.16).

Macedonius held the see for about six years, while letters and delegates, the pope and the emperors, synods and counter-synods, were debating and disputing the treatment of Paul and Athanasius. In 349 the alternative of war offered by Constans, emperor of the West, induced Constantius to reinstate Paul; and Macedonius had to retire to a private church. The murder of Constans (a.d.350) placed the East under the sole control of Constantius, and Paul was at once exiled. Imperial edicts followed, which permitted the Arians to claim to be the dominant faction in the church.

Macedonius is said to have signalled his return to power by acts which, if truly reported, brand him as a cruel bigot. The Novatianists suffered perhaps even more fearfully than the orthodox and some of them were stung into a desperate resistance: those of Constantinople removing the materials of their church to a distant suburb of the city; those at Mantinium in Paphlagonia daring to face the imperial soldiers sent to expel them from their home. "The exploits of Macedonius," says Socrates (ii.38), "on behalf of Christianity, consisted of murders, battles, incarcerations, and civil wars."

An act of presumption finally lost him the imperial favour (a.d.358). The sepulchre containing the relics of Constantine the Great was in danger of falling to pieces, and Macedonius determined to remove them. The question was made a party one. The orthodox assailed as sacrilege "the disinterment of the supporter of the Nicene faith," the Macedonians pleaded the necessities of structural repair. When the remains were conveyed to the church of Acacius the Martyr, the excited populace met in the church and churchyard; so frightful a carnage ensued that the place was filled with blood and slaughtered bodies. Constantius's anger was great against Macedonius because of the slaughter, but even more because he had removed the body without consulting him.

When Macedonius presented himself at the council of Seleucia (a.d.359), it was ruled that being under accusation it was not proper for him to remain (Socr. ii.40). His opponents, Acacius, Eudoxius, and others, followed him to Constantinople, and, availing themselves of the emperor's indignation, deposed him (a.d.360) on the ground of cruelty and canonical
irregularities. Macedonius retired to a suburb of the city, and died there.

He is said to have elaborated the views with which his name is connected in his retirement. His doctrine was embraced by Eleusius and others; and Marathonius brought so much zeal to the cause that its upholders were sometimes better known as Marathonians. Their grave, ascetic manners and pleasing and persuasive eloquence secured many followers in Constantinople, and also in Thrace, Bithynia, and the Hellespontine provinces. Under the emperor Julian they were strong enough to declare in synod at Zele in Pontus their separation from both Arians and orthodox. In 374 pope Damasus and in 381 the council of Constantinople condemned their views, and they gradually ceased to exist as a distinctive sect. For authorities, consult the scattered notices in Socrates, Sozomen; Hefele,
Conciliengeschichte, i.; the usual Church histories and HOLY GHOST in D. C. B. (4-vol. ed.1882).

[J.M.F.]

Macedonius II., patriarch of Constantinople
Macedonius (3) II., patriarch of Constantinople a.d.495. For an account of his election see [378]EUPHEMIUS (4). Within a year or two (the date is uncertain) he assembled a council, in which he confirmed in writing that of Chalcedon, and openly professed, as he always did, his adhesion to the orthodox faith. In 507 Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem, who had been unwilling to sanction the deposition of Euphemius, united himself in communion with Macedonius. The heterodox emperor Anastasius employed all means to oblige Macedonius to declare against the council of Chalcedon, but flattery and threats were alike unavailing. An assassin named Eucolus was even hired to take away his life. The patriarch avoided the blow, and ordered a fixed amount of provisions to be given monthly to the criminal. The people of Constantinople were equally zealous for the council of Chalcedon, even, more than once, to the point of sedition. To prevent unfavourable consequences, Anastasius ordered the prefect of the city to follow in the processions and attend at the assemblies of the church. In 510 the emperor made a new effort. Macedonius would do nothing without an oecumenical council at which the bp. of great Rome should preside. Anastasius, annoyed at this answer, and irritated because Macedonius would never release him from the engagement he had made at his coronation to maintain the faith of the church and the authority of the council of Chalcedon, sought means to drive him from his chair. He sent Eutychian monks and clergy, and sometimes the magistrates of the city, to load him with public outrage and insult. This caused such a tumult amongst the citizens that the emperor was obliged to shut himself up in his palace and to have vessels moored near in case flight should be necessary. He sent to beg Macedonius to come and speak with him. Macedonius went and reproached him with the sufferings his persecutions caused the church. Anastasius pretended to be willing to alter this, but at the same time made a third attempt to tamper with the orthodoxy of the patriarch. One of his instruments was Xenaïas, an Eutychian bishop. He demanded of Macedonius a declaration of his faith in writing; Macedonius addressed a memorandum to the emperor insisting that he knew no other faith than that of the Fathers of Nicaea and
Constantinople, and that he anathematized Nestorius and Eutyches and those who admitted two Sons or two Christs, or who divided the two natures. Xenaïas, seeing the failure of his first attempt, procured two infamous wretches, who accused Macedonius of an abominable crime, avowing themselves his accomplices. They then charged him with Nestorianism, and with having falsified a passage in an epistle of St. Paul, in support of that sect. At last the emperor commanded him to send by the hands of the master of the offices the authentic copy of the Acts of the council of Chalcedon signed with the autographs of the bishops. Macedonius refused, sealed it up, and hid it under the altar of the great church. Thereupon Anastasius had him carried off by night and taken to Chalcedon, to be conducted thence to Eucaïta in Pontus, the place of the exile of his predecessor. In 515 pope Hormisdas worked for the restitution of Macedonius, whom he considered unjustly deposed; it had been a stipulation in the treaty of peace between Vitalian and Anastasius that the patriarch and all the deposed bishops should be restored to their sees. But Anastasius never kept his promises, and Macedonius died in exile. His death occurred c.517, at Gangra, where he had retired for fear of the Huns, who ravaged all Cappadocia, Galatia, and Pontus. Theod. Lect. ii.573-578, in Patr. Gk. lxxxvi.; Evagr. III. xxxi. xxxii. in ib.2661; Mansi, viii.186, 198; Vict. Tun. Chron. in Patr Lat. lxviii.948; Liberat. vii. in ib.982; Theoph. Chron.120-123, 128, 130, 132.

[W.M.S.]

Macrina, the Elder
Macrina (1), the Elder, the paternal grandmother of Basil and Gregory Nyssen, resident at and probably a native of Neocaesarea in Pontus. Both Macrina and her husband, of whose name we are ignorant, were deeply pious Christians. Macrina had been trained on the precepts of the celebrated bp. of Neocaesarea, Gregory Thaumaturgus, by some of his hearers. In the persecution of Galerius and Maximin, Macrina and her husband, to save their lives, left home with a slender equipment and escaped to a hill forest of Pontus, where they are said to have lived in safe retirement for seven years. On the cessation of the persecution, a.d.311, they returned to Neocaesarea. On the renewal of the persecution they appear to have again suffered. Their goods were confiscated and Macrina and her husband obtained the right to be reckoned among confessors of the faith (Greg. Nys. de Vit. S. Macr. t. ii. pp.178, 191). In due time their son Basil married Emmelia, and became the father of ten children, the eldest bearing her grandmother's name Macrina, and the second that of his father Basil. This boy, afterwards the celebrated bp. of Caesarea Basil the Great, was brought up from infancy by his grandmother Macrina, at her country house at Annesi, to which she seems to have retired after her husband's death (Basil. Ep.204 [75], § 6; 223 [79], § 3). Her death cannot be placed before 340.

[E.V.]

Macrina, the Younger
Macrina (2), the Younger, the eldest child of her parents Basil and Emmelia, by her position in the family and still more by her force of character, high intellectual gifts, and earnest piety, proved the well-spring of good to the whole household, and so contributed largely to form the characters of her brothers. To her brother Basil in particular she was ever a wise and loving counsellor. Basil was born c.329, and Macrina probably c.327. She received her name from her paternal grandmother. She was very carefully educated by her mother, who was more anxious that she should be familiar with the sacred writers than with heathen poets. Macrina committed to memory the moral and ethical portion of the books of Solomon and the whole of the Psalter. Before her twelfth year she was ready at each hour of the day with the Psalm liturgically belonging to it (Greg. Nys. de Vita S. Macr. ii.179). Her personal beauty, which, according to her brother Gregory, surpassed that of all of her age and country, and her large fortune, attracted many suitors. Of these her father selected a young advocate, of good birth and position, and when he was cut off by a premature death, Macrina resolutely refused any further proposals of marriage (ib.180). After her father's death (c.349) she devoted herself to the care of her widowed mother, the bringing up of her infant brother Peter, and the supervision of the interests of her family. Emmelia was left burdened with a large and extensive property, and the maintenance of and provision for nine children. Of the greater part of this load Macrina relieved her. They resided then, or soon afterwards, on the paternal estate near the village of Annesi, on the banks of the Iris, near Neocaesarea, which Macrina never left. Basil returned from Athens c.355 elated with his university successes. Macrina taught him the enthusiastic love for an ascetic life which she herself felt (ib.181). Brother and sister settled on their paternal estate on opposite banks of the Iris. The premature death of her most dearly loved brother Naucratius, on a hunting expedition, 357, strengthened her resolution to separate from the world, and she persuaded her mother also, who was nearly broken-hearted at their loss, to embrace the ascetic life. The nucleus of the sisterhood was formed by their female servants and slaves. Devout women, some of high rank, soon gathered round them, while the birth and high connexions of Macrina and her mother attracted the daughters of the most aristocratic families in Pontus and Cappadocia to the community (ib.184, 186). Among its members were a widow of high rank and wealth, named Vestiana, and a virgin named Lampadia, who is described as the chief of the band (ib.197). Macrina took to her retreat her youngest brother Peter (ib.186). The elevation of her brother Basil to the see of Caesarea, 370, became a stimulus to a higher pitch of asceticism. Peter was ordained presbyter by his brother (ib.187), probably in 371. In 373 Emmelia died, holding the hands of Macrina and Peter and offering them to God with her dying breath, as the first-fruits and tenths of her womb, and was buried by them in her husband's grave at the chapel of the "Forty Martyrs." Macrina sustained her third great sorrow in the death (Jan.1, 379) of Basil, whom she had long regarded with reverential affection. Nine months after, her brother Gregory Nyssen paid her a visit. Owing to his banishment under Valens and other persecutions it was eight or nine years since they had met. He found the aged invalid, parched with fever, stretched on planks on the ground, the wood barely covered with a bit of sackcloth. The pallet was carefully arranged to face the east. On her brother's approach she made a vain effort to rise to do him honour as a bishop; Gregory prevented her, and had her placed on her bed (ib.189). With great self-command Macrina, he megale, as he delights to call her, restrained her groans, checked her asthmatic pantings, and putting on a cheerful countenance endeavoured to divert him from the present sorrow. She ventured to speak of Basil's death; Gregory completely broke down; and when her consolations proved unavailing, she rebuked him for sorrowing like those who had no hope for one fallen asleep in Christ. Gregory defending himself, she bid him argue out the point with her. After a somewhat prolix controversy, Macrina, as though under divine inspiration -- kathaper theophoroumene to hagio Pneumati -- her words pouring out without stay, like water from a fountain (ib.189), delivered the long discourse on the resurrection and immortality of the soul which Gregory has recorded -- more probably in his own than his dying sister's words -- in the de Anima ac Resurrectione Dialogus, entitled ta Makrinia (Opp. t. iii. pp.181-260). On the conclusion of this remarkable discourse (in which the purificatory nature of the fire of hell is unmistakably set forth, the anguish being in exact proportion to the rootedness of the sinful habits -- metron tes algedones he tes kakias en hekasto posotes estin, p.227), she noticed that her brother was weary and sent him to rest awhile in an arbour in the garden. Towards the close of the same day he revisited her bedside. She began a thankful review of her past life, recounting God's mercies to her (ib.191, 192). At last her voice failed, and only by the motion of her lips and her outspread hands -- diastole ton cheiron -- was she known to be praying. She signed her eyes, mouth, and breast with the cross. Dusk came on; lights were brought in; she immediately attempted to chant the epiluchnios eucharistia -- but "silently with her hands and with her heart." She once more signed her self on the face with the cross, gave a deep sigh, and finished her life and her prayers together (ib.195). Round her neck was found an iron cross, and a ring containing a particle of the true cross (ib.198). She was buried by her brother in the grave of her parents in the chapel of the "Forty Martyrs," about a mile from her monastery. Gregory was assisted in carrying the bier by Araxius the bishop of the diocese (probably Ibora), and two of the leading clergy. After her death many miracles said to have been performed by her were reported to Gregory (ib.199, 202-204) Tillem. Mém. eccles. ix.564-573.

[E.V.]

Magnentius, Flavius Popilius, emperor
Magnentius, Flavius Popilius, emperor, 350-353. He rose under Constantius to the rank of count; and Constans gave him command of the Jovian and Herculian legions embodied by Diocletian and Maximian I. On Jan.18, 350, he was proclaimed emperor instead of Constans, then absent on a hunting expedition. Constans fled, but was murdered at Helena or Elve at the foot of the W. Pyrenees. Gaul and all the Western Empire, including Italy, Sicily, Spain, and Africa, submitted to the new emperor. Socrates (H. E. ii.26) says that the general confusion of affairs now encouraged the enemies of Athanasius to accuse him to Constantius; and Athanasius indignantly disclaims any correspondence or connexion with Magnentius, in the apology to Constantius; some false charge of the kind may have been made (Athan. vol. i. pp.603 seq. Migne).

On Sept.28, 351, the battle of Mursa on the Drave was fought, which deprived Magnentius of nearly all his provinces excepting Gaul. His last centre of operations was Lyons, and he fell upon his sword in Aug.353. His coins, as Tillemont says (Hist. des Emp. iv. p.354), prove his profession of Christianity; and he employed bishops in his negotiations with Constantius (Athan. op. cit. p.606). But his usurpation began an unbroken career of crimes, and Athanasius's somewhat pithy summary of him (ib.603) as ton diabolou Magnention is confirmed after their fashion by Zosimus and Julian.

[R.ST.J.T.]

Majorianus, Julius Valerius
Majorianus, Julius Valerius, declared emperor of the West Apr.1, 457, at Columellae, six miles from Ravenna. Tillemont argues (Emp. vi.634) that he did not become emperor till some months later. Majorian apparently remained at Ravenna till Nov.458, the year of his consulship, which was marked by a series of remarkable laws, which may be found among the "Novels" at the end of the Theodosian Code. An outline of these laws is given by Gibbon; the seventh enacted that a curialis who had taken orders to avoid the duties of his position, if below the rank of a deacon, should be at once reduced to his original status, while, if he had been ordained deacon, priest, or bishop, he was declared incapable of alienating his property. The sixth law, intended to encourage marriage, forbade nuns to take the veil before the age of forty. A girl compelled by her parents to devote herself to perpetual virginity was to be at liberty to marry if at her parents' death she was under 40. The whole of this law, except the restrictions on the testamentary power of widows, was repealed by Majorian's successor, Severus. It is remarkable that the Catalogue of the Popes given by the Bollandists (AA. SS. Apr. i.33) states that Leo the Great forbad a woman taking the veil before 60 years of age, or according to a various reading 40, and that the 19th canon of the council of Agde (Mansi, viii.328), following the law of Majorian, fixes the age at 40.

On his arrival at Lyons, before the close of 458, Majorian was greeted by Sidonius with a long panegyric (Carm. v.). At Arles, Mar.28, 460, he issued a law declaring ordinations against the will of the person ordained to be null; subjected an archdeacon who had taken part in such an ordination to a penalty of ten pounds of gold to be received by the informer, and referred a bishop guilty of the same offence to the judgment of the apostolic see. By the same law parents who compelled a son to take orders against his will were to forfeit to him a third part of their property.

On Majorian's return to Italy in 461 Ricimer excited a mutiny in the army against him at Tortona, forced him to abdicate on Aug.2, and five days afterwards caused him to be assassinated on the banks of the Ira.

[F.D.]

Majorinus, a church reader at Carthage
Majorinus, a reader in the church at Carthage, holding some domestic office in the household of Lucilla, who was, through her influence, chosen bp. in opposition to [379]CAECILIAN. This Augustine and Optatus denounced as an act of rebellion, and it was undoubtedly one of the first steps towards definite schism, a.d.311. His party afterwards became known by the greater name of [380]DONATUS. One of his consecrators was Silvanus, Donatist bp. of Cirta, who was afterwards proved before Zenophilus to have been a "traditor." Majorinus died c.315. Aug. Epp.43; 3, 16; 89; c. Parm. iii.11, 18; c. Cresc. ii.3; iii.30, 32; iv.9; de Haer.69; Opt. i.14, 15, 19; Mon. Vet. Don. iv. ed. Oberthür; Tillemont, Mem. vi.15, 19, 24, 699, 700; Sparrow Simpson's Aug. and Afr. Ch. Divisions (1910), p.18.

[H.W.P.]

Malchion, a presbyter of Antioch
Malchion, a presbyter of Antioch in the reigns of Claudius and Aurelian, conspicuous for his prominent part in the deposition of the bp. of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, in 272. He was famed as a rhetorician and was a learned man well acquainted with heathen writers, from whom he was accustomed to make quotations (Hieron. Ep. lxx.4), and held, while a presbyter of the church, the office of president of the faculty of rhetoric (Eus. vii.29). The bishop having announced or implied doctrines concerning the nature of Christ which appeared to Malchion and most of his co-presbyters to be identical with the heresy of Artemon, he engaged him in a public discussion, which was taken down by shorthand writers and published. He compelled Paul unwillingly to unveil his opinions, and exhibited him to the assembly as a heretic. A great council of bishops and presbyters having then been called together, and having condemned Paul, Malchion was chosen to write the letter denouncing him as a heretic and a criminal to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, and through them to the world. The letter and the report of the discussion were known in the 4th and 5th cents. by Eusebius and Jerome; the latter enrolled Malchion in his list of illustrious church-writers, while the former cites at length the principal portions of the condemning letter (Eus. H. E. vii.29, 30; Hieron. de Vir. Ill. c.71). A trans. of the existing fragments of Malchion are in the Ante-Nic. Lib. (T. & T. Clark).

[W.H.F.]

Malchus, a hermit in Syria
Malchus (1), one of the earliest hermits in Syria, was seen in extreme old age by Jerome in 374 and told him the story of his life, which was written down by Jerome 16 years after wards. He was born at Nisibis near Edessa, and was the only son of a proprietor of that district. He fled from his parents when they importuned him to marry, and joined one of the monastic establishments in the desert of Chalcis. As life advanced he desired to revisit his home. The caravan was surprised by Arabs; he was made a slave, and set to feed flocks. He worked faithfully, and every thing prospered in his hands. His master required him to marry a woman who was his companion in slavery. Malchus pretended to comply, but secretly told the woman that he would rather die by his own hand than break his vow of continency. He found her of the same mind, and indeed she had a husband living. The pair agreed, though living separately, to pass as man and wife. After a time they escaped to the Roman settlements in Mesopotamia. Finding the abbat of his monastery dead Malchus took up his abode in the hamlet of Maronia, near Antioch, his reputed wife living with the virgins near. Maronia came by inheritance to Evagrius, afterwards bp. of Antioch, in whose company Jerome came from Italy in 374; and the story of the aged hermit confirmed Jerome in his desire for the life in the desert, on which he entered in 375 (Hieron. Vita Malchi, Opp. vol. ii.41, ed. Vall.).

[W.H.F.]

Mamertus, Saint, bp. of Vienne
Mamertus (1), St., 18th bp. of Vienne, the elder brother of Claudian the poet, whom he ordained priest, and who is said to have assisted him in his episcopal labours. Our first authentic information about him is in 463. The see of Die had been included by pope Leo in the province of Arles, but Mamertus had consecrated a bishop of it. Gundeuchus or Gundioc, king of the Burgundians, complained to pope Hilary, who took up the matter warmly, addressing a letter, Feb.24, 464, to various prelates, solemnly warning Mamertus. Mamertus was still alive at the death of his brother in 473 or 474 (Sid. Apoll. Ep. iv.11, in Patr. Lat. lviii.515), but how long after is unknown.

Though not the inventor of Rogations or Litanies, Mamertus was undoubtedly the founder of the Rogation Days. Litanies of the kind were, on the evidence of Basil, in use in the East and, on that of Sidonius, in the West, but Mamertus first systematized them on the three days preceding Ascension Day. The story of their institution has been given by his contemporary Sidonius, by Avitus, Gregory of Tours, and others. Vienne, in some year before 474, had been terrified by portents and calamities. To atone for the sins of which these calamities were thought to be the penalties, Mamertus, with the joyful assent of the citizens, ordained a three days' fast, with processions and an ordered service of prayer and song, which, for greater labour, was to take place outside the city. Its successful issue ensured its permanence, and from Vienne it spread over France and the West. Already in 470 or 474 Sidonius had established these services at Clermont, and looked to them as his chief hope in the threatened invasion of the Goths. In 511 the first council of Orleans recognized them and directed their continuance (Mansi, viii.355). For accounts of this institution see Ceillier, x.346; Bingham, Antiquities, iv.281 sqq. (1855); Smith, D. C. A. art. "Rogation Days"; Gall. Christ. xvi.15.

[S.A.B.]

Mamertus, Claudianus Ecdicius
Mamertus (2), Claudianus Ecdicius, a learned writer of the last half of the 5th cent., one of the literary school of which Sidonius Apollinaris is the best-known member. He was a native of Gaul, and brother of the more famous Mamertus, archbp. of Vienne. Trained from his earliest years for the monastic life, he was educated in all the stores of Greek, Roman, and Christian literature. During his brother's archbishopric he worked as a presbyter in Vienne, and served so effectually as his right hand that some writers have represented him as a "bishop" under his brother. This, however, seems the result of a misinterpretation (cf. Sirmondi, i. p.539). As presbyter he was specially useful in training the clergy, organizing the services of the church, and arranging the order of Psalms and Lessons for the year, and perhaps we may attribute to his influence the regular use of litanies upon Rogation Days established by his brother. He was no less eminent for intellectual power. When, c.470, Faustus, bp. of Riez, published anonymously a treatise asserting the corporeality of the soul, Sidonius and other friends applied to Mamertus as best qualified to answer it, and the de Statu Animae was the result. Sidonius also mentions with warm praise a hymn he had written, and represents him as a great centre of intellectual discussion, "hominum aevi, loci, populi sui ingeniosissimus," full of learning, eager for argument, patient with those who could not understand, and, in his work as a priest, thoughtful for all, open-handed, humble, not letting his benevolence be known, the adviser and helper of his brother in all diocesan matters. He died c.474, and his epitaph, composed by Sidonius, is the chief source of information about his life. (Sid. Apoll. Ep. iv.2, 3, 11, v.2; Gennadius, de Scrip. Ill. cc.67 (?) and 83; and the Preface to his own work, de Statu Animae.)

Besides two letters of his, we have (1) the book mentioned above, de Statu Animae, and (2) some poems of doubtful authorship. Sidonius (u.s.) mentions with special praise a hymn by Claudian, but does not give its name. One scholiast says that it was the well-known "Pange lingua gloriosi," and one MS. of Gennadius (u.s.) states that that hymn was written by Claudian. It is, however, ordinarily found ascribed to Fortunatus (v. Daniel, Thes. Hymnol. iii. p.285, iv. p.68).

Fabricius has also attributed to him an hexameter poem of 165 lines, "contra vanos poetas ad collegam," found in a Paris MS. without any author's name.

Possibly there should be assigned to him also a few smaller poems found among the works of the heathen poet Claudian, viz. two short hexameter poems entitled "Laus Christi" and "Carmen Paschale," some short epigrammatic praises of the paradox of the Incarnation, an elegiac account of Christ's miracles, an elegiac appeal to a friend not to criticize his verses too severely, and two short Greek hexameter addresses to Christ, Eis ton sotera and Eis ton despoten Christon.

The works are in Migne, vol. liii.; Bibl. Vet. Patr. Lugd.1677, vi. p.1050; ed. Galland. x. p.417, and in the Corpus Script. Eccl. Lat. vol. xi. (1885); the poems in Fabricius, Poet. Christ. p.777. The de Statu Animae has been separately edited, notably by Peter Mosellanus (Basil, 1504), Barth (Cycneae, 1655), Schulze (Dresden, 1883).

[W.L.]

Mammaea or Mamaea, Julia
Mammaea or Mamaea, Julia, the daughter of Julia Moesa, and niece of Julia Domna, the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. She played for a short time a conspicuous part in Roman history, not without some interesting points of contact with the Christian church. By her marriage with the Syrian Gessius Marcianus she became the mother of Alexander Severus, and soon afterwards was a widow. With her mother and her sister Soaemias, the mother of [381]ELAGABALUS, she went, at the command of Macrinus after the death of Caracalla, to reside at Emesa. On the election of her nephew Elagabalus as emperor, she went with him and her son Alexander, then 13 years old, to Rome, and it speaks well for her prudence and goodness that she continued to secure the life of her son from the jealous suspicions of the tyrant and to preserve him from the fathomless impurity which ran riot in the imperial court. There are sufficient reasons for assigning this watchfulness to at least the indirect influence of Christian life and teaching. Possibly, as in the time of Nero, there may have been disciples of the new faith among the slaves of Caesar's household, whom she learnt to respect and imitate. On the death of Elagabalus, a.d.222, and the election of her son by the Praetorian Guard, she attained great influence. Her leanings to the Christian society were shewn more distinctly when she was with the emperor at Antioch, and hearing that Origen, already famous as a preacher, was at Caesarea, invited him to visit them with the honour of a military escort, welcomed him with all honour, and listened attentively as he unfolded the excellence of the faith of Christ (Eus. H. E. vi.21). It does not appear that she ever made a definite profession of belief, and her religion, though it won from Eusebius (l.c.) the epithets of theosebestate and eulabes, and from Jerome (de Script. Eccles. c.54) that of religiosa, was probably of the syncretistic type then prevalent, which shewed itself, in its better form, in Alexander's adoption of Christian rules of action, and in his placing busts of Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius of Tyana in his private oratory (Lamprid Vit. Sev. c.29, 43), and in its worst when Elagabalus wished to build a temple on the Capitol in which Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Romans were to unite in worshipping the Deity whose name he had adopted. Both mother and son, in consequence of these tendencies, came under the lash of Julian, who sneers at the childish unwisdom of the latter in submitting his own will to Mammaea's and gratifying her greed of gain (de Caesarr. p.315), and represents him as weakly bemoaning his disaster. Mammaea shared her son's fate when the troops rose and murdered him in Gaul, and her last moments were embittered by her son's reproaches for the pride and avarice which had wrought their common ruin (Gibbon, cc. vi. and vii. and authorities cited above).

[E.H.P.]

Manes, called also Mani
Manes (called also Mani among Oriental writers, Manichaios and Manichaeus among Greeks and Latins). The lives of all ancient heretics have suffered much from the misrepresentations of their opponents. In the case of Manes there is the additional difficulty that we have two contradictory accounts in the Western and Eastern traditions. The Western story is derived from the Acts of Archelaus, bp. of Caschar; the Eastern from Persian and Arabian historians. Our earliest authentic notice of him is in Eusebius (H. E. vii.31), where he is described "as a barbarian in life, both in speech and conduct, who attempted to form himself into a Christ, and then also proclaimed himself to be the very Paraclete and the Holy Spirit. Then, as if he were Christ, he selected twelve disciples. the partners of his new religion, and after patching together false and ungodly doctrines, collected from a thousand heresies long since extinct, he swept them off like a deadly poison, from Persia, upon this part of the world." The Acta Archelai were forged by some romancing Greek between a.d.330 and 340, as we first find them quoted by Cyrill. Hieros. (Catech. vi., written a.d.348-350), and Eusebius in his history, pub.326-330, knows nothing of them. If genuine, it is scarcely possible that Eusebius, living but a few miles from Jerusalem and with all the imperial resources at his back, could have been ignorant of a dispute which must have made such a noise all over Syria and Mesopotamia. [[382]ARCHELAUS.]

Upon the story told by the Syrian, Persian, and Arab historians and chroniclers known to Beausobre he places much more reliance than upon the Western tradition (pt. i. liv. ii. cc. i.-iv.). It runs thus: Manes was born c.240, and descended from a Magian family. He was well educated in Greek, music, mathematics, geography, astronomy, painting, medicine, and the Scriptures. Being very zealous for the faith, he was ordained priest while yet young, but becoming a heretic he went to the court of Sapor, whom he proselytized to his views, c.267, but as soon as he opened his views more fully the king resolved to put him to death. In fact, a real revival of Zoroastrian doctrine had taken place under his reign, and as soon as Manes disclosed his full plan it was seen to involve the overthrow of the national religion. He then fled into Turkestan, where he gained many disciples, used his talents to adorn a temple with paintings, and hiding himself in a cave for 12 months produced his gospel in a book embellished with beautiful figures. He returned to Persia, and presented this to king Hormisdas, who protected him and embraced his views. This king, dying within two years, was succeeded by Varanes I. a.d.273, who was at first favourable to Manes. The national priesthood, however, becoming alarmed at the power of his sect, challenged him to a disputation before the king, after which he was condemned to die as a heretic. According to some he was crucified, according to others cut in two or flayed alive (Hyde, Rel. Vet. Pers. p.283; Renaudot, Hist. Pat. Alex. pp.40-49; Eutych. Annal. Alex. t. i. p.387; Hotting. Hist. Orient. i.3). Varanes instituted a general persecution of the Manicheans after his death. Eutychius (l.c.) reports a savage jest of his on this subject. He put to death 200 Manicheans, and caused them to be buried with their heads down and their feet projecting above ground. He then boasted he had a garden planted with men instead of trees. The persecution was so severe that adherents of the sect fled into all the neighbouring lands -- India, China, Turkestan, etc. The pretext of the persecution was that the spread of the sect was hostile to the human race through their opposition to marriage (Assem. Bibl. Or. iii.220).

Since Beausobre's time the sources of Oriental knowledge have been much enlarged, and modern research inclines more and more to trust the concordant testimony of Persian, Arabic, and Armenian historians, as opposed to the Byzantines, about the affairs of W. Asia. According to these Eastern authorities, the father of Manes came originally from Persia to Babylon, where Manes was born. One day his father heard in a temple a voice saying, "Eat no flesh, drink no wine, and abstain from women," whereupon he founded the sect of the Mugtasila or the Washers, identical with the Sabians of the Marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates, still found near Bassora. In this sect Manes was brought up, being instructed in all the knowledge of his time. At 12 years old an angel announced to him that when older he should abandon that sect. At 24 the same angel summoned him to found Manicheism in these words: "Hail, Manes, from me and from the Lord which has sent me to thee and chosen thee for his work. Now he commands thee to proclaim the glad tidings of the truth which comes from him, and bestow thereon thy whole zeal." Manes, according to one tradition, entered on his office the day that Sapor, son of Artaxerxes, succeeded to the throne, Sun. Apr.1, 238, as Flügel determines by a lengthened calculation (pp.146-149). According to another (p.85) Manes appeared in the 2nd year of the emperor Gallus, a.d.252 (pp.150-162). He claimed to be the Paraclete promised by Christ, and derived his dogmas from Persian and Christian sources. Before Manes met Sapor he travelled for 40 years through various countries. Upon his return he invited Fîruz, the brother of Sapor and son of Artaxerxes, to accept his doctrines. Through him he was introduced to Sapor, who shewed him great respect, though he had previously intended to slay him. He promised reformation of his own life and freedom to Manes's adherents to preach their views. Already the sect had spread into India, China, and Turkestan. Manes was put to death by Varanes I. (272-276), and his body, cut in two, was suspended over the two gates of the city Dschundîsâbûr, pp.99, 329-334. A version of his history which later research has brought to light is in Albîrûnî's Chronology of Ancient Nations, trans. by E. Sachau and pub. by the Oriental Trans. Fund in 1879. It is a most important document, and well deserves the praise the learned editor lavishes upon it in his introduction. In many particulars it strikingly confirms the narrative of an-Nadîm given by Flügel, both being probably derived from Manichean sources. Albîrûnî was a native of Khiva, a.d.973-1048, and lived and wrote near there. This work proves him to have possessed vast literary resources no longer available, but some of which may yet be found in Central Asia. (Cf. art. by Thomas on Recent Pehlvi Decipherments in Jour. Asiat. Soc.1871, p.417.) The writings of Manes were very numerous. From Albîrûnî's work we learn that some were still in existence in the 11th cent. They were written in Persian and Syriac, and, according to Muhammad ben Ishak, in a character peculiar to the Manicheans. Of this alphabet Flügel in his commentary, p.167, gives a copy. It contained more letters than the Syriac, and was chiefly used by the Manicheans of Samarkhand and Transoxania, where the Marcionites who still existed there in the 10th cent. used a similar character. The names of his books, according to Beausobre, are his Gospel; his Treasure of Life; Book of Chapters; Treatise about the Faith, which Beausobre (t. i. p.427) believes identical with his Mysteries (musteria, Epiph. Haer. lxvi.14), of which too he gives an analysis, with which cf. the very different one by Muhammad ben Ishak in Flügel, p.102; Book about the Giants, known in Syriac at the court of Baghdad so late as the 9th cent. (Jour. Asiat. Mar.1835, p.260). According to Epiphanius he also wrote treatises on astronomy, astrology, and magic. To his Fundamental Epistle Augustine replies in his treatise cont. Ep. Fundamenti. This last seems to have been specially popular in Africa. In Fabric. (Bibl. Graec. lib. v. c. i.) will be found a collection of fragments from his epistles and a list of his works.

[G.T.S.]

Manicheans
Manicheans (Manichaioi, Epiph. Haer. lxvi., where they are also called Akouanitai, from Akouas, one of their leaders, who carried the heresy from Mesopotamia to Eleutheropolis). For the personal history of Manes see last art. We now treat of the origin, principles, cultus, literature, and history of the sect called after him; which was, indeed, not so much a definite sect as a vast indefinite spiritual and intellectual movement, which from its very vastness eludes, or at least renders very difficult, definite historical treatment.

(1) Origin and Principles of Manicheism. -- For the fountain of the Manichean heresy we must turn to India (see Baur, Das Manichäische Religionssystem, Tübingen, 1831, pp.433-451, where there is satisfactory evidence that elements derived both from Buddhism and from Zoroastrism are found in the Manichean system). Darmester recognized the influence of the Zend-Avesta and Zoroastrism upon Manicheism: cf. Zend-Avesta in Sacred Books of the East, t. iv. intro. p. xxxvii. For a thorough exposition of this system see the two large works of Beausobre, Baur's vol. of 500 pp., and Neander's Church Hist. (Bohn's ed.), t. ii. pp.157-195. We must content ourselves with sketching the leading principles of the sect. Manes probably at first merely desired to blend Christianity and Zoroastrism together. From Zoroastrism he took his Dualism, which consisted of two independent principles absolutely opposed to each other, with their opposite creations: on the one side God (Ahura-Mazda), the original good from whom nothing but good can proceed; on the other side original evil (Angro-Mainyus), whose essence is wild, self-conflicting tumult, matter, darkness, a world full of smoke and vapour. The powers of darkness, contending in wild rage, approached so near in their blind struggle to the realm of light that a gleam from that hitherto unknown kingdom reached them, whereupon they strove to force their way into it. The good God, in order to guard His boundaries, produced the Aeon Mother of Life, by whom the first or spiritual man was produced, together with the five elements, wind, light, water, fire, and matter, to carry on the struggle; which, however, are not identical with the actual elements, but are the elements of the higher world, of which the mundane and actual elements are a copy framed by the Prince of Darkness, a view we find worked out by the Cathari of the 12th cent. (Gieseler, H. E. iii.452). Primitive man is worsted by the spirits of darkness, who take from him some of his armour, which is his soul (psuche). He prays to the Light-King, who sends the Spirit of Life, who rescues him and raises him once more to the Light-Kingdom. Meanwhile the Powers of Darkness had succeeded in swallowing part of the luminous essence of the primeval heavenly man, which they proceeded to shut up in material bodies, as in a prison. But this very violence is the means of their destruction. The Divine Spirit is only enclosed in the material prisons for a time and with a view to final deliverance. To illustrate this Manes used a parable. A shepherd sees a wild beast about to rush into the midst of his flock. He digs a pit and casts into it a kid; the beast springs into the pit to devour his prey, but cannot extricate himself. The shepherd, however, delivers the kid and leaves the lion to perish (Disp. c. Archel. c.25; Epiph. Haer. lxvi. c.44). The Spirit of Life at once began his preparations for purifying the souls which had been mixed up with the kingdom of darkness. That part of the soul which had not been affected by matter he placed in the sun and moon, whence it might send forth its influence to release and draw back towards itself, through the refining processes of vegetable and animal life, kindred souls diffused through all nature; for the sun and moon play as important a part in the Manichean as they do in the Persian, Indian, and Mithraic systems (C. B. Stark, Zwei Mithraeen, Heidelberg, 1864, p.43). To prevent this gradual despiritualization the powers of darkness resolve to produce a being in whom the soul of nature, which was ever striving after liberty, might be securely imprisoned. This is man as he is now, shaped after the image of the primitive man with whom they originally waged war. He was formed by the prince of darkness, and embraces in himself the elements of both worlds, the soul springing from the Light-Kingdom, the body from that of darkness. The powers of darkness now perceive that the light-nature, by concentrating itself in man, has become powerful. They therefore seek to attach him by every possible enticement to the lower world. Here comes in the Manichean story of the Fall, which resembles that of the Ophites. The Powers of Darkness invited man to partake of all the trees of Paradise, forbidding only the tree of Knowledge. But an angel of light, or Christ Himself, the Spirit of the Sun, counteracted their artifices in the shape of the serpent, the parts of the Biblical narrative being thus reversed, God's share being ascribed to the devil and vice versa. The Manichean standpoint with respect to the Fall determined their attitude towards the whole O.T., which they rejected as the work of the evil principle. Likewise their theory about the creation of the material part of man determined their view of the Incarnation, which they regarded as wholly Docetic; if a material body was a prison and a burden to the spirit of man, Christ could scarcely voluntarily imprison His divine Spirit in the same. "Moreover, the Son, when He came for man's salvation, assumed a human appearance, so that He appeared to men as if He were a man, and men thought He had been born" (Epiph. Haer. lxvi.49). This Docetic view of the Incarnation destroyed the reality of His life, His death, resurrection, and ascension, and struck at the root of all historical Christianity, so that we find at last some later Manicheans maintaining a distinction between the mundane or historical Christ, who was a bad man, and the spiritual Christ, Who was a divine deliverer (Gieseler, H. E. iii.407, note 28). They attached a mystical signification to orthodox language about our Lord, whereby they could use it to deceive the unwary. Thus they could speak of a suffering son of man hanging on every tree -- of a Christ crucified in every soul and suffering in matter. They gave their own interpretation to the symbols of the suffering Son of Man in the Lord's Supper (cf. Petrus Sic. Hist. Man. in Bigne's Bib. PP. xvi.760). For a thorough exposition of the relations between Manicheism and Buddhism see Baur, l.c. pp.433-451, where he points out Buddhist influence on Manichean doctrines as to the opposition between matter and spirit, upon the creation and end of the world, and upon moral questions. The most striking points of contact are metempsychosis (Baur, l.c. p.440), and the stress laid upon gnosis. The former is the outer way, whereby souls can return thither whence they have descended. The latter is the inner and highest way (cf. Colebrooke's Essays, ii.382, 389, for the universal influence of this view in India. In both systems asceticism was the practical result of the opposition between matter and spirit; the more matter could be crushed, the nearer the spirit came to its original source (cf. Lassen, Ind. Alterthum. iii.408-415)

(2) Organization. -- Perhaps, however, it is on the practical organization of the system that Buddhist influence is most clearly seen. Manicheism differed from Gnosticism, for the latter did not wish to alter anything in the constitution of the existing church, but only desired to add to the Confession of Faith for the psuchikoi a secret doctrine for the pneumatikoi; while Manes, as the Paraclete, set up a new church instead of the old, which, even in the persons of the apostles, had been corrupted by Jewish traditions. In the Manichean church the gradations were similar to those among the Buddhists (cf. H. H. Wilson's Opp. t. ii. p.360, Essay on Buddha and Buddhism). There was first the great body consisting of the auditores, from whom a less strict course of life was demanded, and one of whose leading duties was to supply the other and higher class, the Elect or Perfect, with food and other necessaries. From these last an ascetic life was demanded. They should possess no property, were bound to a celibate and contemplative life, abstaining from all strong drinks and animal food. They should hurt no living thing, from a religious reverence for the divine life diffused through all nature. Not only should they take no life, but not even pull up a herb or pluck fruits or flowers (Aug. cont. Faust. v.6, vi.4). Thus Epiphanius (Haer. lxvi. c.28) tells us that when their followers presented one of the Elect with food, he first addressed it thus: "I have neither reaped nor ground, nor pressed nor cast thee into the oven. All these things another has done, and brought thee to me. I am free from all fault." Upon which he said to his disciple, "I have prayed for thee," and let him go (cf. Von Wegnern, de Manich. Indulgent. pp.69 seq.). Here is an essential Pantheism, a tendency which Manicheism manifestly draws from Buddhism (Hodgson, Jour. Roy. As. Soc.1835, p.295; Matter, Hist. du Gnostic. t. ii.357) and which develops further in the course of its history. St. Augustine noted this point in his reply to Faustus, ii.5, xii.13; cf. Aug. Epp.165, 166, c. iii. § 7; Ep.74 ad Deuterium Episcop.; Toll. Insig. p.137; Muratorii, Anecd. Ambros. Biblioth. ii.112. Manes derived from Christianity another element of his system. As the Paraclete promised by Christ, he, after Christ's example, chose twelve apostles, in whom the government of the sect was placed. At their head there was a thirteenth, representing Manes and presiding over all (Flügel's Mani, pp.97, 298, 316; Baur, l.c. p.305); subordinate to them there were 72 bishops, under whom were presbyters, deacons, and travelling missionaries, a constitution which lasted to the 13th cent. and possibly may not be yet quite extinct.

(3) Cultus. -- The Manicheans had their own peculiar rites, though their mystical interpretation of language enabled them to hold the highest position in the Christian ministry, as in an-Nadim's time, a.d.987, it enabled them to conform externally to the Mohammedan system (Flügel's Mani, pp.107, 404-408). Thus Eutychius, Pat. Alex. Annal. t. i. p.515 (cf. Renaudot, Hist. Patr. Alexand. p.101), tells how Timotheus, Pat. Alex., discovered Manicheans among the Egyptian bishops at the council of Constantinople by permitting the bishops and monks to eat flesh on Sundays, which the Manicheans would not do. Their worship consisted in prayers and hymns. They had neither temples, altars, incense, nor images. They fasted on Sunday. They regarded Easter lightly, as a festival which in their system had no meaning. They observed Pentecost, but not Christmas or Epiphany. Their great festival was that of Bema, held in March in memory of their founder's death. An empty chair or pulpit, richly upholstered, was then placed in their assembly, as a symbol of his presence, while one of his works, probably his Fundamental Epistle, was read, together with the records of his martyrdom (cf. Aug. Reply to Fund. Epist. c. viii.; cont. Faust. xviii.5). As to their sacraments, the authorities vary much. Beausobre (t. ii. liv. ix. c. vi.) maintained strongly that they baptized even infants, and that in the name of the Trinity. On the other hand Augustine, de Haer. c. xlvi.; cont. Ep. Pelag. lib. ii. and other places cited by Beausobre, l.c. p.714 n.; Cedren. Hist. Comp., Opp. t. i. col.831, Migne's Patr. Gk. t. cxxi., expressly assert that they rejected baptism with water; and Timotheus C. P. in his Form. Recep. Haer. classes them among those heretics who must receive baptism on joining the church, a rule which seems to have prevailed from the 4th cent. (Beveridge, Cod. Canon. Eccles. Primit. lib. ii. c.12; Basil. Ep. clxxxviii.). Certainly their practice in the 12th cent. would support this latter view, as they then substituted their Consolamentum or laying on of hands -- which they called the baptism of the Holy Ghost -- for water baptism, which they scorned (cf. Gieseler, H. E. iii.397, 410 n.). For the Manicheans to admit baptism with water would seem inconsistent with their fundamental principle of the essentially evil nature of matter (cf. Tertull. cont. Marcion. i.23). But we cannot expect perfect consistency, as in another respect they seem to have retained from the Zoroastrian system an exaggerated reverence for water. As to their Eucharist there is the same diversity of testimony and a similar accusation of filthy practices. They celebrated the communion, substituting water for wine, the use of which they abhorred. About the disgusting ceremonial of Ischas, which Cyril. Hier. (Cat. vi.), Augustine (Haer. xlvi.), and Pope Leo I. (ser. v. De Jejun. x. Mens.) accuse them of adding to their communion in a foul manner, see Beausobre, liv. ix. cc.719 in t. ii. pp.720-762.

Manicheism has been the prolific parent of false gospels. [[383]LEUCIUS (1); [384]MANES.] But the work of forgery was due not so much to Manes as to his followers, and it is almost certain that Manicheism merely adopted many apocryphal writings.

(4) History after Death of Manes. -- (i) In the East, where they originated, the Manicheans made rapid progress, spreading, as an-Nadîm (Flügel's Mani, p.105, cf. p 394) tells us, into various lands. During their persecution upon the death of Manes, they fled into Transoxania, whence they maintained a constant communication with Babylon, their original seat, as the head of the sect always remained there till the Mohammedan invasion. They spread into S. Armenia and Cappadocia, where they found material ready to their hand in the HYPSISTARII of that region (Matter, Gnosticism, ii.392), whence they came into immediate contact with Europe. A proof of their activity in Armenia is found in the work of Eznig, one of the leading writers of Armenia in the 5th cent., pub. by the Mekhitarite monks at Venice in 1826 under the title Refutatio Errorum Persarum et Manichaeorum. Their progress seems to have been intensified by the Mazdakite movement in the 5th cent., which was only a revival of Manicheism. It displayed the same missionary activity which manifested itself in an aggression upon the orthodox of Armenia, a.d.590, noted by the Armenian historian Samuel of Ani. He gives us a list of Manichean works which they introduced into Armenia, including the Penitence or Apocalypse of Adam (pub. by Renan in the Jour. Asiat.1853, t. ii. p.431), the Explanation of the Gospel of Manes, the Gospel of the Infancy, the Vision of St. Paul, and the Testament of Adam.

(ii) In the West the first notice of an advance is found in an edict (given in Gieseler, H. E. i.228) of Diocletian, directed to Julian, proconsul of Africa, dated prid. kal. Apr.287, wherein Manichean leaders are condemned to the stake, and their adherents punished with decapitation and confiscation of all their goods, as following "a new and unheard-of monster, which has come to us from the Persians, a hostile people, and has perpetrated many misdeeds." The genuineness of this edict has been challenged, but is defended by Neander, H. E. ii.195, n. The chief ground for disputing it is the silence of the Fathers, specially of Eusebius. But the argument e silentio is never a safe one, and Ambrosiaster mentions it when commenting upon II. Tim. iii.7. It is addressed to the proconsul of Africa, where the Manicheans were making great progress. This coincides with the fact, known independently, that Manes sent a special envoy to Africa, where, during the 4th cent., Manicheism flourished, both among the monks and clergy of Egypt and in proconsular Africa, ensnaring souls like St. Augustine; and where they must have been very numerous and powerful, since, notwithstanding the severe and bloody laws enacted against them by Valentinian, a.d.372, and Theodosius, a.d.381, they assembled, taught, and debated in public in Augustine's time. Yet in some places these laws were not empty threats, for the heathen rhetorician Libanius appealed in behalf of the Manicheans of Palestine (Ep.1344) Probably, as in the case of the pagan persecutions, the vigour with which they were enforced varied with the dispositions of local magistrates. From Africa the sect spread into Spain, Gaul, and Aquitaine (Philast. Haer. c.61, 84), where it may have originated Priscillianism (Muratori, Anecd. ex Ambros. Biblioth. Codic. ii.113, ed.1698). Later we find the Arian king Hunneric persecuting it in Africa, together with the orthodox, a.d.477 (Vict. Vit. Hist. Persec. Wand. ii. init.). We of course find the sect at Constantinople and at Rome. Constantine the Great commissioned a certain Strategius -- who, under the name of Musonianus, rose to be praetorian prefect of the East -- to report upon it (Ammian. Marcell. xv.13); while again, 200 years later, in the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th cent., Manicheism in the Mazdakite movement made an imperial convert in Anastasius I. At Rome they were found from ancient times. Lipsius in Jahrb. Prot. Theol.1879, art. on Neue Stud. zur Papst-Chronologie, p.438, discusses a constitution of pope Anastasius I. a.d.398, enacted on account of their recent immigration from beyond the seas. After the barbarian invasion of Africa they fled to Rome in great numbers, and pope Leo I. was active in their repression. Leo says that the Manicheans, whom, with the aid of the civil magistrates, he arrested, acknowledged their dissolute practices; whereupon Valentinian III. published a very severe law against them. Notwithstanding all the papal efforts, renewed from age to age, we still find the sect at Rome in 7th cent., under Gregory the Great (cf. Greg. Mag. lib. ii. Ep.37; Gieseler, H. E. t. ii. p.491, Clark's ed.).

(5) Remains of the Sect and of its Literature. -- In the Yezedees, or Devil-worshippers of Mosul, and the Ansairees of Syria, we have their direct representatives; while mingled with the doctrines of the Sabians or Hemerobaptistae, who still linger in the neighbourhood of Harran, we have a large Manichean element. See Badger's Nestorians, t. i. cc. ix. x.; Lyde's Asian Mystery, and Layard's Nineveh, c. ix., as confirming this view by several interesting facts, cf. also Notes sur les sectes de Kurdistan, par T. Gilbert, in Jour. Asiat.1873, t. ii. p.393. Cahier maintained, in Mel. archéol. i.148, that the Bogomili and the Massalians, branches of the same sect, still existed (1888) in Russia. We still possess some specimens of their literature, and a critical examination of Mohammedan MSS. and a complete investigation of the interior state of Western and Central Asia would probably reveal them in still larger abundance (Beausob. Hist. Man. t. i. p.366, and n.4). Renan published in 1883, in the Jour. Asiat. a Syriac document called the Apocalypse of Adam, which he shewed to be one of those brought by the Manicheans into Armenia in 590 a.d. and condemned in the celebrated Gelasian decree. See Harnack, Dogmengesch. vol. ii. (4th ed.1922), pp.513-527. [[385]GELASIUS.]

[G.T.S.]

Mar Aba or Mar-Abas
Mar Aba or Mar-Abas. [[386]NESTORIAN CHURCH; [387]THOMAS (8).]

Marana and Cyra
Marana and Cyra, two ladies of birth and education of Beroea in Syria, who in their youth devoted themselves to a solitary life of the extremest austerity, which they had persevered in for 42 years when Theodoret wrote his Religiosa Historia. According to Theodoret they left home with some female servants whom they had inspired with the same ascetic fervour and built a small stone enclosure, open to the sky, the door of which they closed up with mud and stones, their only means of communication with the outer world being a small window through which they took in food. Only females were allowed to converse with Marana, and that only at Easter; Cyra no one had ever heard speak. For their maidens a small hovel was constructed within earshot, so that they could encourage them by their example and by their words to a life of prayer and holy love. Theodoret often visited these recluses and in honour of his priestly office they unwalled their door and admitted him into the enclosure, which he found devoid of any protection against the heat or cold, rain or snow. Their heads and the whole upper part of their bodies were enveloped in long hoods, entirely concealing their faces, breasts, and hands. They wore chains of iron round their necks, waists, and wrists, of such weight as to prevent Cyra, who was of weak frame, from raising herself upright. These they laid aside at Theodoret's request, but resumed after he left. Their fastings equalled in length those of Moses and David. Fired with a desire to visit holy sites, they made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, not eating once on the journey nor as they returned, and only breaking their fast at Jerusalem. They practised the same rigid abstinence on a second pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thecla at the Isaurian Seleucia. Theod. Hist. Relig. c.29; Basil. Menol. Feb.28; Tillem. ii.64; Ceill. x.63.

[E.V.]

Marcella, friend of Jerome
Marcella, the friend of Jerome, from whose writings and memoir of her (Ep. cxxvii. ed. Vall.) she is chiefly known. She was descended from the illustrious Roman family of the Marcelli, and had great wealth. Her mother Albina was a widow when Athanasius came as an exile to Rome in 340. From Athanasius and his companions she heard of Anthony and the monasteries of the Thebaid, and received her first impulse towards the ascetic life. She married, but her husband died after seven months, and she refused a second marriage offered her by the wealthy Cerealis, a man of consular rank but advanced in years. Her ascetic tendency was confirmed by the coming to Rome of the Egyptian monk Peter in 374. She was the first in the city to make the monastic profession. She continued to live with her mother in their palatial residence on the Aventine, but with the utmost simplicity. She was not immoderate in her asceticism, and followed the counsels of her mother, from whose society she never departed.

When Jerome came to Rome in 382, she sought him out because of his repute for Biblical learning, and made him, at first against his will, her constant companion. A circle of ladies gathered round her, and her house became a kind of convent dedicated to the study of the Scriptures, and to psalmody and prayer. Marcella was eager for information, and would not accept any doubtful explanation, so that Jerome found himself in the presence of a judge rather than a disciple. At times she took her teacher to task for his severity and quarrelsomeness (Ep. xxvii.2, ed. Vall.). He wrote for her some 15 different treatises -- on difficult passages of Scripture and church history; and on his departure in 385 hoped that she might have accompanied her intimate friends Paula and Eustochium to Palestine. A letter written by those two ladies on their settlement at Bethlehem (in Jerome, Ep. xliv. ed. Vall.) invites her in glowing terms to come and enjoy with them the Holy Land; but she remained at Rome. After her mother's death in 387 she retired to a little house outside the city with her young friend Principia and devoted her whole time to good works. She still had a keen interest in Jerome's theological pursuits, and when Rufinus came to Rome and disputes arose as to his translation of Origen's peri Archon, she threw herself eagerly into the controversy. Having, in conjunction with Pammachius and Oceanus, ascertained Jerome's view of the matter, she urged the pope Anastasius (400-403) to condemn Origen and his defenders; and, when he hesitated, went to him and pointed out the passages which, she contended, though veiled in Rufinus's translation, demanded the pope's condemnation. Anastasius completely yielded, and like Theophilus of Alexandria condemned Origen and his upholders. "of this glorious victory," says Jerome, "Marcella was the origin."

She lived till the sack of Rome by Alaric. The Goths, supposing her to be affecting poverty to conceal her wealth, used personal violence, but at her entreaty spared Principia, and at last allowed them to take sanctuary in St. Paul's church. Her faith made her seem hardly sensible of her sufferings, but she only survived a few days and died in the arms of Principia, leaving all she had to the poor. Jerome, ed. Vall. Epp.23-29, 32, 34, 37-44, 46, 97, 127.

[W.H.F.]

Marcellina, a sister of St. Ambrose
Marcellina (2), a sister of St. Ambrose, older than himself. His three books de Virginibus, addressed to her, were written by her request. From iii.1 we learn that she was admitted as a consecrated virgin at Rome on Christmas Day, by pope Liberius, in the presence of a large concourse of virgins and others. The address then given by Liberius is recorded by Ambrose from what Marcellina had often repeated to him. Ambrose praises her devotion and advises her to relax the severity of her fasting. She is mentioned by him (Ep. v.) as a witness to the virginal purity of Indicia. A constant correspondence was kept up with her brother. She is his "domina soror vitae atque oculis praeferenda." He wrote three of his most important letters to her: Ep. xx. describes his conflict with Justina and her son the younger Valentinian; xxii. announces the discovery of the bodies of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius; xli. reports a sermon in which he had reproved Theodosius. In his discourse on the death of his brother Satyrus, Ambrose speaks of the warm family affection which bound the three together, and of the sister's grief (de Excessu Satyri, §§ 33, 76.

[J.LL.D.]

Marcellinus, bp. of Rome
Marcellinus (1), bp. of Rome after Caius from June 30, 296, to Oct.25 (?), 304, elected after a vacancy of about two months; called Marcellianus by Jerome, Nicephorus, and in the Chronogr. Syntomon (853). The above dates are those of the Liberian Catalogue (354) and appear correct. In other records his chronology is very uncertain, partly, it would seem, owing to a confusion between him and his successor Marcellus. He is omitted altogether in the Liberian Depositio Episcoporum and Depositio Martyrum (see Lipsius, Chronol. der röm. Bisch. p.242). The main question about him is his conduct with regard to the persecution under Diocletian. The Liberian Catalogue says only that it occurred in his time -- "quo tempore fuit persecutio." Eusebius (H. E. vii.32) intimates that he was in some way implicated in it -- hon kai auton kateilephen ho diogmos. The Felician Catalogue (530) says: "In which time was a great persecution: within 30 days 16,000 persons of both sexes were crowned with martyrdom through divers provinces; in the course of it Marcellinus himself was led to sacrifice, that he might offer incense, which thing he also did; and having after a few days been brought to penitence, he was by the same Diocletian, for the faith of Christ, together with Claudius Quirinus and Antoninus, beheaded and crowned with martyrdom. The holy bodies lay for 26 days in the street by order of Diocletian; when the presbyter Marcellus collected by night the bodies of the saints, and buried them on the Salarian Way in the cemetery of Priscilla in a cell (cubiculum) which is to be seen to the present day, because the penitent [pope] himself had so ordered while he was being dragged to execution, in a crypt near the body of St. Crescentio, vii. Kal. Maii." Most probably the statements of his having offered incense and of the place of his burial are true, but his martyrdom is at least doubtful. The charge of having yielded to the edict of Diocletian, which required all Christians to offer incense to the gods, appears from Augustine to have been alleged afterwards as a known fact by the African Donatists. True, Augustine treats it as probably a calumny, and says it "is by no means proved by any documentary evidence" (de Unico Baptism. c. Petilian. c.16, § 27). Further, Theodoret (H. E. i.2) speaks apparently with praise of the conduct of Marcellinus in the persecution: ton en to diogmo diaprepsanta. On these grounds Bower, in his history of the popes, warmly maintains his innocence. But it is difficult to account for the introduction of the story into the pontifical annals themselves and its perpetuation as a tradition of the Roman church, unless there had been foundation for it. Even Augustine, however anxious to rebut the charge, can only plead the absence of evidence; he does not deny the tradition, or even the possibility of its truth. The expression of Theodoret is too vague to count as evidence. In the story of the martyrdom there is nothing in itself improbable, and it is quite possible that Marcellinus recovered courage and atoned for his temporary weakness. But there is such a significant absence of early evidence of the martyrdom as to leave it not only unproved but improbable. His name does not appear in the Liberian Depositio Martyrum, nor in Jerome's list, and, apart from the legendary complexion of the Felician narrative (including the statement of 16,000 having suffered in 30 days), the addition of the glory of martyrdom to popes in the later pontifical annals is too frequent to weigh against the silence of earlier accounts. Further, the omission of his name also from the Depositio Episcoporum may be due to his unfaithfulness, if that had not really been atoned for by martyrdom. His burial in the cemetery of Priscilla instead of that of Callistus, where his predecessors since Zephyrinus (236) had been interred, may be accepted without hesitation, the Felician Catalogue being apparently trustworthy as to the burial-places of popes, and the place where he lay being spoken of as well known in the writer's day. A reason for the change of place, independent of the alleged wish of the penitent pope himself, is given by De Rossi (Rom. Sotteran. ii. p.105), viz. that the Christian cemeteries had been seized during the persecution, so that it had become necessary to construct a new one. It appears (ib. i. p.203; ii. p.105) that the Christians did not recover their sacred places till Maxentius restored them to pope Miltiades; and this accounts for the fact, that of the two popes between Marcellinus and Miltiades, the first, Marcellus, was also buried in the cemetery of Priscilla, but the second, Eusebius, as well as Miltiades himself, again in that of Callistus (Catal. Felic.); though not in the old papal crypt, a new one having presumably been constructed by Miltiades. In recensions of the pontifical annals later than the Felician the cemetery of Priscilla is said to have been acquired from a matron of that name by Marcellus, the successor of Marcellinus; but in the Felician account Marcellinus himself appears as having already secured a place of burial there. The cemetery itself was, according to De Rossi, one of the oldest in Rome, with extensive workings in it at a deep level, which he supposes to have been made during the persecution, when the old burial-place of the faithful on the Appian Way was no longer available. The Salarian Way, where the cemetery of Priscilla was, lies far from the Appian, being on the opposite side of the city, towards the N.

[J.B -- Y.]

Marcellinus, Flavius
Marcellinus (7), Flavius, a tribune and afterwards a notary (Böcking, Not. Dig. Occ. p.408), brother to Apringius, afterwards proconsul of Africa, where Marcellinus appears to have usually resided. He was a Christian of high character, taking much interest in theological matters. In 410 he was appointed by Honorius to preside over a commission of inquiry into the disputes between the Catholics and Donatists, an office for which he was singularly well qualified, and which on the whole he discharged (in 411) with great moderation, good temper, and impartiality, though not without giving offence to the Donatists, who accused him of bribery (Aug. Ep.141; Cod. Theod. xvi.11, 5). With Augustine an intimate friendship subsisted which the behaviour of Marcellinus at the conference no doubt tended to strengthen; several letters were exchanged between them, and Augustine addressed to him his three books de Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione, his book de Spiritu et Littera, and the first two books of his great work de Civitate Dei, which he says that he undertook at his suggestion (Aug. Retract. ii.37; de Civ. Dei. i. praef. ii.1). Excepting letters about the conference (Epp.128, 129), the correspondence appears to have been carried on chiefly during 412. It arose mainly out of the anxiety of Marcellinus for his friend Volusianus, who, notwithstanding the efforts of his mother to induce him to become a Christian, was swayed in a contrary direction by the worldly society in which he lived. In 413 occurred the revolt of Heraclian, suppressed by Marinus, count of Africa, who, bribed by the Donatists, as Orosius insinuates, arrested and imprisoned Marcellinus and Apringius. Several African bishops joined in a letter of intercession on behalf of the prisoners, whose prayer Caecilianus affected to support, and he even paid an express visit to Augustine, giving him the strongest hope that they would be released, with solemn asseverations of absence of hostility on his own part. But on the following day, Sept.15 or 16, they were both put to death. Augustine mentions their edifying behaviour in prison. See Dr. Sparrow Simpson's S. Aug. and Afr. Ch. Divisions (1910), pp.102-126.

[H.W.P.]

Marcellus, bp. of Rome
Marcellus (3), bp. of Rome probably from May 24, 307, to Jan.15, 309, the see having been vacant after the death of Marcellinus, 2 years, 6 months, and 27 days (Lipsius, Chronologie der röm. Bischöf.).

This pope appears as a martyr in the Roman Martyrology, and in the later recensions of the Liber Pontificalis, a story being told that he was beaten, and afterwards condemned to tend the imperial horses as a slave. No trace of this legend, or indeed of his being a martyr at all, appears in the earlier recensions of the Pontifical, including the Felician. But a light is thrown on the circumstances which probably led to his title of "Confessor" by the monumental inscriptions to him and his successor Eusebius, placed on their tombs by pope Damasus. That to Marcellus (Pagi, Critic. in Baron. ad ann.309; in Actis S. Januar.; De Rossi, Rom. Sotter. vi. p.204) reads:

"Veridicus rector lapsis quia crimina flere

Praedixit, miseris fuit omnibus hostis amarus.

Hinc furor, hinc odium sequitur, discordia lites,

Seditio, caedes; solvuntur foedera pacis.

Crimen ob alterius, Christum qui in pace negavit,

Finibus expulsus patriae est feritate tyranni.

Haec breviter Damasus voluit comperta referre

Marcelli ut populus meritum cognoscere posset.

It would appear from these lines, together with those on Eusebius [[388]EUSEBIUS (1)], that when persecution ceased at Rome conflicts arose in the Christian community as to the terms of readmission of the lapsi to communion; that Marcellus after his election had required a period of penance before absolution; that this stern discipline evoked violent opposition, the subjects of it being doubtless numerous anal influential; that the church had been split into parties in consequence, and riots, anarchy, and even bloodshed, had ensued; that "the tyrant" Maxentius had interposed in the interests of peace and banished the pope as the author of the discord. He was not really so, the inscription implies, but "another," for whose "crime" he suffered, i.e. the leader and instigator of the opposition, who had "denied Christ in time of peace" by condoning apostasy and subverting discipline after persecution had ceased. But Marcellus was made the victim, and thus was a "confessor" (or, in the wider sense of the word, a "martyr"), if not strictly for the faith, at any rate for canonical discipline and the honour of Christ. The "other" referred to was probably the Heraclius spoken of in the inscription on Eusebius as having "forbidden the lapsi to mourn for their sins," and who was banished in the next episcopate by "the tyrant" as well as the pope -- "Extemplo pariter pulsi feritate tyranni." As Marcellus, unlike Eusebius, is not said in the Damasine inscription to have died in exile, and as he was certainly buried at Rome, like his predecessor in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Salarian Way (Catal. Felic.), he may have been allowed to return to his see.

[J.B. -- Y.]

Marcellus, bp. of Ancyra
Marcellus (4), bp. of Ancyra, believed to have been present at the synod held there in 315; but nothing can be proved from subscriptions doubtful in themselves. St. Athanasius, writing in 358 (Hist. ad Mon.76), calls him an old man then; so that his age could have been no bar to his being bishop a.d.315. He was certainly present, 325, at the Nicene council, where he obtained a good report, as pope Julius tells the Eusebians (Mansi, ii.1215), for having contended earnestly for the Catholic faith against the Arians. Later, in refuting the heterodox writings of Asterius, he was accused of falling into doctrines combining the errors of Sabellius and Paul of Samosata, but his attachment to St. Athanasius and the orthodox cause may have subjected his book to unfair criticism. Anyhow the Eusebians, piqued at his absence from the synod of Tyre and afterwards the festivities at Jerusalem, A.D.335, in honour of the dedication of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, called upon him to render account of the opinions advanced in it, and to recant them, and, according to Socrates, extorted a promise that he would burn the offending book. For not having at once done this, he was deposed in the synod held, by command of the emperor, at Constantinople by the chiefs of that party, in Feb.336, when Eusebius of Nicomedia presided, and Eusebius of Caesarea was charged by the assembled bishops with the task of refuting the work of Marcellus. Basil the semi-Arian was appointed to the see vacated by him (Socr. i.36). Condemned at Constantinople, Marcellus betook himself to Rome, apparently without loss of time. It must have been almost the first act of Julius, after his election (Feb.6, 337), to receive Marcellus into communion. Marcellus could have scarcely left Rome when the Eusebian deputies, Macarius and two deacons, arrived (a.d.339), hoping to persuade Julius to join them in unseating St. Athanasius who had returned from exile without being synodically restored. This led to Athanasius coming to Rome about Easter 340, and to a synod of more than 50 bishops assembled at Rome by pope Julius in Nov.341.

Marcellus was at Rome then, having been admitted by Julius to communion on a previous visit; and Julius followed the precedent suggested by Marcellus at his previous visit, and adopted in his case, viz. that of sending presbyters to the Eusebians with the object of bringing them to Rome to confront an opponent already there. Neither Julius nor his bishops ventured to restore Marcellus or St. Athanasius to their respective sees. They merely gave their collective voice for admitting them to communion, and declared their innocence. It was now that Marcellus testified to Julius and the assembled bishops that his attempt to return to Ancyra, A.D.338-339, had only provoked such flagrant scenes as had happened more recently at Alexandria when St. Athanasius was expelled (Apol. c. Arian. § 33, cf. Hil. Frag. iii.9).

"Marcellus," Athanasius says, in his history to the monks (§ 6), "went to Rome, made his apology, and then at their request gave them his faith in writing, of which also the Sardican council approved." The Sardicans grounded their verdict in his favour on the book which Eusebius had maligned, but which they pronounced consistent with orthodoxy. "For he had not, as they affirmed, attributed to the Word of God a beginning from Mary, nor any end to His kingdom; but had stated His kingdom to be without beginning or end" (Apol. c. Arian. § 47). Hence they declared him faultless and free from taint. St. Hilary, who also says nothing of his profession, bears them out in their decision on the book; adding that Marcellus was never again tried or condemned in any subsequent synod (Frag. ii.21-23). Against such testimony -- living, competent, and explicit -- as this, it is plainly not for moderns to contend, the book being no longer extant to speak for itself; and therefore we must -- in spite of all Cave may urge to the contrary (Hist. Lit. i.202), and after him Cardinal Newman (Library of the Fathers, xix.503) and the learned writer of art. [389]EUSEBIUS in this work -- conclude with Montfaucon (Diatr. c. iii.), that, strongly as the extracts from it may read in Eusebius, whose party bias betrays itself in every line, yet "read by the light of what precedes and follows," as say the Sardican fathers, they may all be interpreted in a sense not conflicting with orthodoxy. St. Hilary, moreover, speaks with unwonted weight, as he proclaims the fact loudly that Marcellus subsequently by some rash utterances and his evident sympathy with his former disciple, Photinus, the ejected from Sirmium, came at last to be suspected of heretical leanings by all; and notably that he was, though privately, put out of communion by St. Athanasius, on which Marcellus abstained from church himself (Frag. ii.23). Possibly such a rash utterance was in the mind of St. Hilary when he said to Constantius: "Hinc Marcellus Verbum Dei cum legit, nescit," and then adds: "Hinc Photinus hominem Jesum Christum cum loquitur, ignorat," classing them both in the same category. In the work of St. Epiphanius against heresies the Photinians rank first (71), and the Marcellians follow (72); yet even there the inference is, that the latter had been led astray by the former. St. Epiphanius does not mention the work of Eusebius against Marcellus, but gives extracts from one against him by Acacius, the successor of Eusebius at Caesarea, but not, as he says, because he thinks it any more conclusive than the Sardican fathers thought the work of Eusebius. But he criticizes the profession made by Marcellus in writing to pope Julius on the principle "Qui s'excuse s'accuse." This profession, what both Marcellus himself and St. Athanasius call his "engraphon pistin," which, he says expressly, he gave to pope Julius before leaving Rome, and which St. Epiphanius gives at full length. St. Athanasius says it was exhibited to the Roman and Sardican councils as well; but we have no other proof of this. It is but one of three different professions exhibited at different times on behalf of Marcellus -- all characterized by the same suspicious surroundings, as will be shewn in due course. The two first are given by St. Epiphanius (Haer. lxxii.); the third was exhumed by Montfaucon. Dr. Heurtley (de Fide et Symbolo, p.24) took this creed of Epiphanius as the earliest specimen of a Western creed. It was as certainly the baptismal creed of the West as it was not that of the local church of Rome (ib. pp.89-133). For had it been the creed of the church of Rome, would not St. Athanasius have characterized it as such; would not Julius have recognized and applauded the adoption of his own formula? No doubt Marcellus picked it up in the Danubian provinces, or at Aquileia, in his way to Rome. It is identical with the creed commented upon by St. Augustine, which follows it in Heurtley (op. cit.), saving in the expression ton gennethenta ek Pneumatos hagiou, etc., which is suspiciously peculiar, and may well have excited the misgivings of St. Epiphanius. Now this creed Marcellus never ventures to call the creed of his own church, yet must have meant that Julius should think it so, as he designates it "what he had been taught by his spiritual fathers, had learnt from holy Scripture, and preached in church," and he begs Julius to enclose copies of it to those bishops with whom he was corresponding, that any to whom he was unknown might be disabused of wrong notions formed of him from hostile statements. By way of preface, he recites, to condemn them, the principal errors held by his enemies; and affirms several points on which his own faith had been questioned. Whether by his own contrivance or otherwise, this profession was never made public, nor appealed to by him again. It satisfied Julius, and Julius may have communicated it to his
correspondents among the Western bishops and to St. Athanasius on his arrival in Rome: but it cannot be proved to have been formally brought before the 50 bishops afterwards assembled there, and there is no proof that it was so much as named at Sardica. In dealing with Easterns, anyhow, the creed in which he professes his faith was that of Nicaea. This profession is extant as well as the other, and was being employed by his disciples in their own justification when it was placed in the hands of St. Epiphanius. It is headed "Inscription of the faith of Marcellus." Yet it can hardly be thought accidental that his own assent is not explicitly given by subscription either to this or the third formula, produced on his behalf. Montfaucon, preoccupied with his own discovery, seeks to connect it with this second profession, with which it has nothing whatever to do. Evidently Marcellus aimed at being an Eastern to the Easterns, and a Western to the Westerns.

Finally, neither of these professions would seem to have sufficed for him in extreme old age, but he must construct a third, intended this time for St. Athanasius himself. The date fixed for it by Montfaucon is 372, not earlier, to give time for some letters that passed on the subject of Marcellus in 371, between St. Athanasius and St. Basil, elected to the see of Caesarea the year before; not later, because St. Athanasius died in 373, and Marcellus himself in 374. But if Montfaucon had dated it 373, he would have got rid of the very difficulty which perplexed him most, viz. the absence of the name of St. Athanasius amongst its countersigners (Diatr. c. vi.4). Far from having been received by St. Athanasius and his colleagues, the signatures affixed to this "aureum opusculum," as Montfaucon in his enthusiasm calls it, are such as go far towards impeaching its genuineness, or else depriving it of the least weight. Surely the signatures to it should have been not of those to whom it was delivered, but from whom it emanated! The document purports to be the work of a gathering of the church of Ancyra under their father Marcellus; and it may well have been dictated by a man of his advanced years, recapitulating and repudiating all the various errors amid which his chequered life had been passed. As no other name is given but his own and that of his deacon Eugenius who was charged with its delivery, we may well doubt whether any third person had a hand in it. The reference in it to the commendatory letters given to its bearer by the bishops of Greece and Macedonia seems consistent with its having been addressed, and expedited through their good offices, to St. Athanasius (Diatr. ib. § 2). Basil (Epp.59, 125, 239, 265, ed. Ben.) is just as disgusted at Marcellus having been received into communion in the West under Julius, as at Eustathius having been similarly received under Liberius (Epp.226, 244, 263). He looked upon both as trimmers, as indeed their acts prove them; and heterodox at heart, in spite of their repeated disclaimers, and undeserving of any trust. There was one point of which Marcellus never lost sight and traded upon through life, with whatsoever errors he was charged. "Se communione Julii et Athanasii, Romanae et Alexandrinae urbis pontificum, esse munitum" -- as St. Jerome puts it (de Vir. Illust. c.86). Some may, possibly, consider that he duped them both; and the second more, by a good deal, than the first. All that remains to be said of Marcellus is, that although restored at Sardica, and included in the general letter of recall issued subsequently by the emperor Constantius and preserved by St. Athanasius (Apol. c. Arian. § 54), he never seems to have regained his see. Basilius certainly was in possession of it at the second council of Sirmium a.d.351, when he refuted Photinus; and either he, or Athanasius his successor, with whom St. Basil corresponded in 369 (Ep.25), was in possession A.D.363, and joined in the petition recorded by Socrates (iii.25) to the emperor Jovian. St. Athanasius, according to Cardinal Newman, upheld him "to c.360," but attacked his tenets pointedly, though without naming him, in his fourth oration against the Arians. The short essay demonstrating this is of the highest interest -- Introd. to Disc. iv. pp.503 seq. vol. xix., also vols. viii. and xiii. (p.52, note 1.), of Lib. of the Fathers. Cf. Montfaucon, Diatr. de causâ Marcelli, vol. ii. collect. Nov. Pat. Praef.41 seq.; Newman's Arians; Rettberg's Pref. in Migne, Patr. Gk. xviii.1299; Wetzer's Restit. Ver. Chronol.; and Larroque's Diss. de Phot. Haeret.
[[390]ATHANASIUS; [391]EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA.]

[E.S.FF.]

Marcia, concubine of Commodus
Marcia. In 183 a conspiracy against the emperor Commodus was detected and put down, in which the emperor's sister Lucilla and his cousin Quadratus had been prime movers. On the execution of Quadratus and the confiscation of his property, his concubine Marcia became the concubine of Commodus and obtained the highest favour with him. She was granted all the honours due to an acknowledged empress, save that of having the sacred fire borne before her. The emperor's coins displayed her figure in the garb of an Amazon, and he himself took the title Amazonius, and gave it to a month of the year. She was all-powerful with him, and used her influence on behalf of the Christians, obtaining for them many benefits. This fact, stated by Dion Cassius (or possibly by his epitomizer Xiphilinus), has led to the suspicion that she was a Christian herself, a suspicion not disproved by her position as concubine; for the Christian code then dealt tenderly with the case of a female slave unable to refuse her person to her master, and, provided she shewed the fidelity of a wife, did not condemn her (Const. Apost. viii.32). We now know from Hippolytus that the eunuch who brought Marcia up, and who retained a high place in her confidence, was a Christian presbyter. This sufficiently accounts for her Christian sympathies; and the epithet philotheos, which Hippolytus applies to her, would have been different if, besides being friendly to the Christians, she had been a Christian herself.

Marcia, whose intimacy with her fellow servant Eclectus had given occasion for remark, ultimately became his wife. She appears to have had resolution and spirit corresponding to her favourite Amazonian dress. She was put to death in 193 by Didius Julianus, to avenge the death of Commodus, which she had planned and carried out to save her own life. For the original authorities, see ECLECTUS.

[G.S.]

Marciani, see Euchites
Marciani. [[392]EUCHITES.]

Marcianus, a solitary in Syria
Marcianus (3), Nov.2 (Menol. Graec. Sirlet. and Mart. Rom.), a celebrated solitary in the desert of Chalcis in Syria (Theod. Rel. Hist. c.3); a native of Cyrrhus and of good family. In the desert he built himself within a narrow enclosure a cell in which he could neither stand upright nor lie at full length. In course of time he admitted to his society, but in separate dwellings, two disciples -- Eusebius, his successor in the cell, and Agapetus. At some distance he established an abode, under the care of Eusebius, for those who desired to pursue a monastic life under regulations framed by him. Agapetus retired and became bp. of Apamea. Towards the end of his life Marcian allowed himself to be visited by all who pleased, women excepted, but only after the festival of Easter. About 382 he was visited by Flavian, the new bp. of Antioch, in company with four of the most eminent bishops of Syria -- Acacius of Berrhoea, Eusebius of Chalcis, Isidore of Cyrrhus, and Theodotus of Hierapolis -- besides some religious laymen of high rank. They came to listen to his wisdom, but he persisted in humble silence, and only observed that such as he could not expect to profit men while the word and works of God were so continually appealing to men in vain. Living in the Arian reign of Valens, Marcian's great influence was steadily exerted on the side of orthodoxy and he was an uncompromising opponent of all the prevailing heresies. He zealously upheld the Nicaean rule of Easter and broke off communion with the venerable solitary Abraham in the same desert until he gave up the old Syrian custom and conformed to the new one. Tillemont (viii.483, xiv.222) places his death c.385 or 387. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on Nov.2. His disciple Agapetus founded two monasteries, one called after himself at Nicerta in the diocese of Apamea, and another called after Marcian's disciple Simeon. From them sprang many, all observing the rules of Marcian. His disciple Basil erected one at Seleucobelus. Tillem. viii.478, x.533, xi.304, xii.20, xiv.222, xv.340, 349; Dupin, i.455, ed.1722; Ceill. x.52; Baron. A. E. ann.382, lxviii.

[C.H.]

Marcianus, presbyter at Constantinople
Marcianus (4), Jan.10, presbyter and oeconomus of the great church of Constantinople. The authorities for his Life are Theodorus Lector (H. E. i.13, 23, in Patr. Gk. lxxxvi.), the Basilian Menology, Jan.10, a Vita from Simeon Metaphrastes (Boll. Acta SS.10 Jan. i.609); and notices in the Bollandist Lives of St. Auxentius (14 Feb. ii.770), St. Isidore the martyr of Chios (15 Mai. iii.445), and St. Gregory Nazianzen (9 Mai. ii.401 c, note n). Tillemont (xvi.161) devotes an article to him. He was originally a layman of the Cathari or Novatianists (Theod. L. i.13), and was then intimate with Auxentius, who was a Catholic (Vit. Auxent. u.s.). He was appointed oeconomus by the patriarch Gennadius, therefore after 458; and made it a rule that the clergy of Constantinople should retain for their own churches the offerings made in them and no longer pay them over to the great church (Theod. L. i.13). His erection of the remarkable (thaumaston) church of the Anastasia or Holy Resurrection and of the church of St. Irene is mentioned in the Basilian Menology and by Codinus (Aedif. Cp. p.88, ed. Bekker), the latter adding that he also built a hospital for the sick. The church of Irene (transformed from an idol temple) was on the shore (Vit. § 14) at "the passage" (Codin.). The Anastasia was (Codin.) a refoundation of the humble oratory in which St. Gregory ministered, and Marcian bought the site (then occupied by dealers in materials for mosaic work) because there had been found St. Gregory's commentaries (hupomnemata), wherein he had, 50 years before, predicted the restoration of the building in greater size and beauty. The adornment of Marcian's church was subsequently completed by Basil the Macedonian, who added the golden ceiling. How Marcian saved his new church in the conflagration of Sept.2 by his prayers and tears, while mounted on the roof with the Holy Gospels in his hands, is related by Theodore Lector (i.23), the Vita, the Basilian Menology, Theophanes (A. C.454), and Cedrenus (p.348, ed. Bekker, p.610). The year as fixed by Clinton (F. R. i.666) was 465. Codinus's mention of 50 years makes the rebuilding of the Anastasia c.425, as the Bollandist Lives of St. Gregory (u.s.) and St. Isidore (u.s.) say, long therefore before Marcian became oeconomus. He is stated to have placed the relics of St. Isidore in the church of St. Irene (ib.). An account of the two churches, very full as to the Anastasia, is given in Du Cange (Cpolis. Chr. lib. iv. pp.98, 102, ed.1729). Tillemont dates Marcian's death 471, and has minor notices of him at ii.231, iii.354, v.98, ix.416, xvi.59, 70.

[C.H.]

Marcianus, Flavius, emperor of the East
Marcianus (8), Flavius, emperor of the East 450-457. For his civil history see D. of G. and R. Biogr.

On his accession he found the world distracted by the Eutychian controversy. Theodosius had taken the part of Eutyches and upheld the decision of the "Latrocinium" of Ephesus. His death caused a complete revolution in the church in the East. Pulcheria had always been on the side of pope Leo and orthodoxy and naturally chose for her husband one who shared her views. Marcian, in his first letter to Leo (S. Leonis, Ep. lxxiii. in Migne, Patr. Lat. liv.900), speaks of the assembling of a council under Leo's influence. For the correspondence between Marcian, Pulcheria, and Leo relating to the proposed council see [393]LEO I. The disturbed state of the ecclesiastical atmosphere was probably the motive of Marcian's law of July 12, 451, against brawling in churches and holding meetings in private houses or in the streets (Codex, lib. i. tit. xii.5). The same year Eutyches was banished, though not so far from
Constantinople as Leo (Ep. lxxxiv.) wished, and orders were issued by the emperor convening a council. Originally intended to meet at Nicaea on Sept.1, pressure of public business prevented the emperor, then in Thrace, from going so far from Constantinople, so the bishops assembled at Nicaea were directed to repair to Chalcedon (Mansi, vi.552, 558). For a detailed account of the proceedings of the council see [394]DIOSCORUS and [395]EUTYCHES. Marcian and Pulcheria were present only at the sixth session on Oct.25, when the emperor made short speeches in Greek and Latin to the assembled bishops, who received him and the empress enthusiastically as a new Constantine and a new Helena. [[396]EUTYCHES.]

After the council separated Marcian proceeded to enforce its decrees by a series of edicts. The first two, dated Feb.7 and Mar.13, 452, confirmed the decisions of the council and prohibited public arguments on theological questions that had been settled by them once for all, as thereby the divine mysteries were exposed to the profane gaze of Jews and pagans (Mansi, vii.475-480). A third, of July 6, repealed the constitution promulgated by Theodosius at the instigation of the Eutychians against Flavian and his adherents Eusebius and Theodoret (ib.497-500) A fourth, dated July 28 (ib.501-506), imposed heavy penalties and disabilities on the Eutychians. Another law, dated Aug.1, 455, re-enacted the same provisions with trifling variations and subjected the Eutychians to all penalties imposed upon the Apollinarists by former emperors (ib.517-520). The emperor wrote to the monks of Alexandria by Joannes the Decurio (ib.481), exhorting them to abandon their errors and to submit to the decrees of Chalcedon. The troubles at Alexandria, however, were too great to be appeased by words. The arrival of Proterius, the bishop appointed in place of Dioscorus, led to violent riots (Evagr.229, 293).

Palestine was likewise in a disturbed state. Some of the monks of the defeated side, who had attended the council, on their return, headed by Theodosius, a violent monk who had been their leader in the council, stirred up an insurrection of the whole body of desert monks (ib.293). Juvenalis, bp. of Jerusalem, had, after his return, to fly for his life. Severianus, bp. of Scythopolis, was killed by an assassin sent in pursuit of Juvenalis; Jerusalem was seized by the infuriated monks; houses were burnt, murders were perpetrated, the prisons broken open and criminals released, and finally Theodosius was elected bishop. Marcian, hearing of the outrages, wrote to the archimandrites, monks, and inhabitants of Jerusalem, rebuked them sharply, ordered the punishment of the guilty, and placed a garrison in Jerusalem (Mansi, vii.487-495).

Marcian also took measures to suppress the last remnants of paganism. By a law of Nov.12, 451 (Codex, lib. i. tit. xi.7), he forbade, under pain of death, the reopening of the closed temples, and the offering sacrifices, libations, or incense in them, or even adorning them with flowers, and at the end of his law of Aug.1, 455, directed the strict enforcement of the laws against paganism.

In Apr.454 he passed a law granting to nuns, deaconesses, and widows the power of making testamentary dispositions in favour of the church or clergy and repealing all previous contrary enactments. In Apr.456 he passed another (ib. tit. iii.25, and tit. iv.13), by which proceedings against the oeconomus or other clerics of the churches in Constantinople were to be taken at the plaintiff's desire either before the archbishop or the prefect of the city, and no oaths tendered to clerics, who were forbidden to swear by the laws of the church and an ancient canon.

Dying Jan.457 (Theod. Lect.565), aged 65, after a reign of 6½ years, he was buried in the church of the Apostles at Constantinople (Cedrenus, 607, in Patr. Gk. cxxi.659).

[F.D.]

Marcion, a 2nd cent. heretic
Marcion, a noted and permanently influential heretic of the 2nd cent.

Life. -- Justin Martyr (Apol. cc.26, 58) mentions Simon and Menander as having been instigated by demons to introduce heresy into the church, and goes on to speak of Marcion as still living, evidently regarding him as the most formidable heretic of the day. [98] He states that he was a native of Pontus who had made many disciples out of every nation, and refers for a more detailed refutation to a separate treatise of his own, one sentence of which has been preserved by Irenaeus (iv.6). This work seems to have been extant in the time of Photius (Cod.154). Irenaeus also states that Marcion came from Pontus. He adds that thence he came to Rome, where he became an adherent, and afterwards the successor, of Cerdo, a Syrian teacher who, though he made public confession and was reconciled, privately continued teaching heretical doctrine, was betrayed by some of his hearers, and again separated. Irenaeus places the coming of Cerdo to Rome in the episcopate of Hyginus, which lasted four years, ending, according, to Lipsius, 139, 140, or 141. Irenaeus places the activity of Marcion at Rome under Anicetus ("invaluit sub Aniceto"), whose episcopate of 12 years began in 154. He says (iii.3) that Marcion meeting Polycarp at Rome (probably 154 or 155) claimed recognition, on which Polycarp answered, "I recognize thee as the firstborn of Satan." Irenaeus contemplated (iii.12) a separate treatise against Marcion. There is no direct evidence of his having carried out this design, but as its proposed method is stated to have been the confutation of Marcion by means of his own gospel, and as this is precisely the method followed by Tertullian, who is elsewhere largely indebted to Irenaeus, the work of Irenaeus may have been then written and known to Tertullian. It has been stated under [397]HIPPOLYTUS how the contents of the lost Syntagma of Hippolytus are inferred. It appears to have named Sinope as Marcion's native city (Epiph.42, Philast.45), of which his father was bishop; and to have stated that he was obliged to leave home because he seduced a virgin and was excommunicated by his father (Epiph., Pseudo-Tert.17). Epiphanius tells, apparently on the same authority, that Marcion, his frequent entreaties for absolution having failed, went to Rome, where he arrived after the death of Hyginus, that he begged restoration from the presbyters there, but they declared themselves unable to act contrary to the decision of his venerated father. The mention of presbyters as then the ruling power in the church of Rome, and their professed inability to reverse the decision of a provincial bishop, indicate a date earlier than that of Epiphanius; but Epiphanius further states that Marcion's quarrel with the presbyters was not only because they did not restore him to church communion, but also because they did not make him bishop. This has been generally understood to mean bp. of Rome, and possibly Epiphanius intended this, but he does not say so. His words are hos ouk apeilephe ten proedrian te, kai ten eisdusin tes ekklesias. It is absurd that an excommunicated foreigner should dream of being made bishop of a church from which he was asking in vain for absolution. Epiphanius must have misunderstood some expression he found in his authority, or Marcion must have been already a bishop (possibly one of his father's suffragans), been deposed, and was seeking at Rome both restoration to communion and recognition of his episcopal dignity. Optatus alone directly countenances the latter view, speaking of Marcion (iv.5, p.74) as "ex episcopo factus apostata." But there is indirect confirmation in the fact which we learn from Adamantius (i.15; xvi.264, Lommatz.) that Marcion was afterwards recognized as bishop by his own followers and was the head of a succession of Marcionite bishops continuing down to the writer's own day. The Marcionites appear to have had no difference with the orthodox as to the forms of church organization. Tertullian's words are well-known, "faciunt et favos vespae, faciunt et ecclesias Marcionitae" (adv. Marcion. iv.5). We may conclude that episcopacy was the settled constitution of the church before the time of the Marcionite schism, else Marcion would not have adopted it in his new sect, and it seems more likely that Marcion had been consecrated to the office before the schism than that he obtained consecration afterwards, or by his own authority took the office to himself and appointed others to it, a thing unexampled in the church, of which we should surely have heard if Marcion had done it. Many critics have believed that the statement as to the cause of Marcion's excommunication arose from the misunderstanding of a common figurative expression, and that it meant that Marcion by heresy had corrupted the pure virgin church. We are inclined to adopt this view, not on account of the confessed austerity of Marcion's subsequent life and doctrines, which are not inconsistent with his having fallen into sins of the flesh in his youth, but because the story goes on to tell of Scripture difficulties propounded by Marcion to the Roman presbyters and of his rejection of their solutions. If the question had been whether pardon were to be given for an offence against morality, neither party would have been likely to enter into theological controversy, whereas such discussion would naturally arise if the cause of excommunication had been heresy.

The story proceeds to say that he asked the Roman presbyters to explain the texts, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit," and "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment," texts from which he himself deduced that works in which evil is to be found could not proceed from the good God, and that the Christian dispensation could have nothing in common with the Jewish. Rejecting the explanation offered him by the presbyters, he broke off the interview with a threat to make a schism in their church. The beginning of Marcionism was so early that the church writers of the end of the 2nd cent., who are our best authorities, do not themselves seem able to tell with certainty the story of its commencement. But we know that the heresy of Marcion spread itself widely over many countries. Epiphanius names as infected by it in his time, Rome and Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Cyprus, and even Persia. Its diffusion in the latter half of the 2nd cent. is proved by its antagonists in numerous countries: Dionysius in Corinth writing to Nicomedia, Philip in Crete, Theophilus in Antioch, besides Modestus (Eus. iv.25), Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Rhodo, and Tertullian. Bardesanes wrote in Syriac against the heresy (ib. iv.30), as did Ephrem Syrus later.

Now, Marcion would seem to have travelled much and probably used his journeys to propagate his doctrines. Ephrem Syrus speaks of him as wandering like Cain, but possibly only refers to his leaving his country for Rome (Hymn 56, Assemani, Bibl. Or. i.119). Tertullian constantly describes him as "nauclerus"; Rhodo (ap. Eus. v.13) calls him nautes, according to a reading which we believe to be right, though the word is wanting in some MSS. His travels seem more likely to have preceded than to have followed his settling in Rome under Anicetus. Unless, therefore, the story of the interview with the Roman presbyters is to be rejected altogether, we think it must be taken date and all. The interview must be placed immediately after the death of Hyginus and we must suppose Marcion then to have left Rome on his travels and only to have settled there permanently some years later, first as a member of Cerdo's school and afterwards as his successor.

The authorities as to the chronology of his life are very conflicting. The statement on which we can most rely is that he taught in Rome during the episcopate of Anicetus. We have no good warrant to extend his activity later, for we can give no credit to Tertullian when he names Eleutherus (de Praesc.30) in connexion with the excommunication of Marcion. If Marcion did not survive Anicetus he may have been born c.100. The Chronicle of Edessa names 138 for the beginning of Marcionism, and with this agrees the first year of Antoninus given by the Fihrist (Flügel's Mani, p.85). This date is not improbable, if we suppose an Oriental preaching of the heresy to have preceded its establishment at Rome; a.d.150 is a not unlikely date for Justin Martyr's Apology, and 12 years' growth is not too much for Marcionism to attain the formidable dimensions that work indicates. If Justin Martyr's work is dated earlier, the date of Marcionism will be similarly affected.

The time of Marcion's death is unknown, but he probably did not survive Anicetus. The only works he is known to have left are his recensions of the Gospel and Pauline Epistles; his Antitheses, in which by comparing different passages he tried to shew that the O.T. contradicted the New, and also itself; and Tertullian refers to a letter of his, then extant, as proving that he had originally belonged to the Catholic church (adv. Marc. i.1; iv.4; de Carn. Christ. ii.). We learn from Rhodo (Eus. v.13) that after his death his followers broke up into sects, among the leaders of which he names Apelles, who only acknowledged one first principle; Potitus and Basilicus, who counted two; and Syneros, who counted three (Ref. vii.31). Other Marcionite teachers mentioned are Prepo, an Assyrian, by Hippolytus, Lucanus by Tertullian; Pitho and Blastus (the latter probably erroneously) by Theodoret (Haer. Fab. i.25). Epiphanius says (de Mens. et Pond.17) that Theodotion, the translator of O.T., had been a Marcionite before his apostasy to Judaism, and Jerome (de Vir. Illust.56) states that Ambrosius was one before his conversion by Origen. These sectaries were formidable to the church, both from their numbers and the strictness of their life. They were very severe ascetics, refusing flesh meat, wine, and the married life. Unlike some Gnostics who taught that it was no sin to escape persecution by disguising their faith, the Marcionites vied with the orthodox in producing martyrs. Eusebius tells (iv.15) that the same letter of the church of Smyrna from which he drew his account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, told also of the martyrdom of a Marcionite presbyter, Metrodorus, who, like Polycarp, suffered at Smyrna by fire, and in the same persecution. When, later, the Montanists appealed in proof of their orthodoxy to the number of their martyrs, they were reminded that this could be equally pleaded for the Marcionites (Eus. v.16). Other Marcionite martyrs mentioned by Eusebius are a woman who suffered under Valerian at Caesarea in Palestine (iii.12), and a Marcionite bp. Asclepius, who in the Diocletian persecution was burned alive at Caesarea on the same pyre as the orthodox Apselamus (Mart. Pal. c.10). The strictness of the Marcionite discipline is proved by the unfriendly testimony of Tertullian, who tries by their practice to convict of falsity the Marcionite theory, that a good God could not be the object of fear: "If so, why do you not take your fill of the enjoyments of this life? Why do you not frequent the circus, the arena, and the theatre? Why do you not boil over with every kind of lust? When the censer is handed you, and you are asked to offer a few grains of incense, why not deny your faith? 'God forbid!' you cry -- 'God forbid!'"

At the end of the Diocletian persecution the Marcionites had a short interval of freedom of worship. An inscription has been found over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village (Le Bas and Waddington, Inscriptions, No.2558, vol. iii. p.583) bearing a Syrian date corresponding to the year commencing Oct.1, 318. This is more ancient than any dated inscription belonging to a Catholic church. With the complete triumph of Christianity, Marcionite freedom of worship was lost. Constantine (Eus. de Vit. Const. iii.64) absolutely forbade their meeting for worship in public or private buildings. Their churches were to be given to the Catholics; any private houses used for schismatical worship to be confiscated. But the dying out of Marcionism was probably less the result of imperial legislation than of the absorption of the older heresy by the new wave of Oriental dualism which in Manicheism passed over the church. The Theodosian Code (xvi. tit. v.65) contains a solitary mention of Marcionites. They were not extinct in the fifth cent., for Theodoret, writing to pope Leo (Ep.113, p.1190), boasts that he had himself converted more than a thousand Marcionites. In Ep.145 the number of converts rises to ten thousand; in Ep.81 they are said to be the inhabitants of eight villages. In his Church History (v.) Theodoret tells of an unsuccessful effort made by Chrysostom for their conversion. Probably this survival of Marcionism was but a local peculiarity. But as late as 692 the council in Trullo thought it worth while to make provision for the reconciliation of Marcionites, and there is other evidence of lingering remains so late as the 10th cent. (Flügel's Mani, pp.160, 167).

Doctrine. -- There is a striking difference of character between the teaching of Marcion and of others commonly classed with him as Gnostics. The systems of the latter often contain so many elements derived from heathenism, or drawn from the fancy of the speculators, that we feel as if we had scarcely any common ground with them; but with Marcion Christianity is plainly the starting-point, and the character of his system harmonizes with his being the son of a Christian bishop and brought up as a Christian. But he has been perplexed by the question of the origin of evil, and is disposed to accept the solution, much prevalent in the East then, that evil is inextricably mixed up with matter, which therefore could not be the creation of the Supreme. He tries to fit in this solution with his Christian creed and with the Scriptures; but naturally only by a mutilation of both can he force an agreement. Indeed, he sometimes has even to alter the text, e.g. "I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil," into "I am not come to fulfil the law, but to destroy." Still, the arbitrary criticism of Marcion has more points of contact with modern thought than the baseless assumptions of other Gnostics. A modern divine would turn away from the dreams of Valentinianism in silent contempt; but he could not refuse to discuss the question raised by Marcion, whether there is such opposition between different parts of what he regards as the word of God, that all cannot come from the same author.

The fundamental point of difference between Marcion and the church was concerning the unity of the first principle. Marcion plainly asserted the existence of two Gods, a good one and a just one. What he meant to convey by these words Beausobre well illustrates by a passage of Bardesanes, preserved by Eusebius (Praep. Evan. vi.10). He says that animals are of three kinds: some, like serpents and scorpions, will hurt those who have given them no provocation; some, like sheep, will not attempt to return evil for evil; others will hurt those only that hurt them. These three may be called evil, good, and just respectively. Marcion then thought the infliction of punishment inconsistent with perfect goodness, and would only concede the title of just to the God of O.T., who had distinctly threatened to punish the wicked. The God, he said, whose law was "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," was a just God, but not the same as that good God whose command was, "If any smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also." The command, "Thou shalt love him that loveth thee and hate thine enemy" was that of a just God; "Love thine enemy" was the law of the good God. Further, the God of O.T. had said of Himself, "I create evil"; but since from a good tree evil fruit cannot spring, it follows that He who created evil cannot Himself be good. He could not be the Supreme, for He was of limited intelligence, not being able to find Adam when he hid himself, and obliged to ask, "Where are thou?", and also obliged to come down to see before He could know whether Sodom had done according to its cry. Marcion's theory was that the visible creation was the work of the just God; the good God, whose abode he places in the third or highest heaven and whom apparently he acknowledged as the creator of a high immaterial universe, neither concerned Himself with mankind nor was known by them, until, taking compassion on the misery to which they had been brought by disobedience to their Creator who was casting them into his hell, He interfered for their redemption. The Marcionite denial of the unity of the first principle was variously modified. Some counted three first principles instead of two: a good Being who rules over the Christians, a just one over the Jews, a wicked one over the heathen. Others, since the world was supposed to be made out of previously existent matter, held that matter was a fourth self-originated principle. Marcion himself only counted two archai, but used the word in the sense of ruling powers, for it does not appear that he regarded matter as the creation either of his good or his just God, and therefore it should rightly have been reckoned as an independent principle. Tertullian, indeed, argues that Marcion, to be consistent, should count as many as nine gods. In all these systems the good Being was acknowledged to be superior to the others, so it was not a violent change to assume that from this principle the others were derived; and Apelles and his school drew near the orthodox and taught that there was but one self-originated principle. The ascription of creation and redemption to different beings enabled the church writers to convict the Marcionite deity of unwarrantable interference with what did not belong to him. This interference was the more startling from its suddenness, for Marcion's rejection of O.T. obliged him to deny that there had been any intimation of the coming redemption, or any sign that it had been contemplated beforehand. His God then suddenly wakes up to trouble himself about this earth; stoops down from his third heaven into a world about which, for thousands of years, he had given himself no concern; there kidnaps the sons and servants of another, and teaches them to hate and despise their father and their king, on whose gifts they must still depend for sustenance, and who furnishes the very ground on which this new God's worshippers are to kneel, the heaven to which they are to stretch out their hands, the water in which they are baptized, the very eucharistic food for which a God must be thanked to whom it had never belonged.

Marcion's rejection of O.T. prophecy did not involve a denial that the prophets had foretold the coming of a Christ; but the Christ of the prophets could not be our Christ. The former was to come for the deliverance of the Jewish people; the latter for that of the whole human race. The former was to be a warrior -- Christ was a man of peace; Christ suffered on the cross -- the law pronounced accursed him that hangeth on a tree; the Christ of the prophets is to rule the nations with a rod of iron, kings are to set themselves against Him, He is to have the heathen for His inheritance and to set up a kingdom that shall not be destroyed. Jesus did none of these things, therefore the Christ of the prophets is still to come. Tertullian successfully shews that if Jesus was not the Christ of the prophets, He must have wished to personate Him, coming as He did at the time and in the place which the prophets had foretold, and fulfilling so many of the indications they had given. What Marcion supposed his own Christ to be has been disputed. Some have supposed that he did not distinguish him from his good God, for Marcion's Gospel was said to have commenced: "In the 15th year of Tiberius God came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught on the Sabbath days" (Tert. adv. Marc. iv.7); but we believe the true reading here is "eum," not "deum," and that Marcion held his Christ to be a saving Spirit (i.19), but did not confound him with the Supreme. Marcion's Gospel told nothing of the birth of Christ, and Marcion's "came down" has a very different meaning from what it has in the original passage (Luke vi.31), in Marcion's use meaning "came down from heaven." In fact, the story of Christ's birth would represent Him as a born subject of the Demiurge, deriving from his bounty the very body in which He came; so it was preferred to tell the improbable tale of a divine teacher unheard-of before making a sudden appearance in the synagogue. That Christ had a real earthly body Marcion of course could not admit. See [398]DOCETISM for an account of Marcion's doctrine on this subject, and that of his disciple Apelles, who on this point as on others approached more nearly to the orthodox. It was an obvious argument against the Docetic theory that if our Lord's body were not real we could have no faith that His miracles were real, nor in the reality of His sufferings and death, which Marcion was willing to regard as an exhibition of redeeming love; nor in the reality of His resurrection. Marcion, like the orthodox, taught that the death of our Lord was followed by a "descent into hell"; but Irenaeus tells us that he taught that there Cain, the people of Sodom, and others condemned in O.T. as wicked, received Christ's preaching and were taken up by Him into His kingdom; but that Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, the prophets, and other righteous men imagined that the Demiurge was tempting them as on other occasions, and so, being afraid to join themselves to Christ and accept deliverance from Him, were left in the underworld. Christ's salvation, according to Marcion, affected the soul only, and did not affect the body, of which he held there would be no resurrection. Indeed, none of those who regarded matter as essentially evil could believe that evil would be made eternal by a material resurrection. Tertullian points out that sin originates with the soul, not the body, and pronounces it unfair that the sinful soul should be redeemed and the less guilty body punished. On unredeemed souls no punishment would be inflicted by Marcion's good God -- he would merely abandon them to the vengeance of the Demiurge; but Tertullian shewed that if direct punishment were inconsistent with perfect goodness, such abandonment must be equally so.

The Marcionite system as described by Esnig has more of a mythic than of a rationalistic character, and if we accept this as the original form of Marcionism, Marcion owed more to the older Gnostics than we should otherwise have supposed. Marcion is said by Esnig to have taught that there were three heavens: in the highest dwelt the good God, in the second the God of the Law, in the lowest His angels; beneath lay Hyle, or matter, having an independent existence of its own. By the help of Hyle, which played the part of a female principle, the God of the Law made this world, after which he retired to his heaven; and each ruled in his own domain, he in heaven and Hyle on earth. Afterwards the God of the Law, beholding how goodly this earth was, desired to make man to inhabit it, and for this purpose requested the co-operation of Hyle. She supplied the dust from which man's body was made, and he breathed in his spirit, and made him live. He named him Adam, gave him a wife, and placed him in Paradise. There they lived, honouring and obeying their Maker, in joy and childlike innocence, for as yet they had no children. Then the Lord of Creation, seeing that Adam was worthy to serve Him, devised how he might withdraw him from Hyle and unite him to himself. He took him aside, and said, "Adam, I am God, and beside me there is no other; if thou worshippest any other God thou shalt die the death." When Adam heard of death he was afraid, and gradually withdrew himself from Hyle. When Hyle came after her wont to serve him, Adam did not listen to her, but withdrew himself. Then Hyle, recognizing that the Lord of Creation had supplanted her, said, "Seeing that he hates me and keeps not his compact with me, I will make a number of gods and fill the world with them, so that they who seek the true God shall not be able to find him." Thus she filled the world with idolatry; men ceased to adore the Lord of Creation, for Hyle had drawn them all to herself. Then was the Creator full of wrath; and as men died he cast them into hell, both Adam, on account of the tree, and the rest. There they remained 29 centuries. At length the good God looked down from the highest heaven and beheld what misery men suffered from Hyle and the Creator. He took compassion on those plagued and tortured in the fire of hell, and he sent his son to deliver them. "Go down," he said, "take on thee the form of a servant, and make thyself like the sons of the law. Heal their wounds, give sight to their blind, bring their dead to life, perform without reward the greatest miracles of healing; then will the God of the Law be jealous, and will instigate his servants to crucify thee. Then go down to hell, which will open her mouth to receive thee, supposing thee to be one of the dead. Then liberate the captives whom thou shalt find there, and bring them up to me." This was done. Hell was deceived and admitted Jesus, who emptied it of all the spirits therein and carried them up to his Father. When the God of the Law saw this he was enraged, rent his clothes, tore the curtain of his palace, darkened his sun, and veiled his world in darkness. After that, Jesus came down a second time, but now in the glory of his divinity, to plead with the God of the Law. When the Creator saw Jesus thus appear, he was obliged to own that he had been wrong in thinking that there was no other god but himself. Then Jesus said, "I have a controversy with thee, but I will take no other judge between us than thine own law. Is it not written in thy law that whoso killeth another shall himself be killed; that whoso sheddeth innocent blood shall have his own blood shed? Let me, then, kill thee and shed thy blood, for I was innocent and thou hast shed my blood." Then he recounted what benefits he had bestowed on the Creator's children, and in return had been crucified; and the Creator could make no defence, seeing himself condemned by his own law, and he said: "I was ignorant; I thought thee but a man, and did not know thee to be a God; take the revenge which is thy due." Then Jesus left him and betook himself to Paul, and revealed to him the way in which we should go. All who believe in Christ will give themselves to this good and righteous man. Men must withdraw themselves from the dominion of Hyle; but all do not know how this is to be done.

Though this mythical story differs much in complexion from other ancient accounts of Marcionite doctrine, we cannot absolutely reject it; for there is nothing in it inconsistent with Marcion's known doctrines or such as a Gnostic of his age might have taught. It is, indeed, such a system as he might have learned from the Syriac Gnostic Cerdo. But Marcion must have given the mythic element little prominence, or it would not have so disappeared from the other accounts.

Discipline and Worship. -- In rites Marcion followed the church model. Thus (Tert. adv. Marc. i.14) he had baptism with water, anointing with oil, a mixture of milk and honey was given to the newly baptized, and sacramental bread represented the Saviour's Body. Wine was absent from his Eucharist, for his principles entirely forbade wine or flesh meat. [[399]ENCRATITES.] Fish, however, he permitted. He commanded his disciples to fast on Saturday, to mark his hostility to the God of the Jews, who had made that His day of rest. Marriage he condemned. A married man was received as a catechumen, but not admitted to baptism until he had agreed to separate from his wife (ib. i.29 and iv.10). This probably explains the statement of Epiphanius that the Marcionites celebrated the mysteries in the presence of unbaptized persons. The sect could not have flourished if it discouraged married persons from joining it; and if it admitted them only as catechumens, that class would naturally be granted larger privileges than in the Catholic church. [99] Nor need we disbelieve the statement of Epiphanius that a second or a third baptism was permitted. If a member married, or one who had put away his wife took her back, it is not incredible that on repentance a second baptism was necessary before restoration to full privileges of membership. Again, since the baptism of a married person was only permitted in articulo mortis, it would sometimes happen that catechumens were surprised by death before baptism, and it is not incredible that in such cases the device of a vicarious baptism may have been resorted to, as Chrysostom tells in speaking on the passage in Corinthians about being baptized for the dead. Epiphanius states that Marcion permitted females to baptize. The Marcionite baptism was not recognized by the church. Theodoret tells that he baptized those whom be converted. (See also Basil. Can.47, Ep.199.) He tells also that he had met an aged Marcionite who, in his hostility to the Creator, refused to use his works, a principle which could not possibly be carried out consistently.

Canon of Scripture. -- Marcion's rejection of the O.T. involved the rejection of great part of the New, which bears witness to the Old. He only retained the Gospel of St. Luke (and that in a mutilated form), and ten Epp. of St. Paul, omitting the pastoral epistles. In defence of his rejection of other apostolic writings, he appealed to the statements of St. Paul in Galatians, that some of the older apostles had not walked uprightly after the truth of the gospel, and that certain false apostles had perverted the gospel of Christ. Marcion's Gospel, though substantially identical, as far as it went, with our St. Luke's, did not bear that Evangelist's name. That it was, however, an abridgment of St. Luke was asserted by all the Fathers from Irenaeus and not doubted until modern times. Then it was noticed that in some cases where Marcion is accused by Epiphanius or Tertullian of having corrupted the text, his readings are witnessed by other ancient authorities. We have the means of restoring Marcion's Gospel with sufficient exactness. Tertullian goes through it in minute detail; Epiphanius also has made a series of minute notes on Marcion's corruptions of the text; some notices are also found in the Dialogue of Adamantius. Combining these independent sources, we obtain results on which we can place great confidence. It clearly appears that Marcion's Gospel and our St. Luke's in the main followed the same order and were even in verbal agreement, except that the latter contains much not found in the former. So that the affinity of the two forms is certain, and the only choice is whether we shall regard the one as a mutilation or the other as an interpolated form. The theory that the shorter form was the original was for some time defended by Ritschl and Baur, who, however, were obliged to yield to the arguments of Hilgenfeld and Volkmar. In Volkmar's Das Evangelium Marcions the differences between the two forms of the Gospel are examined in minute detail, especially with reference to their doctrinal bearings; and it is found that the only theory which will explain the facts is that Marcion's is a mutilated form. His form exhibits a hostility to Judaism, the Mosaic law, and the work of the Creator, of which there is not a trace in genuine Pauline Christianity. Dr. Sanday (Gospel in the Second Cent., p.204) has made a careful linguistic, comparison of the portion of our St. Luke which Marcion acknowledges with that which he omits, the result being a decisive proof of common authorship; the part omitted by Marcion abounding in all the peculiarities which distinguish the style of the third evangelist. The theory, therefore, that Marcion's form is the original may be said to be now completely exploded. Dr. Sanday notes further that the text of St. Luke used by Marcion has some readings recognized by some other ancient authorities, but which no critic now accepts. The inference is that when Marcion used St. Luke's Gospel it had been so long in existence, and had been copied so often, that different types of text had had time to establish themselves. It has been argued that Marcion could not have known our Fourth Gospel, else he would have preferred this, as being more strongly anti-Jewish. But the Fourth Gospel is not anti-Jewish in Marcion's sense, and he would have had even more trouble in mutilating it to make it serve his purpose. At the very outset Christ's relation to the Jewish people is described in the words, "He came unto His own"; the Jewish temple is called His Father's house; salvation is said to be of the Jews; contrary to Marcion's teaching, Christ is perpetually identified with the Christ predicted in O.T.; the Scriptures are "they which testify of Me," "Moses wrote of Me," "Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed Me." Great importance is attached to the testimony of John the Baptist, who, according to Marcion, like the older prophets, did not know the true Christ; and the miracle of turning water into wine would alone have condemned the Gospel in Marcion's eyes. In short, the Fourth Gospel is strongly anti-Marcionite. See esp. Zahn's Gesch. des N.T. Kanons, i.587-718 and ii.409-529.

Marcion's Apostolicon consisted of ten epistles, in the order: Gal., I. and II. Cor., Rom. (wanting the last two chapters), I. and II. Thess., Eph. (called by Marcion the Ep. to the Laodiceans), Col., Philippians, Philemon. Concerning the order of the last two, Tertullian and Epiphanius differ. The Acts and the pastoral epistles are rejected. The Apostolicon was known to Jerome, who notes two or three of its readings. The most careful attempt to restore it is by Hilgenfeld (Zeitschrift f. histor. Theol.1855). It becomes apparent that Marcion struck out from the Epistles which he acknowledged some passages which conflicted with his theory and also made some few additions. The arbitrary character of such criticism would destroy all claim to originality for Marcion's text of the Gospel, even if that claim had not otherwise been sufficiently refuted.

[G.S.]

Marcus, bp. of Rome
Marcus (6), bp. of Rome, probably from Jan.18 to Oct.7, 336, having been ordained 18 days after the death of his predecessor Sylvester. The above dates, from the Liberian Catalogue and Depositio Episcoporum, are confirmed by St. Jerome (Chron.), who gives him a reign of 8 months, and are consistent with historical events. He is said (Catal. Felic. and Anastasius) to have ordained that the bishops of Ostia should consecrate the bishops of Rome and bear the pallium, and to have been buried in the cemetery of Balbina on the Via Ardeatina, "in basilica quam coemiterium constituit." Baronius notices this as the earliest mention of the pallium. The cemetery of Balbina, called also that of St. Mark from this pope's interment there and variously spoken of in old itineraries as on the Ardeatine and Appian Ways, has been identified as lying between the two by De Rossi, who supposes the "basilica" to have been a chapel, or cella memoriae, built by Marcus at the entrance of an existing cemetery and intended as a place of burial. Interment near the surface of the ground seems about this time to have begun to supersede the use of subterranean catacombs.

[J.B -- Y.]

Marcus, surnamed Eremita
Marcus (14), surnamed Eremita, mentioned by Nicephorus Callistus as ho poluthrulletos asketes, said to have lived in the reign of Theodosius II. and to have been a disciple of St. Chrysostom (Niceph. H. E. xiv.30). Nicephorus speaks later of the works of a Markos asketes, apparently the same man. Of these he had seen a collection of 8 and another of 32, dealing with the ascetic life (H. E. xiv.54). Photius (Bibl. Cod.200) gives an account of 8 works of Marcus the monk, all of which are extant with one doubtful exception. His works, pub. in Patr. Gk. lxv.905, preceded by two disquisitions on the author by Gallandius and Fessler, are:

(1) peri nomou pneumatikou, a collection of short aphorisms, inculcating especially the duties of humility and constant prayer.

(2) peri ton oiomenon ex ergon dikaiousthai shews that as slaves of God we have no wages to expect. All is of grace, which is given teleia in baptism, and afterwards in measure proportioned to our obedience.

(3) peri metanoias shews repentance to be necessary for all.

(4) apokrisis pros tous aporountas peri tou theiou baptismatos, an important treatise on the doctrine of baptism, states distinctly that by the grace of baptism original sin is put away and the baptized are in exactly the condition Adam was before the fall.

(5) and (9) pros Nikolaon and peri nesteias are ascetic treatises.

(7) antibole pros scholastikon defends monastic life against a man of the world.

(8) sumboulia noos pros ten heautou psuchen shews that the root of evil is in ourselves.

(10) eis ton Melchisedek, against heretics who argued from the language of Hebrews that Melchizedek was the Son of God.

(6) kephalaia neptika, generally included among the works of Marcus, but not mentioned by Photius, From external and internal evidence it would seem to be wrongly ascribed to Marcus.

[M.F.A.]

Marcus, a Gnostic
Marcus (17), a Gnostic of the school of Valentinus, who taught in the middle of the 2nd cent. His doctrines are almost exclusively known to us through a long section (i.13-21, pp.55-98) in which Irenaeus gives an account of his teaching and his school. Both Hippolytus (Ref. vi.39-55, pp.200-220 and Epiphanius (Haer.34) have copied the account from Irenaeus; and there seems no good reason to think that either had any direct knowledge of the writings of Marcus. But Clement of Alexandria clearly knew and used them. Although Jerome describes Marcus as a Basilidian (Ep.75 ad Theod. i.449), what Irenaeus reports clearly shews him as a follower of Valentinus. Thus his system tells of 30 Aeons, divided into an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Dodecad; of the fall and recovery of Sophia; of the future union of the spirits of the chosen seed with angels as their heavenly bridegrooms. What Marcus added to the teaching of his predecessors is perhaps the most worthless of all that passed under the name of "knowledge" in the 2nd cent. It merely contains magical formulae, which the disciples were to get by heart and put trust in, and puerile speculations, such as were in vogue among the later Pythagoreans, about mysteries in numbers and names. Marcus found in Scripture and in Nature repeated examples of the occurrence of his mystical numbers, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirty. If so great mysteries were contained in names, it naturally followed that to know the right name of each celestial power was a matter of vital importance; and such knowledge the heretical teachers promised to bestow. They had formulae and sacraments of redemption. They taught that the baptism of the visible Jesus was but for the forgiveness of sins, but that the redemption of Him Who in that baptism descended was for perfection; the one was merely psychical, the other spiritual. Of the latter are interpreted the words in which our Lord spoke of another baptism (Luke xii.50; Matt. xx.22). Some conferred this redemption by baptism with special invocations; others added or substituted various anointings; others held that these applications could not procure spiritual redemption -- only by knowledge could such redemption be effected. This knowledge included the possession of formulae, by the use of which the initiated would after death become incomprehensible and invisible to principalities and powers, and leaving their bodies in this lower creation and their souls with the Demiurge, ascend in their spirits to the Pleroma. Probably the Egyptian religion contributed this element to Gnosticism. Some of these Marcosian formulae were in Hebrew, of which Irenaeus has preserved specimens much corrupted by copyists. Marcus, as Irenaeus tells us, used other juggling tricks by which he gained the reputation of magical skill. A knowledge of astrology was among his accomplishments, and apparently some chemical knowledge, with which he astonished and impressed his disciples. The eucharistic cup of mingled wine and water was seen under his invocation to change to a purple red; and his disciples were told that this was because the great CHARIS had dropped some of her blood into the cup. Sometimes he would hand the cup to women, and bid them in his presence pronounce the eucharistic words; and then he would pour from their consecrated cup into a much larger one held by himself, and the liquor, miraculously increased at his prayer, would be seen to rise up and fill the larger vessel. He taught his female disciples to prophesy. Casting lots at their meetings, he would command her on whom the lot fell boldly to utter the words which were suggested to her mind, and such words were accepted by the hearers as prophetic utterances. He abused the influence he thus acquired over silly women to draw much money from them, and, it is said, even to gain from them more shameful compliances. He is accused of having used philtres and love charms, and at least one, if not more, of his female disciples on returning to the church confessed that body as well as mind had been defiled by him. Some of his followers certainly claimed to have been elevated, by their knowledge and the redemption they had experienced, above ordinary rules of morality. If we are sometimes tempted to be indulgent to Gnostic theories as the harmless dreams of well-meaning thinkers perplexed by problems too hard for them, the history of Marcus shews how these speculations became a degrading superstition. Everything elevating and ennobling in Christ's teaching disappeared; the teachers boasted of a sham science, having no tendency to make those who believed it wiser or better; the disciples trusted in magical rites and charms not more respectable than those of the heathen; and their morality became of quite heathen laxity.

Marcus appears to have been an elder contemporary of Irenaeus, who speaks of him as though still living and teaching. Irenaeus more than once tells of the resistance to Marcus of a venerated elder, from whom he quotes some iambic verses, written in reprobation of that heretic. Though we learn from Irenaeus that the Rhone district was much infested by followers of Marcus, it does not appear that Marcus was there himself, and the impression left is that Irenaeus knew the followers of Marcus by personal intercourse, Marcus only by his writings. We are told also of Marcus having seduced the wife of one of the deacons in Asia (diakonon tina ton en te Asia) and the most natural conclusion is that Asia Minor was the scene where Marcus made himself notorious as a teacher, probably before Irenaeus had left that district; that it was a leading bishop there who resisted Marcus; and that the heretic's doctrines passed into Gaul by means of the extensive intercourse well known to have then prevailed between the two countries. The use of Hebrew or Syriac names in the Marcosian school may lead us to ascribe to Marcus an Oriental origin.

[G.S.]

Mari, see Nestorian Church
Mari. [[400]NESTORIAN CHURCH.]

Marinus, a military martyr
Marinus (4), a military martyr in the reign of Gallienus, at Caesarea in Palestine, under a judge named Achaeus, A.D.262. He was distinguished by his birth, riches, and services. When Marinus was about to be made a centurion, another aspirant declared him to be a Christian and unable therefore to sacrifice to the emperors. The judge granted him three hours to choose between death and compliance. As Marinus came out of the praetorium, Theotecnus the bishop led him into the church. Placing him by the altar, be raised his cloak, and pointing to the sword by his side, and presenting him with the book of the gospels, told him to choose which he wished. Without hesitation he extended his hand and took the book. "Hold fast then -- hold fast to God," said Theotecnus, "and strengthened by Him mayest thou obtain what thou hast chosen: go in peace." He was immediately executed, and buried by a Christian senator named Astyrius. The narrative of Eusebius was probably that of an eye-witness, perhaps the bishop. It is a moot question whether this martyrdom resulted from persecution or from military law. Dr. F. Görres, in an art. in Jahrb. Prot. Theologie, 1877, p.620, on "Die Toleranzedicte des Kaisers Gallienus," suggests that Marinus could not legally have suffered under Gallienus, who had already issued his edict of toleration, but that it must have taken place by command of Macrianus, who had revolted from Gallienus and taken possession of Egypt, Palestine, and the East, and was, as we learn from Eus. vii.10, 13, 23 (cf. Trebell. Pollio, ed. H. Peter. Script. Hist. Aug. t. ii. Gallieni duo. cc. i.-iii. xxx. Tyranni, cc. xiii. xiv.) the moral author of the Valerian persecution. When possessed of imperial authority, Macrianus vented his hate on the Christians whom Gallienus favoured. Eus. vii.15, 16; Neander, H. E. ed. Bohn, i.194 ; Ceill, ii.394; Tillem. iv.21; Pagi, Crit. i.276, nr. x. xi.).

[G.T.S.]

Maris, bp. of Chalcedon
Maris (2), (Mares, Magnus, Marius), bp. of Chalcedon, a prominent Arian (Le Quien, Or. Chr. i.599), said to have been a disciple of the martyr Lucian of Antioch (Philost. H. E. ii.14; Tillem. v.770, vi.253, 646). He wrote in support of Arian opinions before the council of Nicaea (Athan. de Syn. § 17; Tillem. vi.646). At the council he joined with Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis, Ursacius, and Valens against Athanasius (Socr. i.8, 27), and was one of five who were unwilling to subscribe on account of the term homoousion (i.8). Maris at length yielded (Soz. i.211; Nicet. Chron. Thesaur. v.8; cf. Vales. note 71, ad Soz. i.21). He was one of 17 who held out against the council and supported Arius, according to Gelasius (Mansi, ii.818; cf.878 B). His name occurs among the subscribers (ib. ii.696). Philostorgius states (in Nicet. Chon. Thes. v.8) that Maris, Eusebius, Theognis, expressed to the emperor their repentance for having signed, stating that they had complied only through fear of him, and that the emperor indignantly banished them to Gaul. Maris assisted at the council of Tyre in 335, and was one of the commission to Mareotis (Athan. Ap. c. Ar. §§ 13, 72; Theod. H. E.1.28; Mansi, 11.1125 D, 1130 B, 1143 D; Tillem. viii.35, 42, 49). In 335 he was one of the deputies sent to Constantinople against Athanasius (Socr. i.35; Tillem. vi.250). He frequently wrote to pope Julius against Athanasius (Hilar. Frag. ii. § 2, in Patr. Lat. x.632, here written Marius; Theod. H. E. ii.6 al.8; Tillem. vii.270). In 341 he attended the council of Antioch and is named in the Ep. of Julius (Ap. c. Ar. § 20; Tillem. vi.312). In 342 he was of the party who secured the appointment of Macedonius to the see of Constantinople (Socr. ii.12; Tillem. vi.323, 493). The same year he was one of four bishops deputed by Constantius to Constans (Socr. li.18; Athan. de Syn. § 25; Tillem. vi.326; Hefele, Conc. ii.80, 83). Sozomen (iii.10) omits Maris here. That he was present at the council of Sardica (343-344) appears certain, although his name is not among the signatures (Tillem. viii.95, 686, 688; Hefele, ii.92, n.3). At the council of Philippopolis his name is again absent, and among the subscriptions occur Thelaphius as bp. of Chalcedon (Mansi, ii.138), probably by a clerical error. In 359 he defended the doctrine of the Anomoeans against Basil (Philostorg. iv.12; Tillem. vi.483) and was at the council of Ariminum (Socr. ii.41; Soz. iv.24), and in 360 at the council of Constantinople (ib.; Hefele, ii.271; Tillem. vi.487). In 362 Maris, then advanced in age and blind, at an interview with Julian, severely rebuked his apostasy, whereupon the emperor tauntingly observed, "Thy Galilean God will not heal thy sight." "I thank God," retorted Maris, "for depriving me of the power of beholding thy face" (Socr. iii.12; Soz. v.4; Tillem. vii.332). He was living in the reign of Jovian (Philostorg. viii.4; Tillem. viii.764) and must be the Magnus of Chalcedon at the council of Antioch in 363 (Socr. iii.25; Mansi, iii.371, 372, 511). In an anonymous Life of Isaacius abbat of Constantinople (iii.12 in Boll. Acta SS. Mai. vii.254 B), Maris is said to have been present at the council of Constantinople in 381, a statement which may safely be rejected.

[C.H.]

Marius Mercator, a writer
Marius (1) Mercator, a writer, of whom, until the last quarter of the 17th cent., nothing was known except indirectly through the writings of St. Augustine, who in his work de Octo Quaestionibus Dulcitii, mentions him as his son, i.e. his friend or pupil, and who addressed to him a letter, containing a long passage identical with one in that work (Ep.193, de Oct. Quaest. Dulc. qu.3).

Probably a native of Africa, in Rome in 417 or 418, and thought by Baluze to have outlived the council of Chalcedon, a.d.451. When Julian of Eclana was lecturing at Rome in 418 in favour of Pelagianism, Mercator replied to him, and sent his reply to St. Augustine, to whom not long afterwards Mercator forwarded a second treatise. Whether these two works exist or not is doubtful, but a treatise called Hypognosticon, or Hypermesticon, in six books, included in vol. x. of St. Augustine's works (ed. Migne, p.1611), has been thought to be the one in question. Five of the books treat of Pelagianism, and the sixth of Predestination. The letter of Augustine, forwarded by Albinus, a.d.418, expresses admiration of the learning of Marius and discusses points submitted for consideration.

The works of Marius Mercator, being chiefly translations, some of them from his own writings in Greek, appear in Migne in the following order, together with much matter more or less relevant to the principal subject. Part I.1. Commonitorium super nomine Coelestii. -- A memorial against the doctrines of Coelestius and Julian, disciples of Pelagius, written in Greek, and presented by Mercator to the emperor Theodosius II. and to the church of Constantinople, a.d.429, translated by himself into Latin. It contains a history of Pelagianism and an account of its doctrines, and an appeal to Julian to abandon them.2. A treatise, to which the Commonitorium is a preface, against Julian, entitled Subnotationes in verba Juliani, written after the death of Augustine, a.d.430.3. Translations of various works relating to Pelagianism, including the creed of Theodore of Mopsuestia, with a preface and a refutation of the creed by Mercator. Part II. Concerning the Nestorian heresy, including extracts from Theodore of Mopsuestia, with preface and refutations by Mercator. Extracts from Theodoret bp. of Cyrus, against Cyril, and from his letters, with remarks by Mercator.

Marius Mercator appears to have been a layman, but an able theologian. His learning, zeal, and ability entitle him to a respectable place among ecclesiastical writers. Migne, Patr. Lat. xlviii.; Ceillier, viii.36.

[H.W.P.]

Marius, bp. of Lausanne
Marius (2), St., 3rd bp. of Lausanne, whither he is said to have transferred the see from Avenches, between Chilmegisilus and Magnerius (Gams, p.283), or Arricus (Gall. Christ. xv.329). He is better known as Marius Aventicensis, the chronicler. He was born at Autun, of parents of high rank. At about the age of 43 he was made bishop (a.d.575). He constructed a church at Paterniacum (Payerne) on his own property, and made various donations to it. In 585 he was present at the 2nd council of Mâcon (Mansi, ix.958), and after an episcopate lasting 20 years and 8 months died on the last day of 596, in his 64th year. At the council of Mâcon, in 585, he signed himself "episcopus ecclesiae Aventicae." The authors of the Gallia Christiana publish a metrical epitaph of unknown date, which represents him as fabricating with his own hands the sacred vessels for his church and ploughing his own glebe. His Chronicon is a work of some historical importance. Though extremely brief it furnishes information with reference to Burgundy and Switzerland during the period embraced by it which is found nowhere else, and serves to correct the bias of Gregory of Tours against the Arians of Burgundy. It takes up the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine in 455 and carries it to 581, continuing his method of marking the years by consulates, and commencing the indictions with 523. An anonymous author has carried it to 623. For an account and criticism of it see Hist. Litt. iii.401; Cave, i.538; Ceillier, xi.399, 400; Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, i.47; Richter, Annalen, p.37 and refs. there given. It is in Bouquet, Recueil, ii.12-19, and Migne, Patr. Lat. lxxii.791-802.

[S.A.B.]

Martinianus, a martyr at Rome
Martinianus (1), legendary martyr with PROCESSUS at Rome. According to the Acts of [401]LINUS, these were the two soldiers into whose charge Peter had been given. They were converted by him in prison, and for their baptism, Peter, by making the sign of the cross, caused a fountain, still shewn in the Mamertine prison, miraculously to spring from the rock. After their baptism the two soldiers give Peter as much liberty as he desires, and when news comes that the prefect Agrippa is about to put him to death, earnestly urge him to withdraw. Peter at first complies, but returns to custody in consequence of the well-known vision Domine quo vadis. According to a notice in Praedestinatus (Haer.86), which has the air of being more historical than most of the stories of that author, their cult was already in vogue in the reign of the pretender Maximus, i.e. before the end of the 4th cent. According to this story, Montanists got temporary possession of their relics and claimed them as belonging to their sect. Lipsius conjectures that their cult began in the episcopate of Damasus, when great exertions were made to revive the memory of the saints of the Roman church. To this period may be referred the Acts of Processus and Martinianus (Bolland. AA. SS. July i.303). They are clearly later than Constantine, containing mention of offices which did not exist till his time. They are evidently based on the Acts of Linus, but the story receives considerable ornament. Their commemoration is fixed for July 2 in the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great (vol. ii.114), who also mentions a church dedicated to them, and tells of a miraculous appearance of them (Hom. in Evang. ii.32, vol. i.1586). On the whole subject, see Lipsius (Petrus-Sage, pp.137 seq.).

[G S.]

Martinus, St., bp. of Tours
Martinus (1), St., bp. of Tours in the latter portion of 4th cent. Of all the prelates of that age he made the deepest impression upon the imagination of France and of a considerable part of Western Christendom.

Authorities. -- The authorities practically resolve themselves into one, Sulpicius Severus, who mentions Martin in his Sacra Historia (lib. ii. cc. xlv. seq.), in connexion with the important case of Priscillian. [[402]PRISCILLIANUS.] Of three dialogues composed by Sulpicius, two treat de Virtutibus B. Martini. An epistle, addressed to a presbyter named Eusebius (some say addressed to Desiderius), is composed contra Aemulos Virtutum B. Martini; and two more, written respectively to a deacon named Aurelius and to the author's mother-in-law Bassula, narrate the circumstances of Martin's death. Finally, we have a biography, de Beati Martini Vitâ Liber. In Horn's ed. of Sulpicius (Amsterdam, 1665), an 8vo of some 570 pages, including notes, at least a sixth part is occupied with St. Martin. St. Gregory of Tours devotes 3 books out of his 7 on miracles to those wrought by the relics of St. Martin, and references to Martin in his Church History again shew the large space in the mind of France occupied by our saint. We possess two versified biographies of St. Martin. Neither the later, in 4 books, by Venantius Fortunatus, merely adapted from the writings of Sulpicius, nor the earlier, more elegant poem, in 6 books, by Paulinus, has any claim to be considered an independent authority. Sozomen (H. E. iii.16) has a brief account of Martin.

Life. -- He was born at Sabaria in that part of Pannonia which is now Lower Hungary. He apparently lived at least 80 years (316-396). [100]

A.D.316-336. -- His father, a soldier in the Roman army, rose to be a military tribune. Martin's infancy was passed at Pavia in Italy, where his father was for some time stationed, and there he received his education, apparently a pagan one. But even in boyhood his real bent was made manifest, and at the age of ten he fled to a church and got himself enrolled as a catechumen against the wish of his parents. His father succeeded in checking for a season the boy's desire for a monastic career. An imperial edict ordered the enrolment of the sons of veterans, and Martin, who had become a wanderer among churches and monasteries, was, through his father's action, compelled to serve. Though living with much austerity, he won the affection of his fellows during his three years' service. During this period, between Martin's 15th and 18th year, we must place a well-known incident, which is thoroughly characteristic. At Amiens, in a winter of unusual severity, he met at the city gate a poor man naked and shivering. His comrades did not heed the sufferer's petitions, and Martin's purse was empty. But Martin with his sword divided his cloak and gave one half to the beggar. That night Martin, in a dream, saw Christ Himself clad in that half cloak. He regarded his dream as a call to baptism, which he straightway received. At the request of his military tribune, he stayed in the army two years after baptism. [101]

a.d.336-360. -- The next important event in his career was his first visit to St. Hilary of Poictiers. Martin was his guest for a considerable time, and Hilary was anxious to ordain him deacon. Martin refused on the plea of unworthiness, but accepted the more lowly office of exorcist. Soon after he conceived it his duty to visit his parents and convert them from paganism. In crossing the Alps Martin fell in with a band of robbers, and was brought with hands bound before the chief, who asked who he was. He answered, "A Christian." To the further query whether he feared, he promptly replied that he never felt more secure, but that he grieved for the condition of his captors. The robber is said to have been converted. Martin's mother, with many more in Illyricum, became a convert to Christianity; his father remained a heathen. Arianism was particularly prevalent there, and Martin stood forth as an almost solitary confessor for the faith. He was publicly scourged and compelled to depart. Gaul being in a state of confusion in consequence of the exile of Hilary, Martin went to Italy, and for a short time found a safe retreat at Milan. But the bp. Auxentius, a leader among the Arians, severely persecuted him, and at length drove him away. He retired to the island of Gallinaria (now Galinara) off the coast of the Riviera.

a.d.360-371. -- Hilary being permitted to return home, Martin kept his promise and returned to Gaul, an attempt to meet Hilary at Rome having failed. Having settled near Poictiers, Martin founded, some five miles off at Locociagum (Lugugé), what is considered the earliest monastic institution in Gaul. Hilary gave him the site. If, as seems to be implied by Sulpicius, Martin returned to Gaul immediately after Hilary, his monastic life commenced A.D.360. After 11 years in his monastery, his reputation led to his election to the see of Tours. It required what is called a pious fraud to entice him from his monastery; a leading citizen of Tours, having pretended that his wife was ill, begged Martin to come and visit her. A crowd of the people of Tours and from neighbouring cities had been gathered together, and the all but unanimous desire was for the election of Martin. The few opponents objected that his personal appearance was mean, his garments sordid, his hair unkempt. One of the objectors was a bishop named Defensor. At service that day the reader, whose turn it was to officiate, failed, through pressure of the crowd, to arrive in time. A bystander took up a psalter and read the verse which in A.V. stands thus: "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength because of Thine enemies, that Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger." But in the version then employed in Gaul, the concluding words were: "ut destruas inimicum et defensorum." It is characteristic of the age that at this point a loud shout was raised by Martin's friends and his enemies were confounded, the reader's choice of the verse being regarded as a divine inspiration. Opposition thenceforth ceased, and Martin was duly consecrated.

A.D.371-396. -- To a great extent the new bp. of Tours continued to be the monk. He built a monastery two miles from the city, where 80 scholars, some of them noble, pursued a severe discipline. The art of transcribing was cultivated by the younger brethren. In time several cities obtained bishops from this institution. Unlike Hilary, whose controversies with Arians and semi-Arians formed his chief polemical work, bp. Martin was especially called upon to fight paganism. The country people in Gaul were still largely heathen. Martin, as portrayed by Sulpicius, simply lives in an atmosphere of marvels. During the first years of his episcopate the record is especially abundant, though his biographer declares he is restricting himself to a few specimens.

Martin must be regarded as the great evangelizer of the rural districts of Gaul, especially in the considerable and not very defined diocese of Tours. His work and influence are facts which no historian of France can omit. Twice he came across the path of emperors -- namely, Valentinian I. and Maximus. Valentinian, the ruler of the West (364-375) for a time (in 368) fixed his seat of empire at Trèves. Martin repaired thither, for some unspecified reason. Moved by his Arian wife Justina, the great opponent of St. Ambrose, the emperor refused an audience. Martin within a week made his way into the palace. The emperor, indignant at the intrusion, declined to rise, until his chair caught fire and compelled him to move forward. Convinced of the divine aid, Valentinian granted all Martin's requests and took him into favour. Martin accepted the royal hospitality but declined all personal presents.

Somewhat different were the relations of Martin with the emperor Maximus, who, after the flight of Valentinian II., fixed his capital also at Trèves. Martin declined from Maximus such invitations as he had accepted from Valentinian, declaring it impossible to banquet with one "who had dethroned one emperor and slain another." The excuses of Maximus, however, induced Martin to appear at the imperial board. The seat assigned to him was among the very highest. In the middle of the feast the proper functionary offered, according to custom, a goblet to the sovereign. Maximus ordered that it should first be given to Martin, expecting to himself receive it from the bishop. But Martin handed the goblet to his chaplain, holding it wrong to allow the emperor higher honour than a presbyter. The bishop's conduct was admired, though no other prelate had acted thus even at the repast of secular dignitaries of inferior rank.

The intercourse of Martin with Maximus involved the bishop in the difficulties which troubled the church in connexion with the Priscillianist error. The leading opponent of Priscillian was the Spanish bp. Ithacius.

Priscillian, though condemned by a local council, was supported by some bishops, who consecrated him to the vacant see of Avila. The members of the council thereupon had recourse to the civil power; while the friends of Priscillian sought the aid of Damasus, bp. of Rome. Failing to obtain it, they betook themselves to Milan, where the great Ambrose was bishop. But St. Ambrose shewed them no more favour than Damasus. In 384 Ithacius went to Trèves to seek an interview with Maximus, and obtained the summoning of a council at Bordeaux. This all recognized as within the fair limits of imperial authority. But Priscillian, on his arrival at Bordeaux, instead of defending his cause by argument, appealed to the emperor. The Ithacians had already committed themselves to the permission of a considerable amount of state interference. Priscillian now came to Trèves and Ithacius followed. Martin objected to a case of heresy being left to a secular tribunal, begged Ithacius not to press the charges against Priscillian before such a court, and besought Maximus not to allow any other punishment of the accused beyond excommunication. Finding that he must leave Trèves and return home, Martin obtained a promise from the emperor that there should be no bloodshed. The trial of Priscillian, which had been delayed until Martin's departure, was now eagerly pressed on, at the instance of two bishops, Magnus and Rufus. The emperor seems to have been sincerely convinced that the heretical teaching of the Priscillianists involved gross immoralities; and, accordingly, in 385 Priscillian was executed with several of his adherents, while others were exiled.

This was the first instance of the capital punishment of a heretic. St. Martin and St. Ambrose protested, and refused communion with the bishops responsible for this sentence.

Martin paid a visit to Trèves later to plead that some of Gratian's officers might be spared. He found there a number of bishops gathered for the consecration of a new bishop, Felix, to the vacant see of Trèves. These prelates had, with one exception, communicated with the adherents of Ithacius, and had endeavoured unsuccessfully to prevent Martin's entrance into the city. The information that those for whose lives he came to plead were doomed, and that a sort of raid against
Priscillianism was contemplated, induced Martin to change his mind, especially as he feared that the charge of sympathy with heresy might plausibly be imputed to himself and to others of ascetic life who had taken the same line. Martin evidently considered himself in a situation which involved a cruel and perplexing question of casuistry. Felix was himself a good man and well fitted for the vacant see. Still, Martin would not have communicated, but for the impending danger to the lives of innocent men and to the cause of religion. On his journey homeward, which he commenced on the day after his communion, he sat down in the vast solitude of a forest, near the village of Andethanna, and again debated with himself whether he had acted aright or not. It seemed to him that an angel appeared and told him that his compunction was right, but that he had had no choice. Henceforth he must be more careful. Martin believed that his power of working miracles and of relieving the oppressed was diminished ever after this unfortunate event. To escape such risks in the future, he never, for the remaining 16 years of his life, attended any synod or gathering of bishops. Sulpicius believes that in due time he regained his supernatural powers. The remainder of his career was spent in the conversion of his diocese, amidst constant prayer and toil. His death was calm, pious, and edifying. It probably occurred in 397, on Nov.11, a date well known throughout the N. of England as the term-day of Martinmas. His funeral is said to have been attended by 2,000 monks. He is specially named among confessors in the Mass of pope Gregory, with Linus, Cletus, Hilary, Augustine, and 13 more. One of the oldest churches in England is that of St. Martin at Canterbury; and the earliest apostle of Scotland, St. Ninian, having heard of Martin's death while labouring in Galloway, dedicated to him the first stone church of the country, Candida Casa.

A cheap popular Life of St. Martin of Tours by J. C. Cazenove is pub. by S.P.C.K. in their Fathers for Eng. Readers.

[J.G.C.]

Martinus, bp. of Dumium
Martinus (2), bp. of Dumium in Gallicia, and afterwards metropolitan bp. of Braga, died c.580; a person of importance, about whom our information is scanty.

Our chief sources are: (1) Isidore, (a) his Life in de Vir. Ill. c.35, (b) a reference in Hist. Suevorum, Esp. Sagr. vi.505; (2) Gregory of Tours -- (a) de Mirac. Scti. Martini Tur. i.11; (b) Hist. Franc. v.38; (3) some Acts of councils of Braga; (4) a letter and poem addressed to him by Venantius Fortunatus (Migne, Patr. Lat. lxxxviii.).

Life. -- According to Gregory of Tours and Venantius Fortunatus, Martin was a native of Pannonia ("Pannonia Quiritis," Venantius). He had travelled to the Holy Land, and had in the East acquired such a knowledge of letters that he was held second to no scholar of his day. Thence (ex Orientis partibus) he came to Galicia, arriving "ad portum Galliciae" (? Portucale) on the same day as the relics of St. Martin of Tours, for which Arianus or Theodoric I., king of the Suevi, had shortly before petitioned the guardians of the saint's shrine. In 561, about eleven years after his arrival in the country, he attended the first council of Braga, presided over by Lucretius, metropolitan bp. of Braga. The Acts of the council, which are in an unusual and highly artificial shape, were probably compiled by Martin, the person of the greatest literary pretensions then in Gallicia.

This council evidently marks an era of revival and reformation in Galicia, probably under the auspices of the orthodox and energetic Martin. The only mention of Arianism in it throughout occurs in a letter of pope Vigilius which was read. Probably this indirect handling, and the penalties decreed generally against intercourse with heretics, were all that the bishops felt themselves strong enough to venture against a creed which had been shortly before the religious confession of the Suevian nation, and had no doubt still many friends in high places. Eleven years later another council was held at Braga, and Martin now occupied the metropolitan see as successor to Lucretius, the bishops addressing him in unusually submissive terms. Eleven bishops were present from the two synods of Lugo and Braga, which here appear as two distinct metropolitan dioceses for the first and only time in authentic history.

We may probably place the correspondence of Martin with Venantius Fortunatus between 572 and 580. In 580 Martin died, greatly mourned by the people of Gallicia. His memory is celebrated on Mar.30.

Works. -- (1) Formula Vitae Honestae, as he himself calls it in the preface, otherwise de Differentiis Quatuor Virtutum (so Isid. l.c.), or de Quatuor Virtutibus Cardinalibus -- a little tract extremely popular in the middle ages, and frequently printed during the 15th and 16th cents. The best ed. is by Hasse in Sen. Op. iii.468, where he describes the Formula as more frequently read and quoted in the middle ages than any of the genuine works of Seneca, to whom it was ascribed in early editions. There is an ed. by A. Weidner (Magdeburg, 1871). Cf. Fabricius, Bibl. Med. Ae. Inf. Lat. iii., Bibl. Latina, ed.1773, ii.119.

(2) De Moribus, a tract consisting of maxims from various sources. (Haase, xx.)

(3) De Correctione Rusticorum. -- In this interesting tract Martin discusses the origin of idolatry and denounces the heathen customs still remaining in Galicia. His theory is that the fallen angels or demons assumed the names and shapes of notoriously wicked men and women who had already existed, such as Jove, Venus, Mars; that the nymphs, Lamias, and Neptune are demons with power to harm all who are not fortified with the sign of the cross, and who shew their faithlessness by calling the days of the week after the heathen gods. The observance of calends, the propitiation of mice and moths by presents of bread and cloth, auguries, the observance of the New Year on Jan.1 instead of on the March equinox, when in the beginning God "divided the light from the darkness" by an equal division, the burning of wax tapers at stones, trees, streams, and crossways, the adornment of tables, the pouring of corn over the log on the hearth, the placing of wine and bread in the wells, the invocation of Minerva by the women at their spinning, the worship of Venus, the incantation of medicinal herbs, divination by birds and by sneezing, are all denounced as pagan superstitions, offensive to God and dangerous to him who practises them. The sign of the cross is to be the remedy against auguries and all other diabolical signs. The holy incantation, viz. the Creed, is the Christian's defence against diabolical incantations and songs.

(4) De Trina Mersione, a letter to a bp. Boniface on threefold immersion in baptism.

(5-9) Pro Repellenda jactantia, de Superbia, Exhortatio Humilitatis, de Ira, de Pascha, 5 small tracts, first pub. by Tamayo de Salazar in vol. ii. of his Martyrol. Hisp. and rightly considered genuine (Gams, ii. (1) 473).

(10) De Paupertate, a short tract, consisting of excerpts from Seneca, sometimes attributed to Martin, but not mentioned by Florez or by Nicolas Antonio (Bibl. Vat. Bayer's ed. Haase, l.c. xx.458).

Martin's Translations. -- Besides his adaptations of Latin Stoical literature, Martin produced or superintended many translations from the Greek. The chief are (a) the Capitula Martini, a collection of 84 canons, which had great vogue and influence in the middle ages. These "capitula sive canones orientalium antiquorum patrum synodis a venerabili Martino episcopo, vel ab omni Bracarensi synodo excerpti," were incorporated in the earliest form of the Spanish Codex Canonum. With it they passed into the pseudo-Isidorian collection, and so obtained widespread influence. The sources of the collection cannot be all ascertained, they are not exclusively from Greek sources. They are, with some corrections, in Brun's Canones Apostolorum, (Berlin, 1839), ii.43. (b) Interrogationes et Reponsiones Plurimae, sct. Aegyptiorum Patr., trans. from an unknown Greek source by a deacon Paschasius in the monastery of Dumium, with a preface by Martin, at whose command the work had been undertaken (Rosweyd, Vitae Patrum, lib. vii. p.505, and Prolegomenon, xiv.; Florez, Esp. Sagr. xv.433).

Was Martin a Benedictine? -- The great Benedictine writers unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. (So Mabillon, Annales O. S. B. and Bibliothèque générale de l'Ordre de Saint Benoit, ii.203.) But it is on the whole most probable that Martin adopted one of the various older rules still current in the contemporary monasteries of S. Gaul, with some of which we know him to have had relations. About 100 years later his illustrious successor in the sees of Dumium and Braga, St. Fructuosus, drew up a monastic rule for his monastery of Compludo, which was mainly an abbreviation of the Benedictine rule, but contained also provisions not found in that rule. This is the only piece of historical evidence connecting the Benedictine rule with Visigothic Catholicism. (Migne, Pat. Lat. lxxxvii.1096; Yepés, Chron. del Ord. de S. Benito, i. for the ultra-Benedictine view. On the general subject of monasticism in Gothic Spain cf. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, vi.)

Martin's Personality. -- That Martin played an important and commanding part in his generation all that remains of him suggests. His life appears to have been greatly influenced by the parallel so often drawn by his contemporaries between him and the greater Martin of Tours. We may also regard him to some extent as a piece in a political game. If Martin the missionary, ex Orientis partibus, effected the Suevian conversion, his career is one element in a scheme of European politics which can be traced through the greater part of 6th cent., and in which the destruction of the Suevian kingdom by Leovigild 5 years after Martin's death, and the West Gothic conversion to Catholicism under Reccared, are important incidents. (Gams, Kirchengesch. von Spanien ii. (1) 471.)

[M.A.W.]

Martyrius, bp. of Jerusalem
Martyrius (3), bp. of Jerusalem, 478-486, a Cappadocian by birth, who had embraced a solitary life in the Nitrian desert. The violent proceedings of Timothy Aelurus drove him and other orthodox monks from Egypt, and he took refuge, a.d.457, together with his fellow-solitary Elias, also subsequently bp. of Jerusalem, in the house of St. Euthymius, who received them with great favour (Cyrill. Scythop. Vit. S. Euthym. cc.94, 95). After a time Martyrius retired to a cave 2 miles W. of the laura, which became the site of a considerable monastery (ib.). Martyrius and Elias were present at the death and burial of St. Euthymius, A.D.473, after which Anastasius bp. of Jerusalem ordained them presbyters, attaching them to the church of the Resurrection (ib. cc.105, 110, 112). Anastasius dying a.d.478, Martyrius succeeded him as bp. of Jerusalem (ib.113). His church was then rent asunder by the Eutychian Aposchistae, of whom Gerontius was the head. He succeeded in bringing back these schismatic monks to the unity of the church (ib.123, 124.). Cyrillus Scythopolitanus tells us that he died in the 8th year of his patriarchate, A.D.486 (Vit. S. Sab. c.19; Eutych. t. ii. p.103). Le Quien, Or. Christ. iii.171; Tillem. Mém. eccl. xvi.332 seq.

[E.V.]

Masona, bp. of Merida
Masona (Massona, Mausona, Mansi, ix.1000; x.478), bp. of Merida from c.571 to c.606. Except for the de Vita et Miraculis Patrum Emeritensium, a series of Lives attributed to Paulus Diaconus, a supposed writer of the 7th cent. (printed by Florez, Esp. Sagr. xiii., by Aguirre, Coll. Max. Conc. Hisp. ii.639, and elsewhere), our information concerning Masona is extremely scanty.

Joannes Biclarensis says under A.D.573, the 5th year of Leovigild, "Masona Emeritensis Ecclesiae Episcopus in nostro dogmate clarus habetur"; and at the third council of Toledo, the famous conversion council of 589, Masona presided, his signature "Ecclesiae Catholicae Emeritensis Metropolitanus Episcopus Provinciae Lusitaniae" being at the head of all the episcopal signatures, and immediately following that of Reccared. Between these two dates 16 years of great importance to the Gothic state had elapsed, comprising the rebellion of Hermenigild and the submission of Reccared to Catholicism. From the notice by Joannes Biclarensis 9 years earlier, it is evident that at the outbreak of the rebellion Masona was one of the most prominent Catholic bishops in S. Spain, and therefore would have considerable influence upon the position assumed by Merida in the contest. In 589 the great aim of the Catholic party was achieved, and the Visigothic state became, at least officially, Catholic. Eight years later a gathering of bishops at Toledo, under the presidency of Masona, passed two canons, one insisting upon the celibacy of bishops, priests, and deacons, the other reserving the endowments of a church for the benefit of its priests and other clerks, as against possible exactions from the bishop. This assembly was perhaps a chance gathering of a number of bishops in the capital, who took the opportunity to formulate rules on two important disciplinary points. If it was a duly summoned national council, the Acts were purposely or accidentally omitted from the original redaction of the Spanish Codex Canonum made within the first 40 years of 7th cent. Our last notice of Masona occurs in a letter, dated Feb.28, 606, to him from Isidore in answer to an inquiry on a matter of discipline. In 610 his successor, Innocentius, signed the Decretum Gundemari.

The above Vita remains to be considered. If it be a genuine piece of 7th-cent. biography, it gives full and valuable information on his life and also on the general condition of the Spanish church in the 6th and 7th cents. But the Latin of the first three chaps. seems to make it impossible to refer them to 7th cent. The legendary and marvellous character of the remainder, and the desire apparent throughout to exalt the ecclesiastical importance of Merida, is, on the other hand, no argument against genuineness, as contemporary parallels might easily be quoted. The facts it gives regarding Masona are briefly: his Gothic extraction, his education in the church of St. Eulalia, his persecution at the hands of Leovigild, who sent two Arian bishops, Sunna and Nepopis, at different times, to undermine Masona's influence and oust him from his church, his intercourse with Leovigild at Toledo, where his resistance to the king's demand led to his exile, and his final restoration to his see after Leovigild's various supernatural warnings. After Reccared had succeeded and publicly embraced Catholicism, a struggle took place in Merida between Masona and Sunna. Sunna joined with two Gothic Comes, Segga and Witteric, in a plot for murdering Masona which was miraculously frustrated, and Witteric, afterwards the Gothic king of that name, confessed all to Masona, who was not only protected by miracles, but by the strong arm of the Catholic Claudius Dux of Lusitania (known to us from other sources as are Sunna and Segga, cf. Isid. Hist. Goth. ap. Esp. Sagr. v.492; Joann. Bicl. op. cit.385, 386; and ep. Greg. Magn.; Aguirre Catalani, Coll. Max. Conc. Hist. ii.). Reccared decided that Sunna should either recant his Arianism or go into exile. He chose the latter, retired into Mauritania and there came to a miserable end. Masona lived to an honoured old age, procuring in his last hours the miraculous punishment of his archdeacon Eleutherius, who had abused the powers entrusted to him by the failing bishop.

It is not improbable that the Vita represents the 7th-cent. tradition. Isidore expressly mentions the exile of bishops among Leovigild's measures of persecution (Hist. Goth. l.c. p.491), and it is most likely that Masona was exiled c.583, after the fall of Merida, and restored, not during the lifetime of Leovigild, as his enthusiastic biographer declares, but upon the accession of Reccared, who sought to reverse his father's policy. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, v.141; R. de Castro, Biblioteca Españoles, ii. p.348; Nicolas Antonio, Bibl. Vet. Bayer's ed. i. p.373; note by Morales to the Memoriale Sanctorum of St. Eulogius apud Hist. Illust. iv.282.

[M.A.W.]

Maternus, Julius Firmicus
Maternus (3), Julius Firmicus, an acute critic of pagan rites and doctrines and a vigorous apologist for the Christian faith, known from his treatise de Errore Profanarum Religionum, composed between 343 and 350, very valuable for its details of the secret rites of paganism. It describes every leading form of idolatry then current and gives us information not found elsewhere. It discusses the idolatry of the Persians, Egyptians, Assyrians, the Greek mysteries, the ceremonies and formulae used in the Mithraic worship. Some of the details on this last are very curious, some liturgical fragments being inserted. In opposition to the heathen orgies he presents the pure mysteries of Christianity in his preface, now almost completely lost, and from c. xxiv. to the end. He concludes with earnestly exhorting the emperors to suppress paganism by force; thus giving one of the earliest specimens of Christian intolerance. The work illustrates the small amount of philological and etymological science possessed by the ancients. Maternus, arguing against the Egyptians that Sarapis was originally the patriarch Joseph, derives the name Sarapis from Saras apo, because Joseph was the descendant of Sarah. The work is valuable for Biblical criticism, as in it are found quotations from the versions used in N. Africa in St. Cyprian's time. There are probably embodied in it some fragments of the ancient Greek writer Evemerus, whose work upon paganism, now lost, was largely used by all the Christian apologists. In Migne's Patr. Lat. t, xii. is reprinted an ed. of Maternus, pub. by Munter at Copenhagen in 1826, with an introductory dissertation discussing the whole subject. A contemporary pagan Julius Firmicus Maternus, usually styled junior, wrote a work (between 330 and 360) on judicial astrology, mentioned by Sidon. Apoll. in Ep. ad Pont. Leont. Upon this see the above dissertation. There is some reason to suppose that he was converted to Christianity and was identical with the subject of our art. See C. H. Moore, Jul. Firm. Mat. der Heide und der Christ. (Munich, 1897).

[G.T.S.]

Maurus, St., founder of Glanfeuil monastery
Maurus (2), St., founder and abbat of the Benedictine monastery of Glanfeuil or St. Maur-sur-Loire. He is better known, as Herzog says, to tradition than to history, but the primary authority is Gregorius Mag. (Dial. ii. cc.3 seq.). His Life, written by Faustus Cassinensis, and re-written with alterations by Odo or Eudes, at one time abbat of Glanfeuil, is given by Mabillon (Acts SS. O. S. B. saec. i.274 seq.) and the Bolland. (Acta SS. Jan. i.1039 seq.). [FAUSTUS (31)]. St. Maurus, better known in France as St. Maur, was when 12 years old entrusted by his father Equitius, an Italian nobleman, to the charge of St. Benedict at Subiaco (or at Monte Cassino) and trained in monastic rule. By St. Benedict he was sent into Gaul c.543, and established his monastery on the Loire by favour of King Theodebert. He introduced the Benedictine rule, and was the chief means of its acceptance in France, but the details of his work are not given. He died A. D.584. His monastery, secularized in 16th cent., was in the middle ages one of great influence, and the "Congregation of St. Maur" has done much from the 17th cent. to elevate the tone of the monastic orders. The genuineness of his life in all its stages has been disputed. Ceillier, Sacr. Aut. xi.157, 170, 610; Herzog, Real-Encycl. ix.201; Cave, Lit. Hist. i.574; Mosheim, Hist. Ch. Ch. cent. xvii. § 2, pt. i. c.1.

[J.G.]

Maxentius, Joannes, presbyter and archimandrite
Maxentius (4), Joannes, presbyter and archimandrite. His monastery (Sugg. Diosc. in Labbe, iv.1520) appears to have been situated within the jurisdiction of Paternus, bp. of Tomi (Köstendje), the capital of Scythia Minor (Dobrudscha), who subscribed the synodical letter of the council held at Constantinople, a.d.520, as "Provinciae Scythiae
Metropolitanus" (Labbe, iv.1525). About 517 a controversy arose at Constantinople, in which the credit of the council of Chalcedon (a.d.451) was considered to be seriously involved (Hormisd. epp.15, 16 in Mansi, viii.418 and Labbe, iv.1454, 1455). An active part was taken by certain Scythian monks, with Maxentius as their leader, who earnestly contended for the position "unus de Trinitate in carne crucifixus est" as essential to the exclusion of the heresy of Nestorius on the one hand and of Eutyches on the other (Suggestio Dioscuri, Labbe, iv.1513, May 13, 519; Desprez, Proleg. Fulgent. Rusp. in Migne, lxv.109). The dispute was at its height in 519, when Germanus bp. of Capua, bp. Joannes, Blandus a presbyter, Felix and Dioscorus deacons, arrived at Constantinople from Hormisdas bp. of Rome, to negotiate a reconciliation of the two churches (Baronius, s.a. lxxxvii.). At the same time the writings of Faustus the semi-Pelagian bp. of Riez were also the subject of fierce debate at Constantinople, the Scythian monks contending that they were heretical. Among the chief antagonists of the monks were a deacon named Victor, Paternus bp. of Tomi, and other Scythian bishops (Sugg. Germ. Joann. Fel. Diosc. et Bland. in Labbe, iv.1514). Both parties had influential supporters in the imperial court, the monks being vigorously upheld by Vitalian, then apparently in great favour with the emperor Justin, who held the office of magister militum (Evagr. H. E. iv.3; Suggest. Diosc. u.s.), and their opponents no less so at first by Justinian, who already held high office under his uncle (Vict. Tunun. s.a.518; Justinian, ad Hormisd. Labbe, iv.1516). Soon after the arrival of the Roman legates at Constantinople the Scythian monks appealed for their help, and Maxentius, in their name, drew up "de Christo Professio," explanatory of their faith, which they sent with the appeal (Migne, Patr. Gk. lxxxvi.75, 79). They protest that it is from no disrespect to the council of Chalcedon, but in its defence, that they contend for their position on the subject of the Trinity, and declare that they anathematize all who either oppose that council or hold its decisions to be imperfect. They also denounce the teaching of Pelagius and Coelestius, and the followers of Theodore of Mopsuestia, as "contradictory to that of the apostle." They further pray the papal legates to hear their accusations against Victor and Paternus (May 30, 519, Labbe, iv.1509; Suggest. Legat. u.s.1514, June 29, 519; Hormisd. Suggest. Diosc. et al. May 30, 519; Labbe, iv.1519; Suggest. German. et al. June 29, 519; ib.1514; Hormisd. Ep.67, ad Justinian.; ib.1518). The legates, at the urgent request of the emperor Justin and Vitalian, consented to hear the case, but without pronouncing a decision. Failing to obtain satisfaction at Constantinople, the monks determined to send four of their number, Achilles, John, Leontius, Mauritius, to lay the whole case before Hormisdas at Rome (Justinian, Ep. ad Hormisd. Labbe, iv.1516). The four departed for the West early in May 519, and Justinian and the Roman legates duly notify their departure to Hormisdas, and pray him to reject their appeal.

Hormisdas delaying to hear the four envoys, others were sent to join them, Maxentius apparently being one. Meanwhile Justinian changed his opinion of the monks and became their advocate (Justinian. ad Hormisd.; Hormisd. Ep.66, ad Justinian. Sept.2, 519, u.s.1518). The controversy seems to have involved a considerable number of the clergy of the East, especially those of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Syria Secunda (Justin. ad Hormisd. u.s.1520, Jan.19, 520; Deprec. et Supplic. ab Hieros. et al, u.s.1542). An active correspondence followed between Constantinople and Rome, during which Possessor, an African bp. exiled by the Arians, wrote to Hormisdas, requesting his opinion as to the orthodoxy of the writings of Faustus and urging that Vitalian and Justinian were equally anxious to hear from Hormisdas on the subject (Possess. Ep. Afr. Relat. Labbe, iv.1530, received at Rome July 18, 520). Shortly after the dispatch of this letter Vitalian was put to death (Procop. Hist. Arc.6, Op. ed. Bonn, iii.46; Vict. Tunun. s.a.523).

The deputation at Rome, finding the Roman legates at Constantinople too strong for them, and therefore having little hope of success with Hormisdas, resolved to appeal to the African bishops then in exile in Sardinia, some of whom, as Fulgentius of Ruspe, enjoyed a high reputation for ability as well as orthodoxy. In drawing up the appeal they again appear to have employed Maxentius. It was divided into eight chapters. In the fourth they elaborately defend the position they had maintained at Constantinople. At the close of the fifth they solemnly protest their acceptance of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, the letters of Leo anathematizing the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius his disciple, and all writings opposed to the Twelve Chapters of the blessed Cyril against Nestorius; anathematizing in addition, Eutyches and Dioscorus (Petr. Diac. de Incarnat. et Gratis, Migne, Patrol. lxv.442-451). This appeal was responded to by Fulgentius, bp. of Ruspe, in his well-known de Incarnatione et Gratis Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in which the exiled bishops express their hearty approval of the confession of faith which the appeal contained (Fulgent. Ep.17, Op. u.s.451-493). The monks, after being detained at Rome 14 months, had now returned to the East. Before they left they drew up a further protestation of their faith, which they caused to be affixed to the statues of the emperors (Hormisd. Ep., ad Possess.; Labbe, iv.1531). This, probably, was the "contra Nestorianos capitula" of the collected works of Maxentius. The title, however, hardly corresponds to the contents, which consist of 12 anathemas, the 9th being directed against the Eutychians, and the remaining three against Pelagius and Coelestius and their followers (Migne, Patr. Gk. lxxxvi.86).

Maxentius and his friends, having returned to Constantinople, sent a copy of the writings of Faustus of Riez to Fulgentius and the other exiles in Sardinia, requesting him and his brethren to send their opinion of these (ib. lxv.145). Meanwhile Fulgentius wrote his de Veritate Praedestinationis, addressed to Joannes presbyter and Venerius deacon, two of the Scythian monks (ib.603-671), speaking of the monks in the highest terms. On Aug.13, 520, Hormisdas replied to the letter received from Possessor on July 18, speaking of the monks with unmeasured reproach. They are scatterers of "poison under the pretence of religion," and he writes now so that, should they return to Constantinople, they might not deceive those who did not know of their conduct at Rome. He does not, however, commit himself to any opinion as to the position "unum de Trinitate," but refers to it in very general terms, saying, "The reverend wisdom of the Fathers has defined what is Catholic doctrine . . . what need, therefore, to raise any further controversy, when the Christian faith is limited by canonical books, synodical decrees, and the constitutions of the Fathers within fixed and immovable limits?" Nor is he much more explicit as to the writings of Faustus. He says that he does not receive him nor any one not approved by the authority of the Fathers, but adds, that if he agrees with "right faith and sound teaching" he is to be admitted; if not, he is to be rejected, and concludes with telling Possessor that "although what the Roman, that is the Catholic, church follows and maintains on the subject of free-will and the grace of God may be gathered from various books of the blessed Augustine, and especially from those addressed to Hilary and to Prosper; nevertheless, there are certain special documents preserved in the ecclesiastical archives, which, if Possessor has not, and wishes to see, he will send him" (Hormisd. Ep.70, ad Possess.; Labbe, iv.1530, 1532). This letter was widely circulated as an encyclic, and when it came into the hands of Maxentius he at once replied to it in his ad Ep. Hormisdae Responsio, Migne, lxxvii.94-112. The reply is in every way a remarkable document. The archimandrite refuses to believe the letter can have been written by Hormisdas, but argues that whether it was so or not, its author was "unquestionably a heretic," as he considers that to "maintain that Christ, the Son of God, is one of the Trinity is to contend about words." He also takes the writer to task for having virtually decided that, although the writings of Faustus were not authoritative, they were still to be read.

We hear nothing more of Maxentius and the Scythian monks until after Hormisdas died in Aug.523. The encyclic of Hormisdas had now reached the exiled bishops in Sardinia, though there is no reason to believe that they had also seen the Responsio of Maxentius, and they had had ample leisure for consideration of the second appeal addressed to them from Constantinople. They accordingly met in council and sent the monks a reply in the form of a synodical letter. They acknowledge the receipt of the letter of Maxentius and his brethren, and say they rejoice that they "hold a right opinion on the grace of God, by whose light the free will of the human mind is illuminated, and by whose aid it is controlled," and express sorrow that any should question the Catholic faith on the point (c.2). The position for which John Maxentius and his brethren contended was afterwards formally approved by a council at Rome in 532 (Labbe, iv.1761) and elaborately defended in 534 by John II. bp. of Rome, who argued that it had always been held by Catholics in the very form used by the Scythian monks, quoting Proclus patriarch of Constantinople and others (Ep.3 in Labbe, iv.1751; Jaffé, Reg. Pont.73; Pagi, Crit. s.a.533). The council of Constantinople of 553 anathematized all who questioned it (collat. viii. anath.10, Labbe, v.575). Yet Baronius (s.a.519 cii.) is unsparing in his condemnation of the monks as impugners of the Catholic faith. They have found an able defender in Cardinal Noris (Hist. Pelagiana, ii.18, in Op. i.474-596; esp. c.20, pp.498-504; Hist. Controv. de Univ. ex Trinit. passe, cc.4-8; Op. iii.800-854), and Pagi (Crit. s.a.519, vi.) accepts his vindication as conclusive.

[T.W.D.]

Maximianus I., M. Aurelius Valerius
Maximianus (1) I., M. Aurelius Valerius (Herculius), emperor of Rome a.d.286-305 with Diocletian, 306-308 with Maxentius or Constantine; compelled to strangle himself Feb.310, being probably 60 years old (Tillem. "Diocletian," vol. iv. p.7, Hist. des Emp.). A Pannonian soldier of humble birth but great military ability and unresting activity, he was created Caesar in 285 by Diocletian, and Augustus in 286. (For the chief events in his history see DIOCLETIAN, CONSTANTINE, and MAXENTIUS in D. of G. and R. Biogr.) The Diocletian persecution began in A.D.303, and Maximian joined in it: He is said in the de Mortibus Persecutorum to have been the worthy brother of Diocletian, and Eusebius speaks of his death in the same retributive tone as of the other emperors except Constantius and Constantine (H. E. viii.13).

The military talents and activity of Maximianus were of the greatest value to the Western empire and in Africa, and while under Diocletian's influence or direction he seconded him honestly and well. He was a barbarian soldier without honour, principle, or education; crime was familiar to him, though he seems not to have practised cruelty for its own sake. He is accused of the usual sensual excesses, though not to the same extent as Maxentius.

[R.ST.J.T.]

Maximianus, a Donatist
Maximianus (2), the man from whom a special sect among the Donatists derived its name; that schism within a schism, which rent it asunder and helped to bring about its ultimate overthrow. He is said to have been related to Donatus the Great, and was a deacon at Carthage when, at the death of Parmenian, Primian was appointed bp. of the Donatists there A.D.391. Primian found fault with four of his deacons, especially Maximian, whom he appears to have disliked most. He tried to persuade the "Seniors" of Carthage to condemn them all, but they refused, and Primian then proceeded to excommunicate Maximian, who was ill and unable to appear. The Seniors summoned Primian to meet them to explain this arbitrariness, but he refused. They then wrote to the bishops of the district, entreating them to meet and inquire into the case. Forty-three met at Carthage; and their proceedings, notwithstanding the violence of the supporters of Primian, who was himself absent, resulted in his condemnation. In June or July 393, at a second meeting of Donatist bishops at Cabarsussum, a town of Byzacene, Primian was more formally condemned, his deposition pronounced, and a resolution apparently passed that Maximian should be appointed in his place. He was accordingly ordained at Carthage by 12 bishops. But Primian was not crushed by this, for at a council of 310 bishops at Bagai, Apr.24, 394, at which he himself presided, the supporters of Maximian, of whom none were present, were condemned in most opprobrious language. Notwithstanding the defection of the Maximianists, who appear to have rebaptized those who joined them, the validity of their baptism was not denied by the other Donatists, a point which Augustine frequently uses against them. Unremitting persecution induced many Maximianists to return at length to the Donatist community, but of Maximian himself we hear little or nothing subsequently; other names are most prominent in the party's history. Aug. c. Cresc. iii.16, 59, iv.3, 4, 6-9, 55, 57; En. Ps. (Vulg.) xxxvi.19, 20, 23, 29; Ps. cxxiv.5; Epp.43, 26, 76; 44, 71; 53, 3; 141, 6; 185, 17; de Gest. Emer.9; c. Parm. i.9; Tillem. Mém. vi.65-72; Morcelli, Afr. Chr. vol. ii. pp.310-326; Ribbeck, Aug. und Don. pp.206-236.

[H.W.P.]

Maximianus, archbp. of Constantinople
Maximianus (5), archbp. of Constantinople, A.D.431. The action of the council of Ephesus had thrown the churches of Constantinople into direst confusion. A large proportion of the citizens held strongly to Nestorius; the clergy, with one voice, agreed in the anathema; and when the deposition became a fact no longer to be disputed, the excitement was continued about the election of a successor. After four months, agreement was arrived at in the election of Maximian. He had led a monastic life and had entered presbyteral orders; his action in building, at his own expense, tombs for the remains of holy men had obtained for him a reputation of sanctity. In principles he followed the former archbishops, Chrysostom, Atticus, and Sisinnius. Pope Celestine wrote to him in highly complimentary terms on his elevation. The appointment was made by the unanimous vote of clergy, emperor, and people. The letter of Maximian announcing to the pope his succession is lost, but that to S. Cyril remains, with its high eulogium on Cyril's constancy in defending the cause of Jesus Christ. It was the custom for occupants of the principal sees on election to send a synodical letter to the most considerable bishops of the Christian world, asking for the assurance of their communion. Maximian sent his synodical to the Easterns as to the others. Communion was refused by Helladius of Tarsus; and, we may conclude, by Eutherius of Tyana, Himerius of Nicomedia, and Dorotheus of Martianopolis, as Maximian deposed them. John of Antioch approved the refusal of the bp. of Tarsus, and praised him for having declined to insert the name of Maximian in the diptychs of his church. Maximian's earnest appeal for reunion continued. Pope Sixtus wrote to him several times, urging him to extend his charity to all whom he could possibly regain. Maximian spared no effort, and although he was in closest harmony with St. Cyril, he pressed him strongly to give up his anathemas, which seemed an insurmountable obstacle to reunion. He even wrote to the emperor's secretary Aristolaus the tribune, who was greatly interested in the question of peace, almost complaining that he did not press Cyril enough on the point, and to his archdeacon Epiphanius. Harmony being restored, John of Antioch and the other Eastern bishops wrote Maximian a letter of communion indicating their consent to his election and to the deposition of Nestorius. Cyril wrote to him, attributing the blessed result to the force of his prayers. A letter to Maximian from Aristolaus, which Maximian caused to be read in his church to his people, was pronounced spurious by Dorotheus of Martianopolis, evidently because it took the side of Maximian so decidedly. Maximian held the see of Constantinople from Oct.25, 431, to Apr.12, 434. Of all his letters, only that to St. Cyril is extant. Mansi, v.257, 259, 266, 269, 271, 273, 286, 351; Baluz. Nov. Coll. Conc.581 seq. ed.1681; Socr. vii.35.40; Liberat. Diac. Brev.19; Ceill. viii.394.

[W.M.S.]

Maximinus I., Roman emperor
Maximinus (2) I., Roman emperor, a.d.235 -- 238. C. Julius Verus Maximinus is conspicuous as the first barbarian who wore the imperial purple, and as one of the emperors whose names are connected with the ten persecutions recorded by ecclesiastical historians. Born in Thrace of a Gothic father and an Alan mother, eight feet high and of gigantic strength, he attracted the notice of Septimius Severus, and rose into favour with Alexander Severus. When that emperor fell into disfavour with his troops, Maximinus seized his opportunity and organized a conspiracy which ended in the murder of Alexander and his mother at Mayence in 235. The praetorian guards elected him emperor, and their choice was confirmed by the senate.

The hostility of Maximinus to his Christian subjects was probably because of the favour they had enjoyed from the eclectic or syncretic sympathies of Alexander Severus. They would appear to him, as to other emperors, a secret, and therefore a dangerous, society, the natural focus of conspiracies and plots. The persecution was limited in its range, and probably was effectual chiefly in removing the restraints which the leanings of Alexander had imposed on the antagonism of the populations and governors of the provinces.

Pontianus, bp. of Rome, was banished with the presbyter Hippolytus to Sardinia, and died there in 235, and, according to Baronius (Ann.137, 138), his successor Anteros met a like fate in 238. Origen thought it expedient to seek safety with his friend Firmilianus, bp. of the Cappadocian Caesarea. That province was under the government of Serenianus, whom Firmilianus describes (ap. Cyprian, Ep.75) as "acerbus et dirus persecutor." Frequent earthquakes had roused the panic-stricken population to rage against the Christians as the cause of all disasters (Orig. in Matt. xxiv.9). This was all the more keenly felt after the comparatively long tranquillity which they had enjoyed under Alexander Severus and his predecessors. >From his retirement Origen addressed two treatises On Martyrdom and On Prayer to his disciple Ambrosius, a deacon of the church of Alexandria (Eus. H. E. vi.28), and Protoctetus, a presbyter of Caesarea, both of whom were taken as prisoners to Germany (Orig. Exhort. ad Mart.41).

The tyranny of Maximin brought about the revolt in Mauritania, which for three months raised the two GORDIANS to the throne of the Caesars. At Aquileia his troops, suffering from famine and disease, became disaffected. A party of praetorian guards rose, and he, with his son and the chief ministers of his tyranny, were slain in his tent. Their heads were cut off and exhibited on the battlements to the gaze of the citizens.

[E.H.P.]

Maximinus II., emperor
Maximinus (3) II. (Jovius), emperor, a.d.305. Galerius Valerius Maximinus, originally called Daza, played a somewhat prominent part in the complications following on the abdication of [403]DIOCLETIAN and [404]MAXIMIANUS I. Those emperors were succeeded as Augusti by [405]GALERIUS and [406]CONSTANTIUS, who appointed as Caesars Daza, under the name of Maximinus, and Severus. On the death of Constantius (a.d.306) Galerius assigned the provinces beyond the Alps to Constantine, but conferred the vacant title of Augustus on Severus, leaving that of Caesar to Constantine and Maximin. Severus was put to death a.d.307, and Galerius made Constantine and Licinius Augusti, assigning Illyricum to the latter. Maximin, who was in charge of Syria and Egypt, jealous of this promotion of others to a higher position than his own, assumed, under the convenient plea that his troops compelled him, the title of Augustus, and added to it the epithet Jovius, which had been borne before by Diocletian (Eus. H. E. viii.13; ix.9). On the death of Galerius in 311, Maximin received the provinces of Asia Minor in addition to Syria and Egypt, and Licinius those of Eastern Europe. The decisive victory of Constantine at Milvian Bridge in 312, and the betrothal of Constantine's sister to Licinius, alarmed Maximin, who determined on immediate hostilities. At Heraclea he was encountered by the army of Licinius, and utterly routed. In 24 hours he reached Nicomedia, 160 miles from the scene of his defeat, and made his way to Tarsus, where after a few days' despair he poisoned himself. As a final insult to his memory all inscriptions to his honour were destroyed, his statues disfigured and thrown from their pedestals (ix.11). His character is pre-eminent for brutal licentiousness and ferocious cruelty. The provinces of Asia, Syria, and Egypt groaned for six years under him, and of all the persecutors in that last great struggle between the old and new religions none were so infamous for their cruelties. Though he joined for a time, on the advice of the dying Galerius, with Constantine and Licinius in a decree of toleration in 311, he renewed the persecution with greater vigour within a few months (viii.17). The sufferings of the Christians in Alexandria drew the hermit Anthony from his desert seclusion to exhort them to steadfastness. Of the martyrs of Palestine, to whom Eusebius dedicates a whole book of his history, most suffered by his orders and many in his presence. Heralds were sent through Caesarea ordering all men to sacrifice to the gods, and on his refusal, Appian, a youth of twenty, was tortured and slain. Ulpian and his brother Aedesius were slain at Tyre, Agapius was thrown into the amphitheatre at Caesarea to fight with a bear and so lacerated that he died the next day. Theodosia, a virgin of Tyre, was drowned, Silvanus tortured, and the confessors of Phaeno in Palestine sent to the mines (Eus. de Mart. Palest. c.4). Silvanus, the aged bp. of Emesa, was thrown into a den of wild beasts. Peter, bp. of Alexandria, with many other bishops, was beheaded (ib. H. E. ix.6). The church of Antioch supplied yet more illustrious martyrs. On the application of an embassy from that city, headed by Theotecnos, which he himself had prompted, he forbade the Christians to hold their wonted meetings in its catacombs (ix.2). Hesychius and Lucian, the latter a presbyter, famous for learning and saintliness, were summoned to the emperor's presence at Nicomedia, half starved to death, and then tempted with a luxurious banquet as the price of their apostasy, and on their refusal to deny their faith were thrown into prison and put to death (ix.6). Decrees, which Eusebius (ix.7) copied from a pillar in Tyre, were issued, ascribing the famines, earthquakes, and pestilences to the wrath of the gods at the spread of the creed which was denounced as atheistic, and decreeing, at the alleged request of the Syrians themselves, perpetual banishment against all who adhered to their denial of the state religion. Even the Armenians, though outside the emperor's dominions, and old allies of Rome, were threatened with war, because they were Christians (ix.8), and this at a time when thousands were dying of starvation from a prolonged famine followed by pestilence. From Nicomedia and the neighbouring cities the Christians were banished by an imperial edict, issued here as elsewhere, as at the request of the citizens themselves (ix.9). Not till after his defeat by Licinius did the tyrant, in the rage of his despair, turn against the priests, prophets, and soothsayers who had urged him on, and, as a last resource, within less than a year after his edicts of extermination, issue a decree of toleration and order the restitution of property taken from the Christians and brought into the imperial treasury (ix.10).

[E.H.P.]

Maximinus, Saint, bp. of Trèves
Maximinus (4), St., 5th archbp. of Trèves (c.332 -- 349) known to us from the part he played in the history of Athanasius. In Feb.336 the latter was banished by the emperor Constantine to Trèves, then the seat of government of his eldest son Constantine II. Maximin received him with honour, became his zealous partisan and friend, and was thenceforth numbered among the champions of orthodoxy in the West (Hieron. Chron. an.346, Migne, Patr. Lat. xxvii.682; Athan. Ep. ad Epasc. Aegypt. § 8; Apologia ad Imp. Const. § 3, ed. Benedict. i.278, 297; Hilarius, Hist. Frag. ii. ed. Maff. ii.634, in Patr. Lat. x.644). For the probable influence of Athanasius's sojourn on the struggle between Arianism and orthodoxy and the growth of monasticism in the West, see Rettberg, Kirchengeschichte, i.187, 188. Athanasius left Trèves in June 338, and in 340 Maximin was called upon to entertain and assist Paul, the banished bp. of Constantinople. His efforts resulted in Paul's restoration in 341. In 342 a deputation of four Arian bishops arrived at Trèves, hoping to win Constans to their views. They brought a creed of compromise, but Maximin was inflexibly hostile, refused them communion, and was mainly instrumental in securing the rejection of their proposals (Hilar. Hist. Frag. iii. ed. Maff. ii.662, 663, in Patr. Lat. x.674, 675). In 343 Maximin was present at the council of Milan (Hist. litt. de la France, i. B.111). Whether he was also at the great council of Sardica, 343 or 344, is not quite certain, but he assented to its decisions (Athan. Apol. contr. Arianos, § 50, ed. Benedict. i.168; Hilar. ib. ii.647, in Patr. Lat.659). His prominent part in the conflict with Arianism is shewn by the special excommunication pronounced against him at the heretical council of Philippopolis (Hist. Frag. iii.27).

Maximin's cult was established from very early times. The legends that collected round his name are embodied in two biographies, one by an anonymous monk of St. Maximin in 8th cent. (Boll. Acta SS. Mai. vii.21-25), the other by a Lupus, who, in the opinion of Ceillier (xii.511) and others, was Lupus, bp. of Châlons. It is in Migne, Patr. Lat. cxix.665-680. According to their story, Maximin was a native of Poitou, brother of Maxentius, bp. of Poictiers. Drawn to Treves by the favour of St. Agricius, he was ordained by him and succeeded him in the see. Against the Arian heresy, then in the ascendant, he boldly contended and suffered much persecution. He summoned a council at Cologne, which condemned Euphratas, the bp. of that city, who denied the divinity of Christ. (This council is now admitted to be fictitious; see Baron. Ann.346, vii. sqq.; Rettberg, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, i.131). He died in Aquitaine after an episcopate of 17 years, and was buried there. For the early history of his famous monastery see Gall. Christ. xiii.523 sqq.; Rettberg, u.s. i.474.

[S.A.B.]

Maximinus, Arian bp. of Hippo Regius
Maximinus (6), Arian bp. of Hippo Regius, who came with the Gothic soldiers into Africa a.d.427, 428, and held a discussion with St. Augustine on the Trinity. Augustine, later, replied in 2 books, which, with that which contains the discussion, exhibit the arguments for and against the Arian doctrine. The line of argument taken by Augustine resembles so strongly that expressed in our Athanasian creed that if this were lost it might almost be supplied from this treatise. August. Coll. cum Max. and Contra Max. i. ii. Opp. vol. viii. pp.719-819, ed. Migne; Vit. Poss.17; Ceillier, vol. ix.359-361.

[H.W.P.]

Maximus Magnus, Christian emperor in the West
Maximus (2) Magnus, Christian emperor in the West, a.d.383-388.

Authorities. -- Besides the regular historians, of whom Zosimus (iv.35-46) gives most original matter, St. Ambrose has special notices, Epp.24 (narrative of his embassies), 20, § 23, and 40, § 23; Symmachus, Ep. ii.31; Sulpicius Severus, almost contemporary, Chron. ii.49-51, Vita S. Martini, 20, Dialogus, ii.6, iii.11. The best modern books are De Broglie, L'Eglise et l'Empire au IVme siècle (Paris, 1866), vol. vi. and H. Richter, Weströmische Reich (Berlin, 1865), pp.568 ff., cf. T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (Oxf.1880), vol. i. pp.147-155.

History. -- Magnus Maximus was a Spaniard by birth (Zos. iv.35) and a dependant of the family of Theodosius, with whom he served in Britain. In 383 he was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers in Britain, where he held some command, apparently not a very high one. He landed in Gaul at the mouth of the Rhine, and was met by the army of Gratian somewhere near Paris. The troops came over to him, and Maximus suddenly found himself in possession of the western provinces. Gratian was killed at Lyons, Aug.25, and, as was generally reported, by the orders of Maximus himself: The Western empire was thus in great danger, since Valentinian II. was a mere weak boy, and Theodosius was occupied in the East. It shews the position of St. Ambrose that he was chosen by the empress-mother, Justina, to treat for peace at this crisis (S. Ambr. Ep.24, §§ 3, 5, 7). Peace was made, Maximus being acknowledged as Augustus and sovereign of the Gauls, side by side with Valentinian and Theodosius.

This state of things lasted for some years, during which Maximus, who had been baptized just before his usurpation, busied himself much with church affairs, being desirous to obtain a reputation for the strictest orthodoxy. Western writers, Sulpicius Severus and Orosius, though treating Maximus as a usurper, give him, on the whole, a good character, Sulpicius making exception on the score of his persecution of the Priscillianists and his love of money (Sulp. Dial. ii.6; Oros. vii.34). Thus Maximus was in general an able and popular ruler, at least in his own dominions, giving his subjects what they most wanted, some feeling of security and peace. But we must join in the censure passed upon his treatment of the Priscillianists by pope Siricius (synod of Turin, a.d.401, can.6, Hefele, Councils, § 113), St. Ambrose, and St. Martin of Tours. Ambrose, indeed, was a political opponent, but Maximus courted Siricius, and was very obsequious to Martin. The Priscillianist heretics, who held a mixture of Gnostic, Manichean, and Sabellian opinions, had been condemned by a synod at Saragossa in 380. Their opponents, Ithacius bp. of Ossonuba, and Idacius bp. of Emerita, found in Maximus a ready instrument of persecution. The Priscillianists were ordered to appear before a synod at Bordeaux in 384, where one of their chiefs, bp. Instantius, was condemned as unworthy of the episcopal office. Priscillian denied the competency of the synod, and appealed to the emperor. St. Martin besought him to abstain from bloodshed, and to remit the case to ecclesiastical judges. Ithacius, their most vehement accuser, did not hesitate to charge Martin himself with Priscillianism, but, for a time, better influences prevailed, and Maximus promised that no lives should be taken. After Martin's departure, however, other bishops persuaded Maximus to remit the case to a secular judge, Evodius, and finally the emperor condemned Priscillian and his companions, including a rich widow Euchrocia, to be beheaded. Instantius and same others were exiled. A second synod, held at Trèves in 385, approved by a majority the conduct of Ithacius, and urged Maximus to further measures of confiscation. St. Martin returned to intercede for some of his friends, and with this purpose communicated with the faction of Ithacius, who were then consecrating a bishop. There can be no doubt that Maximus wished to be regarded as a champion of catholicity, and to use this merit as a political instrument. As early as 385 he seems to have written to pope Siricius, professing his ardent love of the Catholic faith, offering to refer the case of a priest Agricius, whom the pope complained of as wrongly ordained, to ecclesiastical judges anywhere within his dominions. (This letter is only given at length by Baronius, s.a.387, §§ 65, 66; cf. Tillemont, Les Priscillianistes, art.10. The part about Agricius is given by Hänel, s.a.385, from other MSS., thus confirming the genuineness of the letter.) At the beginning of 387 the struggle about the basilicas gave him a pretext for interfering on the Catholic side with the court of Milan, a proceeding which he may have thought would gain him the sympathy of his old opponent St. Ambrose. He wrote a threatening letter to Valentinian II., which we still possess, bidding him desist from the persecution of the church (Soz. vii.13; Theod. v.14. This letter is given only by Baronius, s.a.387, §§ 33-36, cf. Tillem. Saint Ambroise, art.48. Its genuineness seems not absolutely certain). Justina in this emergency, again used the political skill and intrepidity of St. Ambrose, whose loyalty was unshaken and whose disinterestedness was universally recognized. Ambrose went on a second embassy to Maximus, of which he has left us a lively record in his 24th epistle. He set out after that memorable Easter which witnessed the baptism of St. Augustine, and found the emperor at Trèves. His high spirit and sincerity seem to have disappointed Maximus, who found fault with him for acting against his interest, accused count Bauto of turning barbarians upon his territory, and refused to restore the still unburied remains of Gratian; thus clearly shewing that he meant war. Ambrose's refusal to communicate with the Ithacians was the final offence, and the emperor suddenly commanded him to depart (cf. Ep.24, § 3, for his judgment on this party). On his return to Milan Ambrose warned Valentinian to prepare for war, but his wise counsels were disregarded. A second ambassador Domninus was sent, and was entirely deceived by the soft words of Maximus, who persuaded him that Valentinian had no better friend than himself, and cajoled him into taking back into Italy a part of his army, under pretence of serving against the barbarians who were invading Pannonia. Having thus cleverly got his soldiers across the Alps, he followed rapidly in person, and entered Italy as an invader (Zos. iv.42). Justina and her son and daughters fled to Theodosius at Thessalonica. Maximus was thus left in possession of Italy. The details of the campaign that followed belong to secular history. Theodosius defeated the troops of Maximus at Siscia and Petovio, and seized the emperor himself at Aquileia, where he was put to death, after some form of trial (Zos. iv.46; Pacatus, 43, 44), on July 25 or August 28, 388, after a reign of rather more than five years. His son Victor, whom he had named Augustus, was put to death shortly after. Andragathius, his able general, who was accused of the murder of Gratian, threw himself into the Adriatic. It is not said what became of Marcellinus, who had been defeated at Petovio.

Legend. -- The connexion of Maximus with Britain is obscure, but it has given rise to a considerable aftergrowth of legend. He is called "Rutupinus latro" by Ausonius, perhaps merely because he started from Richborough to invade Gaul. Welsh tradition has incorporated him into its genealogies of saints and royal heroes, under the name of Macsen Wledig, or Guledig, a title considered to be equivalent to imperator. (See H. Rowland's Mona Antiqua Restaurata, pp.166 ff., ed.2, Lond, 1766, and cf. Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. i. pp.45, 48, vol. ii.405. He is usually called Macsen, which rather suggests a confusion with Maxentius, but Skene quotes his Welsh name also as Maxim, i. p.48.) The "dream of Maxen Wledig" in the Mabinogion (ed. Guest, vol. iii. pp.263-294, Lond.1849) represents him as already emperor of Rome, and brought to Britain by a dream of a royal maiden Helen Luyddawc or Luyddog, daughter of Eudav ( = Octavius?) of Caer Segont, or Carnarvon, and then returning after seven years with his brother-in-law Kynan to reconquer his old dominions. Another mythical account describes Kynan as raising an army of sixty thousand men, who afterwards settled in Armorica. The desolation of Britain thus left the country exposed to the attacks of the Picts and Saxons (cf. Mabinogion, l.c. pp.29 ff.; R. Rees, Essay on Welsh Saints, pp.104, 105, Lond.1836; Nennius, Hist. Brit. § 23). A further development of the legend represents St. Ursula and her company of virgins as sent out as wives for these emigrated hosts. The term Sarn Helen applied to Roman roads in N. Wales is explained as referring to the wife of Maximus.

It is difficult to say what historical facts may be at the bottom of this. That the withdrawal of Roman troops by Maximus exposed Britain to invasion is an obvious fact, and is already asserted by Gildas (Historia, cc.10, 11). The colonization of Armorica by some of his auxiliaries is also possible enough. On the other hand, the name of Helen may merely be borrowed from the mother of Constantine, and Sarn Helen may be explained as Sarn-y-lleng, "the legion's causeway," just as the story of the cutting out the tongues of the women of Armorica by Kynan's soldiers appears to be only an etymological myth to explain the name Llydaw applied to that country. For further refs., see R. Williams, Biogr. Dict. of Eminent Welshmen (Llandovery, 1852), art. "Maxen Wledig."

[J.W.]

Maximus Petronius, emperor of the West
Maximus (3), Petronius, emperor of the West, A.D.455; a descendant of the Maximus who usurped the empire in the time of Gratian (Procopius, Bell. Vand. i.4). He was of one of the noblest and wealthiest families of Rome, was three times prefect of Rome and twice consul. To avenge the insult his wife had received from Valentinian III. (see Procopius, u.s.), he caused him to be assassinated on Mar.16 or 17, 455. Maximus then seized the vacant throne, and compelled Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, to marry him a few days after her husband's death, his own wife having died shortly before. He also gave her daughter Eudocia to his son Palladius, whom he created Caesar (Idatius, Chronicon in Patr. Lat. li.884). The outraged Eudoxia summoned Genseric king of the Vandals to avenge and deliver her. Genseric sailed with a mighty armament for Rome. Maximus endeavoured to fly, but the people and soldiery, headed by Valentinian's officers, rose against him, stoned him, tore him limb from limb and flung his mangled body into the river, probably on June 12, 455 (Chronicon Cuspinianum); thus he reigned rather under 3 months. The chronology is discussed at length by Tillemont in a note (Emp. vi.628).

[F.D.]

Maximus, bp. of Alexandria
Maximus (9), bp. of Alexandria, 14th "successor of St. Mark," had been a presbyter under bp. Dionysius. During the Decian persecution, after Dionysius had been carried away by some Christians of Mareotis into Libya, Maximus with three other presbyters "kept themselves concealed in Alexandria, secretly carrying on the oversight of the brethren" (Dionys. to Domitius and Didymus, ap. Euseb. vii.11). It is surprising that their ministrations were undetected by the inquisitorial severity of the local government, which found victims among the virgins of the church (see Eus. vi.41). Seven years later, when Valerian's persecution began, we find Maximus attending his bishop (who calls him his "fellow-presbyter") to the tribunal of the prefect Aemilianus, as involved with him, and three deacons and a Roman lay Christian, in the charge of contumacious rejection of the gods who had "preserved the emperor's sovereignty," and whose worship was in accordance with "natural" law. He was banished with Dionysius to Cephro in the Libyan frontier, sharing in the rough reception the heathen inhabitants gave to the bishop and assisting him in the preaching which ere long won over "not a few" of them to "the word then sown among them for the first time." After a while the party were removed to Colluthion, much nearer to Alexandria (ib. vii.11). When Dionysius, "worn out with years," died early in 265 (in Mar. according to Le Quien, Oriens Christ. ii.395; Neale says Feb., Hist. Alex. i.39, 83), Maximus was appropriately elected to succeed him. Maximus died on Sun. Apr.9, 282 (Le Quien, ii.396) and was succeeded by Theonas.

[W.B.]

Maximus, bp. of Jerusalem
Maximus (10), bp. of Jerusalem, the 40th in succession from the apostles, succeeded Macarius on his death, a.d.336. He had been a confessor in one of the persecutions (Theod. H. E. ii.26) -- according to Philostorgius (H. E. iii.12) that of Maximian -- in which he had lost one eye and had the sinews of one arm and one thigh severed while still serving as a presbyter at Jerusalem. He appears to have had no strength of character, being honest but timid, his simplicity making him the tool of the stronger and more designing. His career is consequently inconsistent. He attended the council of Tyre, a.d.335, being admitted to a seat, together with Marcellus of Ancyra, Asclepas of Gaza, and others, as among those least committed to the cause of Athanasius, whose presence would give an air of impartiality to its deliberations, whom, also for their close vicinity, it would not have been decent to exclude (De Broglie, L'Eglise et l'Empire, ii.326). The part he took is variously represented. According to Socrates (H. E. ii.8) and Sozomen (H. E. iii.6), he assented to the deposition of Athanasius. Rufinus, however (H. E. i.17), records the dramatic incident that the aged confessor Paphnutius of the Thebaid, whose mutilated form had attracted so much attention at Nicaea, when he saw Maximus vacillating, took him by the hand and led him over to the small band of Athanasius's supporters, saying that it did not become those who bore the tokens of their sufferings for the faith to consort with its adversaries. Sozomen, who here, as elsewhere, is not consistent, records the same incident (H. E. ii.25). We know little of the part taken by Maximus in the Arian troubles between the council of Tyre, a.d.335, and that of Sardica. But if he had refused complicity when the solemn recognition of Arius was made by the 200 bishops assembled for the dedication of Constantine's church at the council of Jerusalem, it could hardly fail to have been recorded. The silence of all historians throws doubt on Rufinus's statement that Maximus remained always faithful to the cause of Athanasius. He, however, refused to attend the council of the Dedication assembled by the Eusebians at Antioch, a.d.341, at which the sentence of the council of Tyre against Athanasius, to which he had been an assenting party, was confirmed. On this occasion he had been put on his guard in time; and, conscious of his weakness, discreetly kept away, fearing lest he might, as at Tyre, be carried away (sunarpageis) against his will and led to acquiesce in measures of which he would afterwards repent (Socr. H. E. ii.8; Soz. H. E. iii.6). At Sardica he was once more on the orthodox side and his name stands first of the Palestinian bishops who signed the synodical letters (Athan. Apolog. I. ad Const. p.768). A little later he warmly welcomed Athanasius when passing through Jerusalem to resume his seat at Alexandria, summoning an assemblage of bishops to do honour to him, by the whole of whom, with two or three exceptions, Athanasius was solemnly received into communion. Congratulatory letters on the recovery of their chief pastor were written to the Egyptian bishops, and Maximus was the first to affix his signature (Socr. H. E. ii.24; Soz. H. E.21, 22; Athan. Apol. I. ad Const. p.775 ; Hist. Arian. ad Solit. § 25; Labbe. Concil. ii.92, 625, 679). Jerome states that Maximus died in possession of his bishopric, a.d.350 or 351, and that Cyril was appointed to the vacant see.

[E.V.]

Maximus the Cynic, bp of Constantinople
Maximus (11), the Cynic; the intrusive bp. of Constantinople, a.d.380. A native of Alexandria of low parentage, he boasted that his family had produced martyrs. He was instructed in the rudiments of the Christian faith and received baptism, but sought to combine the Christian profession with Cynic philosophy. Gregory Nazianzen describes him as having had no regular occupation, but loitering about in the streets, like a shameless dog, foul and greedy (kuon, kuniskos, amphodon huperetes). More than once he earned a flogging for his misdeeds and was finally banished to the Oasis. We hear of him next at Corinth, with a high reputation for religion, leading about a band of females -- "the swan of the flock" -- under colour of devotion (Carm. cxlviii. p.450). Soon after Gregory Nazianzen had begun to reside there, Maximus shifted to Constantinople. Gregory devotes a considerable number of the biting iambics of his poem, de Vita Sua, to this man, who, however, before long completely gained his ear and heart. Maximus professed the most unbounded admiration for Gregory's discourses, praising them in private and in public. His zeal against heretics was most fierce and his denunciations of them uncompromising. The simple-hearted Gregory was completely duped by Maximus, even delivering a panegyrical oration, in the man's own presence in full church, before the celebration of the Eucharist, inviting him to stand by his side and receive the crown of victory. Meanwhile, Maximus was secretly maturing a plot for ousting his unsuspicious patron from his throne. He imposed upon Peter of Alexandria, who lent himself to Maximus's projects. Maximus found a ready tool in a presbyter of Constantinople envious of Gregory's talents and popularity (de Vit. p.13). Others were gained by bribes. Seven unscrupulous sailors were dispatched from Alexandria to mix with the people and watch for a favourable opportunity for carrying out the plot. When all was ripe they were followed by a bevy of bishops, with secret instructions from the patriarch to consecrate Maximus. The conspirators chose a night when Gregory was confined by illness, burst into the cathedral, and commenced the consecration. They had set the Cynic on the archiepiscopal throne and had just begun shearing away his long curls when the day dawned. The news quickly spread and everybody rushed to the church. The magistrates appeared with their officers; Maximus and his consecrators were driven from the cathedral, and in the tenement of a flute-player the tonsure was completed. Maximus repaired to Thessalonica to lay his cause before Theodosius. He met with a cold reception from the emperor, who committed the matter to Ascholius, the much respected bp. of that city, charging him to refer it to pope Damasus. We have two letters from Damasus asking for special care that a Catholic bishop maybe ordained (Migne, Patr. Lat. xiii. pp.366-369; Epp.5, 5, 6). Maximus returned to Alexandria, and demanded that Peter should assist him in re-establishing himself at Constantinople. Peter appealed to the prefect, by whom Maximus was driven out of Egypt. As the death of Peter and the accession of Timotheus are placed Feb.14, 380, these events must have occurred in 379. When the second oecumenical council met at Constantinople in 381, Maximus's claim to the see of Constantinople was unanimously rejected, the last of its original four canons decreeing "that he neither was nor is a bishop, nor are they who have been ordained by him in any rank of the clergy" (Labbe, Concil. ii.947, 954, 959).

Maximus appealed from the Eastern to the Western church. In the autumn of 381 a synod held either at Aquileia or at Milan under Ambrose's presidency considered Maximus's claims. Having only his own representations to guide them, and there being no question that Gregory's translation was uncanonical, while the election of Nectarius was open to grave censure as that of an unbaptized layman, Maximus also exhibiting letters from Peter the late venerable patriarch, to confirm his asserted communion with the church of Alexandria, it is not surprising that the Italian bishops pronounced decidedly in favour of Maximus and refused to recognize either Gregory or Nectarius. A letter of Ambrose and his brother-prelates to Theodosius (Ep. xiii. c. i. § 3) remonstrates against the acts of Nectarius as no rightful bishop, since the chair of Constantinople belonged to Maximus, whose restoration they demanded, as well as that a general council of Easterns and Westerns, to settle the disputed episcopate and that of Antioch, should be held at Rome. In 382 a provincial synod held at Rome, having received more accurate information, finally rejected Maximus's claims (Hefele, Hist. of Councils, i. pp.359, 378, 381, Eng. trans.). Jerome tells us that Maximus sought to strengthen his cause by writing against the Arians, and presented the work to Gratian at Milan. He appears also to have written against Gregory, the latter replying in a set of caustic iambics (Carm. clxviii. p.250) expressing astonishment at one so ignorant venturing on a literary composition. Theod. H. E. v.8; cf. Soz. H. E. vii.9; Greg. Naz. Orat. xxii. xxviii.; Carm.1 de Vita sua; Carm. cxlviii.; Tillem. Mém. eccl. ix.444-456, 501-503.

[E.V.]

Maximus, patriarch of Antioch
Maximus (15), patriarch of Antioch. After the deposition of Domnus II., patriarch of Antioch, by the "Latrocinium" of Ephesus, a.d.449, Dioscorus persuaded the weak Theodosius to fill the vacancy with one of the clergy of Constantinople. Maximus was selected and ordained, in violation of all canonical orders, by Anatolius bp. of Constantinople, without the official sanction of the clergy or people of Antioch. Maximus, though owing his elevation to an heretical synod, gained a reputation for orthodoxy in the conduct of his diocese and province. He dispatched "epistolae tractoriae" through the churches subject to him as metropolitan, requiring the signatures of the bishops to Leo's famous "tome" and to another document condemning both Nestorius and Eutyches (Leo Magn. Ep. ad Paschas.88 [68], June 451). Having thus discreetly assured his position, he was summoned to the council of Chalcedon in Oct.451, and took his seat without question, and when the illegal acts of the "Latrocinium" were quashed, including the deposition of the other prelates, a special exception was made of the substitution of Maximus for Domnus on the express ground that Leo had opened communion with him and recognized his episcopate (Labbe, iv.682). His most important controversy at Chalcedon was with Juvenal of Jerusalem regarding the limits of their respective patriarchates. It was long and bitter; at last a compromise was accepted by the council, that Antioch should retain the two Phoenicias and Arabia and that the three Palestines should form the patriarchate of Jerusalem (ib.614-618). Maximus was among those by whom the Confession of Faith was drawn up (ib.539-562), and stands second, between Anatolius of Constantinople and Juvenal of Jerusalem, in the signatories to the decree according metropolitical rank to Constantinople (ib.798).

The next notice of Maximus is in a correspondence with Leo the Great, to whom he had appealed in defence of the prerogatives of his see. Leo promised to help him against either Jerusalem or Constantinople, exhorting him to assert his privileges as bp. of the third see in Christendom (i.e. only inferior to Alexandria and Rome). Maximus's zeal for the orthodox faith receives warm commendation from Leo, who exhorts him as "consors apostolicae sedis" to maintain the doctrine founded by St. Peter "speciali magisterio" in the cities of Antioch and Rome, against the erroneous teaching both of Nestorius and Eutyches, and to watch over the churches of the East generally and send him frequent tidings. The letter, dated June 11, 453, closes with a desire that Maximus will restrain unordained persons, whether monks or simple laics, from public preaching and teaching (Leo Magn. Ep.109 [92]). Two years later, a.d.455, the episcopate of Maximus came to a disastrous close by his deposition. The nature of his offence is nowhere specified. We do not know how much longer he lived or what became of him. Tillem. Mém. eccl. t. xv. passim; Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, t. ii. p.725.

[E.V.]

Maximus, bp. of Turin
Maximus (16), bp. of Turin, writer, reckoned as Maximus II., the third bishop, by Cappelletti (Le Chiese d'Ital. xiv.12, 14, 76), who puts a Maximus I. in 390 as the first bishop. Ughelli (Ital. Sac. iv.1022) counts them as one (cf. Boll. Acta SS.25 Jun. v.48). He was present at the council of Milan in 451 and signed the letter to pope Leo (Leo, Ep.97; Labbe, iv.583). He was also at the council of Rome in 465, where his name appears next after pope Hilary's, apparently on account of his seniority (Labbe, v.86). Gennadius of Massilia (d.496) gives a sketch of his works, most of which are still extant, but strangely says that he died in the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, i.e. before 423. This has led some to think that there were two bishops of this name, but the early date given by Gennadius seems irreconcilable with the many allusions to Nestorian doctrines in the homilies on the Nativity, and the general opinion is that he is wrong (Gennad. de Scrip. Eccl. c. xl. in Patr. Lat. lviii.1081). The works of Maximus are in vol. lvii. of Migne's Patrologia Latina. They consist of 117 homilies, 116 sermons, 3 tractates on baptism, 2 (of very doubtful authority) entitled respectively contra Paganos and contra Judaeos, and a collection of expositions de Capitulis Evangeliorum (also doubtful). Many of the sermons and homilies were formerly ascribed to St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Leo, etc. Several are on the great church festivals.

Points of interest in the homilies and sermons are: the notice of fixed lections (e.g. Hom, 36 and 37); abstinence from flesh meat in Lent (Hom.44); no fasting or kneeling at prayer between Easter and Pentecost (Hom.61). In Hom.62, on the other hand, he mentions that the vigil of Pentecost was observed as a fast. This custom therefore probably originated in his time. St. Leo, mentioning the fast of Pentecost, makes it clear that he means the fast immediately following the festival. In Hom.83 Maximus comments on the creed, which is exactly the same as the Roman creed given by Rufinus. Among contemporary events alluded to may be noticed the synod of Milan in 389, at which Jovinian was condemned (Hom.9). Seven homilies (86-92) refer to the terror of the city at an impending barbaric invasion, apparently Attila's inroad, 452. Another homily (94) refers to the destruction of the church of Milan on the same occasion. He several times refers to superstitions in his diocese; their observance of the Calends of Jan. (16), their tumults during an eclipse (100), the idolatry still lurking among the lower orders (Serm.101, 102). There are homilies on the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, on St. Lawrence, St. Cyprian, St. Agnes, and St. Eusebius of Vercelli, and several on the festival of SS. Peter and Paul which are worth particular attention. In some of these he uses very decided language on the supremacy of St. Peter, e.g., speaking of him as the keystone of the church (Hom.54), the "magister navis" (Serm.114); and as entrusted with "totius Ecclesiae gubernacula" (Hom.70). But in other places he speaks of St. Peter as supreme in discipline, St. Paul in doctrine, and remarks "inter ipsos quis cui praeponatur incertum est" (72). Nowhere does he allude to the church of Rome as inheriting exclusively the supremacy of St. Peter. Gennadius mentions a work of Maximus de Spiritali Baptismi Gratia, and three treatises on this subject, formerly ascribed to St. Augustine, are published by Migne with the works of Maximus, on the strength of three ancient MSS., one of which the church of Turin possesses. Nothing in their style is against Migne's conclusion. The first treatise dwells on the significance of the anointing of the ears before baptism; the second gives an interrogatory creed identical with the one mentioned above in the homilies, and alludes to the custom of baptizing on the third day after the profession of faith; the third speaks of the anointing of the head after baptism, by which is conferred the full regal and sacerdotal dignity spoken of by St. Peter, and of the custom of washing the feet at the same time, after the example of Christ. See F. Savio's Gli Antichi Veseovi d'Italia (Turin, 1899), p.283.

[M.F.A.]

Maximus, an ecclesiastical writer
Maximus (24), an ecclesiastical writer, placed by Eusebius (H. E. v.27) in the reign of Severus and episcopate of Victor, i.e. in the last decade of 2nd cent. Eusebius says the subject of his work was the origin of evil and whether matter had been created, and elsewhere (Praep. Ev. vii.22) entitles it, "Concerning Matter" (peri tes hules), and preserves a long extract, from which it appears to have been in dialogue form. Routh, whose Reliquiae Sacrae (ii.87) is by far the best ed. of the remains of Maximus, pointed out that the same fragment is in the dialogue on free will ascribed to Methodius, and that other things are common to the work on free will and the dialogue of Origen against the Marcionites, so that both authors probably drew from Maximus. That the work is rightly ascribed to Maximus the testimony of Eusebius is decisive; and St. Jerome says in his Catalogue, that Methodius wrote on free will, while Photius has preserved large extracts from what he knew as the work of Methodius on free will, which clearly prove that it incorporated much of Maximus. The style, moreover, of the opening of the dialogue on free will resembles Methodius, and differs from that of the part concerning matter. We leave, then, to Methodius the rhetorical introduction to his dialogue, but the context appears clearly to shew that the part which belongs to Maximus begins earlier than the portion quoted by Eusebius and printed by Routh. It must include the statement of the views of the speaker, who maintains matter to have existed from eternity, destitute of qualities, and also the announcement of the presence of the third speaker, who afterwards takes up the controversy, on the hypothesis that matter had been from the first possessed of qualities. In Methodius, the defender of the eternity of matter is apparently represented as a Valentinian, for his speeches are marked Val.; and so also in Adamantius. In Maximus he seems to be no heretic, but a sincere inquirer after truth. He propounds the difficulty concerning the origin of evil; if evil was at any time created, then something came out of nothing, since evil did not exist before; and God Who created it must take pleasure in evil, which we cannot admit. He then offers the solution that, co-eternally with God, there existed matter, destitute of form or qualities, and borne about in a disorderly manner; that God took pity on it, separated the best parts from the worst, reduced the former to order, and left the latter behind as being of no use to Him for His work, and that from these lees of matter evil sprang. The most successful part of the orthodox speaker's reply is where he shews that this hypothesis does not relieve God of the charge of being the author of evil.

Galland conjectures that the author of the dialogue is the Maximus who was 26th bp. of Jerusalem, and whom Eusebius, in his Chronicle, places about the reign of Commodus. It does not absolutely disprove this, that Eusebius, though he twice speaks of the writings of Maximus, does not mention that he was a bishop; probably Eusebius found in the book he used no mention of the author's dignity, and knew no more than we do whether he was the bp. of Jerusalem. But there seems increasing reason to think that Eusebius erroneously attributed to Maximus the work of Methodius: see Zahn in Zeitschr. für Kirchengesch. ix.224-229, and J. A. Robinson, The Philocalia of Origen (Camb.1893), pp. xl.-xlix.

[G.S.]

Maximus of Ephesus
Maximus (25) of Ephesus. A "master of theurgic science," commonly reckoned among the neo-Platonic philosophers, the interest of whose life consists merely in the fact that he supplied an essential link in the transit of the emperor Julian from Christianity to paganism. The account given by Eunapius, in his Life of Maximus, shews exactly how this was. Julian, while still under tutelage and in early youth, with the natural self-will of a vigorous mind, had rebelled in secret against his Christian instructors and betaken himself to Greek philosophy as a liberal and congenial study. This bent was not disallowed by the emperor Constantius, who thought it safe when compared with political ambitions But philosophy at that era indicated much more than quiet intellectual research. It was a name of power, to which all whose sentiments flowed with a strong current towards the traditionary heathenism had recourse for self-justification; and it was natural that Julian, once he had attached himself to this study, should instinctively seek for more practical advantages from it than the mere increase of theoretical wisdom. Maximus, though flashy and meagre as a philosopher, was better supplied with an ostentatious show of practical power than any of his philosophic rivals. The amiable rhetorician Libanius, the aged sage Aedesius, could please Julian, but evidently were lacking in the force which could move the world. But when Aedesius, compelled by increasing infirmity, resigned Julian to the tuition of his two followers, Chrysanthius and Eusebius, Julian began to be struck with the terms in which these two spoke of their old fellow-pupil Maximus. Chrysanthius, indeed, alone seemed to admire him; Eusebius affected to depreciate him; but this feigned depreciation was calculated to excite the interest of Julian. For what Eusebius spoke of in this slighting manner was a certain miraculous power possessed by Maximus, of which he gave one or two casual instances. Julian had never seen miracles like those with which Maximus was credited; so he bade Eusebius stick to his learning and hurried off to Maximus. That skilful adept, after a solemn preparation of his imperial pupil, in which he was aided by Chrysanthius, described to Julian the revered religious authority of the hierophant of Eleusis, whose sacred rites were among the most famous in Greece, and urged him to go thither. He went, and was imbued with a teaching which combined a mysterious exaltation of the power of the Greek deities with hints of his own personal aggrandizement. By such acts as these, and by his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, he passed over to paganism, though his having done so was still unknown to the world. When, Constantius being dead, he became sole master of the Roman empire, he did not forget his instructors. He sent for Chrysanthius and Maximus; they consulted the sacrificial omens; the signs were unfavourable, and dissuaded them from accepting the invitation. Chrysanthius trembled, and refused to go; the more ambitious Maximus declared it unworthy of a wise man to yield to the first adverse sign, and went. He was received by Julian with extraordinary honours, but by his haughtiness and effeminate demeanour earned the censure even of the heathen, among whom was the partial panegyrist Eunapius. After the death of Julian he was severely and even cruelly treated by Valentinian and Valens, and though released for a time, was beheaded by order of Valens in 371, on a charge of having conspired against him. His personal appearance is described by Eunapius as impressive. The four extant letters of Julian to him (Nos.15, 16, 38, 39) consist of such indiscriminate panegyric that they tell little of his real character or views. For other authorities see D. of G. and R. Biogr.

[J.R.M.]

Melania, a Roman lady
Melania (1), a Roman lady of Spanish extraction, daughter of Marcellinus, who had been consul; born c.350. Her husband died when she was only 22 years old, leaving her with three children, of whom two died immediately after their father. Full of ascetic enthusiasm, she rejoiced to be now more free to serve Christ, left her son to the charge of the urban praetor, and, though winter was beginning, sailed for the East (Hieron. Ep. xxxix.4; Chron. Ann.377, vol. viii. ed. Vall.), c.372. She seems to have been acquainted with Jerome and his friends, who at that time formed an ascetic society at Aquileia. Her slave Hylas accompanied Jerome to Syria (Hieron. Ep. iii.3), and Rufinus, from whom Jerome had then recently separated (ib.), was with her in 374 in Egypt, and possibly in Palestine (ib. iv.2). During their stay in Egypt the persecution of the orthodox by Valens arose. Rufinus was imprisoned. Melania, who had only been in Egypt six months, went with a large body of exiled bishops, clergy, and anchorets to a place near Diocaesarea in Palestine, where she supported them at her own expense. Apparently she was joined by Rufinus after a time, and they went together to Jerusalem. There she established herself at the Mount of Olives, where, says Jerome (Chron. a.d.377, properly 375), she was such a wonderful example of virtues, and especially of humility, that she received the name of Thecla. She formed a community of 50 virgins and was the means of reconciling to the church a large body of heretics called Pneumatomachoi. Her house was open to all. Amongst those who visited her was EVAGRIUS, whom she persuaded to embrace the monastic life (a.d.388). She knew John bp. of Jerusalem intimately, and no doubt shared with Rufinus in the friendship of Jerome and Paula when they settled at Bethlehem in 386, and afterwards in his contention with them. In 397 she returned with Rufinus to Italy, to confirm her granddaughter [407]Melania the Younger in the practice of asceticism. She was received by Paulinus at Nola with great honour, and brought him a piece of the true cross set in gold, sent by John bp. of Jerusalem. She took up her abode at Rome, where she no doubt assisted Rufinus through the controversy as to his translation of Origen's works. She lived probably with her son Publicola and his wife Albina and their two children, the younger Publicola, and the younger Melania, with her husband Pinianus. Palladius, when he came to Rome to plead the cause of Chrysostom, stayed with them. She desired to induce her granddaughter Melania and Pinianus to take vows of separation, and was much displeased that, though willing to vow continency, they would not separate from each other's society. In her vehement enthusiasm she spoke of her conflicts with those who resisted her asceticism as "fighting against wild beasts." In 408, Italy being threatened with the invasion of Alaric, and her son Publicola having died, she determined to leave Rome. Rufinus, having quitted Aquileia on the death of his father, went with her and her daughter-in-law Albina, the younger Publicola, Melania and Pinianus. She had been to Africa in 400 with a letter from Paulinus to Augustine (Aug. Ep. xiv.), and it was now determined that she should go to Sicily and thence to Africa, in both which countries she had estates. In Sicily Rufinus died. She passed on to Africa with the others; and, after vainly attempting to induce Melania and Pinianus to embrace the monastic state, went on to her former habitation on the Mount of Olives, and 40 days after died, aged 60. Palladius, Hist. Laus. c.118; Paulinus, Epp.29, 31, 45, 94.

[W.H.F.]

Melania the younger, daughter of Publicola
Melania (2), daughter of Publicola son of [408]MELANIA (1); born at Rome c.383. She married Pinianus when exceedingly young, yielding to the wish of her father, though she was already imbued with the ascetic teachings of her grandmother, then living at Jerusalem. The young husband and wife were induced by Melania the elder in 397 to take a vow of continence, but refused to separate. They accompanied the grandmother from Rome (a.d.408) to Sicily and Africa; but, when she returned to Jerusalem, they remained at Sagaste, attaching themselves to the bp. Alypius and enjoying the friendship of Augustine. On the death of the elder Melania the still considerable remains of her estates became the property of her granddaughter. She gave away those in Gaul and Italy, but kept those in Sicily, Spain, and Africa; and this led to the attempt of the people of Hippo to induce [409]PINIANUS to become a priest of their church. In the scene in which a promise was exacted from them to remain at Hippo, Melania shewed great courage. When through the rapacity of the rebel count Heraclian she was denuded of her property, and thus set free from the promise to remain at Hippo, she accompanied her husband to Egypt, and, after staying among the monastic establishments of the Thebaid and visiting Cyril at Alexandria, eventually went to Palestine, and, together with her mother Albina, settled at Bethlehem in 414. There they attached themselves to Jerome, and to the younger Paula, who then presided over the convent. Their ascetic convictions had so developed that they now accepted that separation which the elder Melania had vainly urged in her lifetime. Pinianus became the head of a monastery and Melania entered a convent. By the settlement of Melania at Bethlehem the feud was extinguished which had separated the followers of Rufinus from those of Jerome; and although in his letter to Ctesiphon (cxxiii.3, ed. Vall., date 415) Jerome still has a bitter expression about the elder Melania, in his last wetter to Augustine (cxliii.2, ed. Vall.) in 419, Albina, Pinianus, and Melania are joined with Paula in their reverential greetings. Their intercourse with Augustine continued, and in answer to their questions on the Pelagian controversy he wrote his treatise On Grace and Original Sin, a.d.418. Melania apparently lived on for many years. Photius says that she came to Constantinople in 437 and obtained his conversion and baptism at the hands of Proclus. Palladius, Hist. Laus.119, 121; Augustine, Epp.125, 126, and de Grat. Christi, ii. and xxxii., Surius, p.380, Dec.31; Photius, Cod.53, p.44.

[W.H.F.]

Meletius, bp. of Lycopolis
Meletius (2) (Melitius), bp. of Lycopolis, consecrated not long before the beginning of the Arian controversy. The see of Lycopolis stood next in rank to that of Alexandria, of which Peter, afterwards martyr, was then bishop (a.d.300-311). Meletius took advantage of Peter's flight from persecution (Soz. H. E. i.24) to intrude into his and other dioceses, ordain priests, and assume the character of primate of Egypt. A protest against his conduct by four incarcerated Egyptian bishops, Hesychius, Pachomius, Theodore, and Phileas, urged that his act was uncalled-for and carried out without consulting them or Peter, involving a breach of the rule which forbade one bishop to intrude into the diocese of another. Meletius ignored the protest. The bishops were martyred, and Meletius went to Alexandria. He was received by the two elders, Isidore and the afterwards famous Arius; probably at their instigation he excommunicated two visitors appointed by Peter, and replaced them by others. The archbp. of Alexandria then wrote forbidding his flock to have fellowship with Meletius until these acts had been investigated. A synod of Egyptian bishops under Peter deposed Meletius (a.d.306) for his irregular acts and insubordination. Athanasius and Socrates affirm indeed that the degradation of Meletius was specially due to his having "denied the faith during persecution and sacrificed"; but in this they probably express only the popular belief which could not otherwise explain why orthodox bishops were imprisoned and martyred, while Meletius passed through the length and breadth of the land unhindered. The council of Nicaea in its comments upon, and condemnation of, Meletius, takes no note of impiety; and the statement of Epiphanius -- Meletius "was orthodox in his belief, and never dissented from the creed of the church in a single point. He was the author of a schism, but not of alterations of belief" -- is probably true of the bishop, if not of his followers. Meletius retorted upon his deposers by separating himself and his followers. Peter preached against the Meletians, and rejected their baptism (Soz. i. xv.); Meletius retaliated by abusing Peter and his immediate successors Achillas and Alexander. At length the whole question was considered by the council of Nicaea. The 2nd, 4th, and 6th canons refer directly or indirectly to the Egyptian schism; and in a synodical epistle addressed by the bishops assembled there "to the holy and great church of the Alexandrians and to the beloved brethren throughout Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis," the "contumacy of Meletius and of those who had been ordained by him" is dealt with (Socr. i.9; Theod. i.9). The line adopted was one of "clemency"; although Meletius is described as "strictly speaking wholly undeserving of favour." He was permitted to remain in his own city and retain a nominal dignity, but was not to ordain or nominate for ordination. The council decreed that those who had received appointments from him should be confirmed by a more legitimate ordination and then admitted to communion and retain their rank and ministry, but were to be counted inferior to those previously ordained and established by Alexander; nor were they to do anything without the concurrence of the bishops of the Catholic and apostolical church under Alexander. Meletius himself was to be an exception; "To him," said the bishops, "we by no means grant the same licence, on account of his former disorderly conduct. If the least authority were accorded to him, he would abuse it by again exciting confusion."

It is doubtful whether Meletius was at the council; but he did not resist its decrees. At Alexander's request he handed in a list of his clerical adherents, including 29 bishops, and in Alexandria itself 4 priests and 3 deacons. Meletius retired to Lycopolis, and during Alexander's lifetime remained quiet; but the appointment of Athanasius to the see of Alexandria was the signal for union of every faction opposed to him, and in the events which followed Meletius took a personal part. The uncompromising sternness of Athanasius was contrasted with the "clemency" of the council and of Alexander; Arian and Meletian, schismatic and heretic banded together against the one man they dreaded, and so pitiless and powerful was their hate that it wrung from him the comment on the pardon accorded to Meletius by the council of Nicaea "Would to God he had never been received!"

Before his death, the date of which is not known, Meletius nominated, contrary to the decree of the Nicene council, his friend John as his successor (Soz. ii.21), a rank accorded to him and recognized by that council of Tyre (a.d.335) in which the Eusebians and others deposed Athanasius (ib. ii.25). "In process of time," says Sozomen (ii.21), "the Meletians were generally called Arians in Egypt." Originally differences in doctrine parted them; but their alliance for attack or defence gradually led the Meletians to adopt Arian doctrines [[410]ARIUS] and side with Arian church politics. The Meletians died out after the 5th cent.; the monks described by Theodoret (i.9) being among the latest and most eccentric of the sect. "They neglected sound doctrine, and observed certain vain points of discipline, upholding the same infatuated views as the Jews and Samaritans." Consult Walch, Ketzerhistorie; Neander, Bright, and the usual church historians.

[J.M.F.]

Meletius, bishop of Antioch
Meletius (3), bp. of Antioch, previously of Sebaste in Armenia (Soz H. E. iv.28; Theod. H. E. ii.31), or according to Socrates (H. E. ii.44), of Beroea in Syria.

He came to Antioch (a.d.361) when the see had been vacated through the disorderly translation of Eudoxius to Constantinople (a.d.360) and the city was still a focus for theological rancour and dispute. The Eustathians, now under the venerated priest Paulinus, represented the orthodox party with whom Athanasius was in communion; the Eudoxians were Arian or semi-Arian. Meletius owed his appointment to the joint application to Constantius of both parties, and each counted on his support. His arrival was greeted by an immense concourse. It was reported that he maintained the doctrines of the council of Nicaea. He was entreated to give a brief synopsis of his doctrine; and his declaration "the Son is of the same substance as the Father," at once and unequivocally proclaimed him an upholder of the essential doctrine of Nicaea. The applause of the Catholics was met by the cries of the infuriated Arians. The Arian archdeacon sprang forward and stopped the bishop's mouth with his hand. Meletius instantly extended three fingers towards the people, closed them, and then allowing only one to remain extended, expressed by signs what he was prevented from uttering. When the archdeacon freed his mouth to seize his hand, Meletius exclaimed, "Three Persons are conceived in the mind, but we speak as if addressing One" (Theod. and Soz.). Eudoxius, Acacius, and their partisans were furious; they reviled the bishop and charged him with Sabellianism; met in council and deposed him; and induced the emperor, "more changeable than Aeolus," to banish him to his native country and to appoint Euzoïus, the friend of Arius, in his place. The Catholics repudiated Euzoïus, but did not all support Meletius. The Eustathian section could not conscientiously unite with one who, however orthodox in faith, had received consecration from Arian bishops; neither would they communicate with his followers who had received Arian baptism. Schism followed. The Meletians withdrew to the Church of the Apostles in the old part of the city; the followers of Paulinus met in a small church within the city, this being allowed by Euzoïus out of respect for Paulinus.

The death of Constantius (Nov.361) and the decrees of toleration promulgated by Julian permitted the banished bishops to return. An effort was at once made, especially by Athanasius and Eusebius bp. of Vercelli, to establish unity in order to resist the pagan emperor; and this was one of the principal objects of a council held at Alexandria in 362 (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i.727), where it was ordered that Paulinus and his followers should unite with Meletius, and that the church, thus united, should in the spirit of fullest toleration receive all who accepted the Nicene creed and rejected the errors of Arianism, Sabellianism, Macedonianism, etc. Eusebius of Vercelli and Asterius of Petra were commissioned to proceed to Antioch, taking with them the synodal letter (Tomus ad Antiochenos), which was probably the work of Athanasius. The prospects of peace had, however, been fatally imperilled before the commissioners reached the city. Lucifer, bp. of Calaris, had gone direct to Antioch instead of to the council of Alexandria. He appears to have repeatedly exhorted both Meletians and Eustathians to unity; but his sympathies were strongly with the latter; and, when the former opposed him, he took the injudicious step of consecrating Paulinus as bishop. "This was not right," Theodoret justly protests (iii.5). When Eusebius reached Antioch, he found that "the evil had, by such unwise measures, been made incurable." The long connexion of Athanasius with the Eustathians made him unwilling to disown Paulinus, who accepted the synodal letter; and attempts at union were suspended.

During the short reign of Julian Meletius remained at his post. Jovian's death (a.d.364.) and the edict of Valens re-expelling the bishops recalled by Julian once more drove Meletius into exile. Two devoted Antiochians, Flavian and Diodorus, rallied the persecuted who refused to communicate with the Arian Euzoïus and assembled them in caverns by the river side and in the open country. Paulinus, "on account of his eminent piety" (Socr. iv.2), was left unmolested. During the 14 years which followed, bitterness and alienation were rife amongst the followers of Meletius and Paulinus. Basil (Ep.89) recommended Meletius to write to Athanasius, who, however, would not sever the old ties between himself and the Eustathians. The death of Athanasius (A. D.373) did not improve matters. His successor Peter, with Damasus of Rome, spoke in 377 of Eusebius and Meletius as Arians (Basil, Ep.266). The Western bishops and Paulinus suspected Meletius and the Easterns of Arianism; the Easterns imputed Sabellianism to the Westerns.

Gratian, becoming sovereign of the whole empire in 378, at once proclaimed toleration to all sects, with a few exceptions (Socr. v.2), amongst which must have been the Arians of Antioch (Theod. v.2). Sapor, a military chief, went there to dispossess the partisans of Euzoïus and to give the Arian churches to the orthodox party. He pacified the Meletians by handing the churches over to them, and the animosity of the two parties was for the time allayed by the six principal presbyters binding themselves by oath to use no effort to secure consecration for themselves when either Paulinus or Meletius should die, but to permit the survivor to retain the see undisturbed.

In 379 a council at Antioch under Meletius accepted the synodal letter of Damasus (a.d.378), which, known as "the Tome of the Westerns," was sent in the first instance to Paulinus; and two years later (381) Meletius -- though disowned by Rome and Alexandria -- was appointed to preside at the council of Constantinople. He was greeted by the emperor Theodosius with the warmest affection (ib. v.6, 7). During the session of the council, Meletius died. His remains finally rested by those of Babylas the Martyr at Antioch.

The schism ought now to have ended. Paulinus was still alive, and should have been recognized as sole bishop. The Meletian party, however, irritated by his treatment of their leader, secured the appointment of [411]FLAVIAN; and a fresh division arose, "grounded simply on a preference of bishops" (Socr. v.269). The history of the Meletians now merges into that of the Flavianists. The schism was practically ended in Flavian's life time, 85 years after the ordination of Paulinus by Lucifer.

[J.M.F.]

Melito
Melito, bp. of Sardis, held in the middle of the 2nd cent. a foremost place among the bishops of Asia as regards personal influence and literary activity. Shortly before the end of that cent. his name is mentioned by Polycrates of Ephesus in his letter to Victor of Rome (Eus. H. E. v.24.) as one of the luminaries of the Asiatic church by whose authority its Quartodeciman practice had been commended. The next extant mention of him some 20 years later is in the Little Labyrinth (Eus. v.28). He is there appealed to as one of the writers, older than Victor of Rome, who had spoken of our Lord as being God as well as man. A reference to him in a lost work of Tertullian, known to us through a citation by Jerome in the art. s.v. in his Catalogue (c.24), shews his high reputation in Tertullian's time. Our fullest information is from the notices in Eusebius (H. E. iv.13, 26), who gives a list of Melito's works with which he was acquainted, together with 3 extracts.

His Apology presented to the emperor Marcus Aurelius may have been his latest work. It is placed under a.d.170 in Jerome's translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius, but the date may be more safely inferred from a passage preserved by Eusebius. Melito, addressing Marcus Aurelius, and speaking of Augustus, says, "of whom you have become the much-wished-for successor, and shall be so with your son if you keep that philosophy which took its beginning with Augustus," etc. That he here says "with your son," not "with your brother," is evidence that the date is later than the death of Lucius Verus, in 169. Commodus was associated in the empire with his father in 176. The passage quoted does not shew whether this association had already taken place or was only anticipated. In 177 persecutions of Christians were raging violently all over the empire. Melito's memorial seems to have been written at the very first beginning of that persecution. The Christians seem to be suffering more in their property than in their persons, and Melito is able to express a doubt whether the emperor had sanctioned the cruelties, and a belief that, when he had examined the case, he would interfere in their favour. Melito declares that Nero and Domitian were the only emperors who had sanctioned persecutions of Christians, and probably from this passage Tertullian derived his argument that only bad emperors had persecuted the Christians. On the other side, as forbidding interference, Melito quotes the letter of Hadrian to Fundanus, and letters of Antoninus, at a time when Aurelius himself was associated in the government, to the people of Larissa, of Thessalonica, and of Athens. One extract from the Apology preserved in the Paschal Chronicle (p.483, Dindorf) gave rise to some discussion in the early Socinian controversy. "We are not worshippers of senseless stones, but adore one only God, Who is before all and over all, and [over] His Christ truly God the Word before all ages." The second "over" given in Rader's ed. of the Chronicle does not appear in the latest ed. (Dindorf's).

An Apology is extant in a Syriac trans. in one of the Nitrian MSS. in the Brit. Mus., which bears the heading, "The oration of Melito the Philosopher held before Antoninus Caesar, and he spoke to Caesar that he might know God, and he shewed him the way of truth, and began to speak as follows." Probably the Syriac translator, finding in his Greek original that the Apology was "addressed" to the emperor, made a blunder in supposing it delivered viva voce. It was printed in Syriac, with English trans. by Cureton (Spicileg. Syr.) and by Pitra, with a Latin trans. by Renan (Spicil. Solesm. vol. ii.) which has been revised in Otto's Apologists, vol. ix. Although this Syriac Apology appears complete, it contains none of the passages cited by Eusebius, and its character seems entirely different from that of the work known to Eusebius. The latter was mainly intended to induce the emperor to stop the persecution by shewing that the Christians did not deserve the treatment inflicted. The Syriac Apology is a calm argument against the absurdities of polytheism and idolatry, such as might have been written with the hope of making a convert of the emperor, but does not exhibit any of the mental tension of one suffering under unjust persecution. The Syriac Apology is, therefore, probably not the same as that from which Eusebius made extracts. Did, then, Melito write two apologies? The Paschal Chronicle records an Apology of Melito under both a.d.164 and 169, but this is clearly only a double mention of one Apology, probably caused by the double mention in Eus. iv.13, 26. The ascription of the Syriac Apology to Melito is probably an error, though the document is perhaps not much later. There are slight, but we think decisive, traces of the use of Justin Martyr's Apology: it must therefore be later than that. It is addressed to an emperor Antoninus, who might have been Pius, Aurelius, Caracalla, or Elagabalus. Probably one of the latter two is intended. The writer's point of view seems to be Syrian. In enumerating heathen idolatries he omits (as we should not expect from Melito writing in Asia Minor) Cybele and the Ephesian Diana; while he speaks in much detail of Syrian objects of worship, and seems to be personally acquainted with the city of Mabug, the Syrian Hierapolis. The, admonition, "if they wish to dress you in a female garment, remember that you are a man," suggests Elagabalus rather than any of the other emperors mentioned. One other passage supports a presumption of Syrian authorship. The writer speaks of the world as destined to suffer from three deluges -- one of wind, one of water, one of fire; the first two already past, the third still to come. The deluge of wind is that by which the tower of Babel was supposed to have been destroyed (see the Sibylline verses quoted by Theophilus, ad Autol. ii.31, and also Abydenus, quoted by Eus. Praep. Evan. ix.14). "Flood of wind" occurs in the work called The Cave of Treasures (Cureton, Spicil. Syr. p.94), and in the Ethiopic book of Adam (Ewald's Jahrbücher der Bibl. Wiss.1853). It has been contended that the reference to the deluge of fire shews acquaintance with II. Peter; but it seems to us that this can by no means be positively asserted. On N.T. allusions in this Apology see Westcott (N. T. Canon, p.219). Against placing it so late as Elagabalus it may be urged that its conclusion, if interpreted naturally, speaks of the emperor as having children; and though the apologist might be merely expressing a wish on behalf of the emperor's unborn successors, it is simpler to refer the work to the time of Caracalla, who spent some time in Syria. There seem also traces that Tertullian, who was acquainted with the Eusebian Apology of Melito, also used this one. Such perhaps may be the identification of Serapis with Joseph and the remark that the old heathen gods were practically less honoured than the emperors, since their temples had to pay taxes.

Of other works of Melito the peri tou pascha is first in the list of Eusebius. The date is limited by the opening sentence which Eusebius quotes: "In the proconsulate over Asia of Servilius Paulus, at the time that Sagaris suffered martyrdom, there took place much dispute at Laodicea about the Paschal celebration empesontos kata kairon in those days, and these things were written." Rufinus here reads "Sergius Paulus," and this appears from other authorities to have been the real name of the proconsul in question, probably within the limits 164-166.

The appeal of Polycrates to the authority of Melito makes it clear that the latter, in his work on Easter celebration, took the Quartodeciman side. Eusebius says that the work of Melito drew forth another, no doubt on the opposite side, from Clement of Alexandria. It has been conjectured that Melito was the Ionian whom Clement (Eus. H. E. v.11) enumerates as among his teachers. It should be noticed that the extant fragments of Melito refute the notion that Quartodecimanism was inconsistent with the reception of the Fourth Gospel. Melito speaks of our Lord's three years' ministry after His baptism, which he could not have learned from the Synoptists. He accounts for the fact that a ram, not a lamb, was substituted as a sacrifice for Isaac, by the remark that our Lord, when He suffered, was not young like Isaac, but of mature years. Possibly here may be an indication that Melito held the same theory concerning our Lord's age as Irenaeus and other Asiatics, derived no doubt from John viii.57. The whole passage shews that Melito believed strongly in the atoning efficacy of Christ's death, and looked on Him as the sacrificial lamb. The word he uses is amnos, as in the Gospel, not arnion as in the Apocalypse.

The next work of Melito from which Eusebius has given an extract is called Selections, addressed to a friend named Onesimus, who had asked Melito to make selections from the law and the prophets of passages concerning our Saviour, and concerning all our faith, and also to give him accurate information as to the number and order of the O.T. books. Melito relates that he had gone up to the East to the place where the things were preached and done, and had accurately learned the books of the O.T. He enumerates the five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four of Kings, two of Chronicles, Psalms of David, Proverbs of Solomon, also called Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job; of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the twelve Minor Prophets in one book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras. The last, no doubt, includes Nehemiah and possibly Esther, which is otherwise omitted. This list gives the Hebrew canon adopted by the Church of England; but gives a different order of the books from that of Josephus, and does not attempt to make the number of books 22. The expressions "the Old Books," "the Books of the O.T.," shew clearly that the church of Melito's time had a New Testament canon.

Eusebius enumerates other works of Melito as being known to him. The titles enable us imperfectly to guess at their contents, and sometimes the titles themselves are uncertain. (4) ta peri politeias kai propheton, very likely two separate works "on Christian Conversation" and "on the Prophets" coupled together by Eusebius, because contained in the same volume in the Caesarean Library. (5) peri ekklesias. It has been conjectured that the breaking out of Montanism may have made it necessary to insist on the authority of the church. (6) peri kuriakes. Possibly the Quartodeciman controversy led to discussion about the Lord's Day. This word kuriake, used in Rev. i.10, is found also in Ignatius's Ep. to the Magnesians, c.9, and in the letter of Dionysius of Corinth to Soter (Eus. iv.33). (7) peri phuseos anthropou. (8) peri plaseos. This book on the formation of man, and (7) on the nature of man, if that be the reading, are conjectured to have been directed against Gnostic theories. (9) peri hupakoes pisteos aistheterion. What was the subject of a treatise on the obedience of faith of the senses has perplexed ancient as well as modern readers of this list. Jerome thinks that a peri may have dropped out of the text, and that there were two treatises, one on the Obedience of Faith, one on the Senses. (10) peri psuches kai somatos kai noos, probably on Human Nature. (11) peri loutrou. (12) peri aletheias, perhaps an apologetic work in commendation of Christianity. (13) peri ktiseos kai geneseos Christou. Ancient writers with one consent apply to our Lord the Kurios ektisen me archen hodon autou of Prov. viii.22. For a full discussion of this verse see Athan. Or. Cont. Ar. ii.44. (14) peri propheteias. A work with the same title written, or intended to be written, by Clement of Alexandria, was directed against the Montanists (Strom. iv.13, p.605), and this may also have been the design of this work of Melito, if the Montanist controversy had broken out before his death. (15) peri philoxenias. (16) he kleis. What was the nature of this work we have no information. A Latin work entitled Melitonis Clavis Sanctae Scripturae mentioned by Labbe in 1653 as preserved in the library of the Clermont College is a medieval Latin composition. (17) (18) ta peri tou diabolou kai tes apokalupseos Ioannou. The form of expression would indicate that both subjects were discussed in a single treatise. (19) peri ensomatou theou. It would be natural to translate this, On God Incarnate, and we have other evidence that Melito wrote on the Incarnation. When he speaks of the two natures which our Lord combined, there is no trace of anthropomorphism in the attributes which he ascribes to the Divine nature. On the other hand Origen, commenting on Gen. i.26 (vol. viii.49, Lomm.) and arguing against the Anthropomorphites, says "of whom is Melito, who has left a certain treatise, peri tou ensomaton einai ton theon." Probably Origen made a mistake, and that the subject of Melito's treatise was the Incarnation. But it is not impossible that a writer as orthodox as Melito may have held the opinions which Origen imputes to him.

The list given shews Melito's great activity as a writer, and the wide range of his writings.

Of spurious writings ascribed to Melito, we need only mention a commentary on the Apocalypse, the ascription to Melito apparently having been made by the fraud or ignorance of some transcriber, and not intended in the work itself, which is a compilation from various writers, some as late as the 13th cent. Through two works, de Passione S. Joannis and de Transitu b. Mariae, with which Melito's name was connected, it became widely known in the West, though with various disguises of form, such as Mileto, Miletus, and Mellitus, the last being the most common.

The remains of Melito are given by Routh (Rel. Sac. i.113-153), and more fully by Otto (Corp. Apol. Chr. ix.375-478). See also Piper (Stud. und Krit.1838, p.54), Westcott (N. T. Canon, p.218), Lightfoot (Contemp. Rev. Feb.1876). Cf. esp. Harnack, Die Überlieferung der Apologeten (Text. und Untersuch. I.240), and Geseh. der Alt. Chr. lib. i.246 ff.

[G.S.]

Mellitus
Mellitus, the first bp. of London and third archbp. of Canterbury. He was not one of the original missionaries who accompanied Augustine to Britain, but was sent by St. Gregory in 601 to strengthen the hands of the newly consecrated archbishop and to convey to him the pall. Mellitus, accompanied by Laurentius, whom Augustine had sent to Rome, and by Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus, left Rome c. July 22, 601. They carried letters of commendation to the bps. of Vienne, Arles, Lyons, Gap, Toulon, Marseilles, Châlons on the Saône, Metz, Paris, Rouen, and Angers; to Theodoric, Theodebert, and Clothair, kings of the Franks, and also to queen Brunichild. These names probably indicate the route of the missionaries, and there is no evidence to support Ussher's conjecture that they visited Columbanus at Luxeuil on the way. To Augustine Mellitus brought also the answers which Gregory sent to the questions laid before him by Laurentius, and a supply of church furniture, "all things which were needed for worship and the ministry of the church, sacred vessels, altar-cloths, church ornaments, priestly and clerical robes, relics of saints and martyrs, and several books" (Bede, H. E. i.29). Some account of the remains of St. Gregory's benefaction, preserved at Canterbury in the 15th cent., is given by Elmham (ed. Hardwick, pp.96 seq.). Augustine, having received from the pope authority to consecrate bishops for the newly converted nation, chose Mellitus for the see of London. That city, properly the capital of the East Saxons, was then under Ethelbert, king of Kent, who had prevailed on the dependent kings of the East Saxons to receive Christianity, and who now founded the church of St. Paul as the cathedral of the new bishopric. No distinct date, is given by Bede for the consecration of Mellitus, but it must have occurred some time between the winter of 601 and the early summer of 604, the most probable date for the death of Augustine.

Mellitus continued undisturbed in his see during the reign of Ethelbert. He joined in the letter addressed by Laurentius to the Irish bishops (Bede, H. E. ii.4), and in 609 went to Rome to treat with pope Boniface IV. on matters necessary for the welfare of the English church. The precise object of this journey is not mentioned by the historian, who, however, tells us that Mellitus was present at a council on Feb.27, 610, subscribed to the decrees, and subsequently carried them to the English church. The purpose of this council was to secure the peace of the monastic order and two versions of a decree are extant (Labbe, Conc. v.619; Mansi, Conc. x.504; Haddan and Stubbs, iii.64, 65). Bede adds that Mellitus also brought letters from the pope to Ethelbert, Laurentius, and the whole clergy and people of the English (W. Malmesb. G. P. lib. i.; Haddan and Stubbs, iii.65). The monks of St. Augustine's also shewed a bull of Boniface IV., dated Feb.27, 611, addressed to Ethelbert, mentioning the request presented by Mellitus, and confirming the privileges of St. Augustine's (Elmham, u.s. pp.129-131; Thorn, ap. Twysden, c.1766; Haddan and Stubbs, iii.67-69).

On the death of Ethelbert the newly-founded church was in danger of dissolution. Mellitus and Justus fled to Gaul, and Laurentius was only saved by a miracle from the disgrace of following them. Bede tells very circumstantially the story of Mellitus's flight. The sons of the Christian king Sebert had continued to be pagans. Seeing the bishop celebrate the holy communion and give the Eucharist to the people, they presumptuously asked, "Why do you not give us the white bread which you used to give to Saba our father and still give to the people?" The bishop replied that if they would be baptized they should have the bread. They refused the sacrament of initiation, but still demanded the bread. On Mellitus's persistence in refusing it, they banished him. He fled to Kent and afterwards to Gaul, whence he was recalled by Laurentius after the conversion of Eadbald. He probably remained at Canterbury until the death of Laurentius in 619, when he succeeded to the vacant see, which he held till 624. That his activity was impaired by gout is nearly all that is preserved about him. Bede mentions that he consecrated a church to the Blessed Virgin within the precincts of St. Augustine's monastery, and that, a great fire at Canterbury occurring in a place termed the "martyrdom of the four crowned martyrs," he was carried there and at his prayer a wind drove the flames southwards and saved the city (H. E. ii.16, 17).

[S.]

Menander
Menander, a Samaritan false teacher in the early part of the 2nd cent. Our knowledge of him is probably all derived, either directly or indirectly, from Justin Martyr. What he tells directly (Apol. i.26, 56) is, that Menander was a native of the Samaritan town Capparatea, and a disciple of Simon, and, like him, had been instigated by the demons to deceive many by his magic arts; that he had had success of this kind at Antioch, where he had taught, and had persuaded his followers that they should not die; and that, when Justin wrote, some of them survived, holding this persuasion. Justin wrote a special treatise against heresies, and from this, in all probability, was derived the somewhat fuller account given by Irenaeus (i.23, p.100) According to this, Menander did not, like Simon, declare himself to be the chief power, but taught that that power was unknown to all. He gave the same account as Simon of the creation of the world -- viz. that " it had been made by angels" who had taken their origin from the Ennoea of the supreme power. He put himself forward as having been sent by the invisible powers to mankind as a Saviour, enabling men, by the magical power which he taught them, to get the better of these creative angels. He taught that through baptism in his own name his disciples received a resurrection, and should thenceforward abide in immortal youth. Irenaeus evidently understood this language literally, and the history of heretical sects shews that it is not incredible that such promises may have been made; but the continuance of a belief which the experience of the past must have disproved indicates that a spiritual interpretation must have been found. Cyril of Jerusalem (C. I.18) treats the denial of a literal resurrection of the body as a specially Samaritan heresy.

Irenaeus (iii.4, p.179), having spoken of Valentinus and Marcion, says that the other Gnostics, as had been shewn, took their beginnings from Menander, the disciple of Simon; and there is every probability that it was from the "Samaritan" Justin that Irenaeus learned his pedigree of Gnosticism, viz. that it originated with the Samaritan Simon, and was continued by his disciple Menander, who taught at Antioch, and that there Saturninus (and, apparently, Basilides) learned from him.

The name Menandrianists occurs in the list of Hegesippus (Eus. H. E. iv.22). Tertullian evidently knows only what he has learned from Irenaeus (de Anim.23, 50; de Res. Carn.5). The same may be said of all later writers, and it is scarcely worth while to mention the imaginary condemnation of these heretics by Lucius of Rome, invented by "Praedestinatus."

[G.S.]

Mennas
Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople, 536-552. On the deposition of ANTHIMUS, Mennas, superior of the great convent of St. Samson at Constantinople, was elected to the see. Pope Agapetus was then at Constantinople, having presided at the council there which dealt with the case of Anthimus, and himself consecrated Mennas. Mennas accepted the council of Chalcedon; he was a Catholic, well known for his knowledge and integrity. On May 2, 536, he presided at a council assembled by Justinian at Constantinople at the request of 11 bishops of the East and of Palestine, and of 33 other ecclesiastics, to finish the case of Anthimus, and to decide those of Severus of Antioch, Peter of Apamea, and the Eutychian monk Zoara. The request had been made to pope Agapetus, who had died on Apr.22, before the council could be held. The result of the council was that, Anthimus having been sought for in vain, he was forbidden to resume his episcopate of Trapezus and deposed from his rank; the others were anathematized. Mennas obtained from Justinian the passing of a law, dated Aug.6, 536, confirming the Acts of this council. He also sent them to Peter of Jerusalem, who held a council to receive them. On Sept.13, 540, pope Vigilius wrote to Mennas and to the emperor Justinian, by the hands of Dominicus the patrician. He endeavoured to carry on the influence which Agapetus had over the affairs of the church of Constantinople. He confirmed the anathemas pronounced by Mennas against Severus of Antioch, Peter of Apamea, Anthimus, and other schismatics, offering communion again to all who should come to a better mind. Mennas died on Aug.5, 552, just before the second great council of Constantinople, called the fifth general. It was in the midst of the angry discussions about the "Three Chapters." Mennas had signed the declaration of faith addressed to pope Vigilius by Theodore of Corsaria and others to satisfy his protests and to preserve the peace of the church.

In the controversies which gave rise to the Lateran council in 649, a Monothelite writing was brought forward by Sergius patriarch of Constantinople as a genuine work of Mennas, supposed to be addressed to pope Vigilius. But in the third council of Constantinople, Nov.10, 680, this document was proved to be the composition of the monk George, who confessed himself its author.

Mansi, viii.869, 870, 960, ix.157, etc., x.863, 971, 1003, xi.226, etc.; Liberatus, Brev. xxi. in Patr. Lat. lxviii.2039 (see also the dissertations at the end of that volume); Vigil. Pap. Ep. in Patr. Lat. lxix.21, 25; Agapet. Pap. Ep. in Patr. Lat. xlviii.; Evagr. iv.36 in Patr. Gk. lxxxvi. Pt.2, 416, etc.; Ceillier, xi.121, 194, 968, xii.922, 947, 953.

[W.M.S.]

Merlinus
Merlinus. The prophecies of Merlin, which had great influence in the middle ages, represented the enduring hate of the Welsh for the English conquerors, and were probably the composition of Merddin, son of Morvryn, whose patron, Gwenddolew, a prince in Strathclyde, and an upholder of the ancient faith, perished a.d.577 at the battle of Arderydd, fighting against Rhydderch Hael, who had been converted by St. Columba to Christianity. When the northern Kymry were driven into Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, they relocalized the story of Merlin in their new abodes. Merddin is now represented as a Christian, and said to be buried in Bardsey, the island of the Welsh saints; but much of his career is passed in Cornwall, which was long under the same dynasty as South Wales, even after the English got possession of the coast at Bristol, and broke the connexion by land between the two districts. As the mass of tradition grew into the shape in which we find it in Nennius, and later on in Geoffrey, Merlin becomes a wholly mythical character, the prophet of his race. It is not till Geoffrey of Monmouth that we find the boy called Merlin and made the confidant of Utherpendragon and of Arthur, and able to bring the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland. Nennius does not mention Merlin among the early bards, and the poems attributed to him were really composed in the 12th cent., when there was a great outburst of Welsh poetry (Stephens, Literature of the Kymry, § 4). Among these poems there is a dialogue between Merddin and his sister Gwenddydd ("The Dawn"), which contains prophecies as to a series of Welsh rulers. The story of Merlin made an impression abroad as well as in England. Layamon alludes to several of his prophecies and they soon gained popular fame. A Vita Merlini in Latin hexameters, also attributed, though wrongly, to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was printed by the Roxburghe Club, 1830; the later English forms of the story by the Early English Text Society. The one fact embodied in the legend is the long continued enmity of the Kymry to the English invaders; but even this almost disappeared when the story became part of the great romance of Arthur.

[C.W.B.]

Mesrobes
Mesrobes, one of the most celebrated patriarchs and historians of Armenia, born in 354 at the town of Hasecasus, now Mush (Tozer's Turkish Armenia, p.286) and educated under Nerses Magnus, the fourth patriarch of Armenia from St. Gregory the Illuminator, to whom also Mesrobes acted as secretary, an office which he likewise filled in the court of king Varaztad till dethroned by the Romans a.d.386 (Langlois, Fragm. Hist. Graec. t. v. pt. ii. pp.297-300). He then took holy orders and sought a solitary life. He became coadjutor to the patriarch Sahag in 390, when he devoted himself to the extirpation of the remains of idolatry still existing in Armenia. Under him a great revival of Armenian literature took place. >From the introduction of Christianity Syriac had become the dominant language, a knowledge of it being deemed a necessary qualification for holy orders (cf. Agathang. Hist. Tiribat.; Zenob. Hist. Daron. in Langlois, l.c. pp.179, 335, Disc. Prelim. p. xiv.; Goriun, Hist. de S. Mesrop; Vartan, Hist. d'Arménie, p.51, Venice, 1862). Mesrobes devoted himself to revive the ancient Armenian culture, some fragments of which can yet be traced in Moses Chorenensis. He was an accomplished Greek, Persian, and Syriac scholar, but wished to revive a national literature. His first step was to restore, if not to invent, an alphabet for the Armenian tongue instead of depending on the Syriac character. He induced the patriarch Sahag, alias Isaac, to convoke a national council at the city of Vagharschabad to consider the question, at which the king Vram-Schapouh assisted. Learning that a Syrian bishop, one Daniel, possessed an ancient Armenian alphabet, Mesrobes sent a priest named Abel to him, who brought it back. It is supposed to have consisted of 22 or 27 letters. With this as a basis and with the help of various persons who possessed some traditionary knowledge of ancient Armenian, as Plato chief librarian at Edessa and two learned rhetoricians, Epiphanius and Rufinus, he composed the alphabet which the Armenians adopted in 406, the seven vowels having been made known, it was said, by direct revelation from heaven (cf. Langl. l.c. Disc. prélim. p. xv.; Moses Choren. Hist. Armén. lib. iii. cc.52, 53, and for minute details of the whole question, Karékin, Hist. de la litt. Armén. pp.8 seq. Venice, 1865; Jour. Asiat.1867, t. i, p.200). Mesrobes attracted great numbers to his schools and sent the ablest pupils to study at Edessa, Athens, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and even Rome, whence they brought back the most authentic copies of the Scriptures, the Fathers, Acts of the councils, and the profane writers. These young scholars endeavoured to adapt the Armenian tongue to the rules of Greek grammar, translating into Armenian the grammar of Dionysius the Thracian, an ed. of which with a French trans. was pub. at Paris in 1830. This Hellenizing movement among them in cent.5 was analogous to similar ones in cents.6, 7, 8, among the Persians and Monophysites, and in cent.9 among the Arabs, movements to which we owe the preservation of some of the most precious monuments of antiquity, as Tatian's long-lost Diatessaron, pub. at Venice out of the Armenian in 1875, cf. Qtly. Rev. Apr.1881, art. on the "Speaker's Commentary on N.T." (cf. Renan, Hist. des lang. sémit. p.297). Among the disciples of Mesrobes were all the leading writers of Armenia, including Leontius presb. and mart., Moses Taronensis, Kioud of Arabeza, afterwards patriarch, Mamprus lector, Jonathan, Khatchig, Joseph of Baghin, Eznig, Knith bp. of Terchan, Jeremiah, Johannes of Egegheats, Moses Chorenensis, Lazarus of Barb, Gorium biographer of Mesrobes, Elisaeus (Langl. l.c.; Neumann's pref. to Hist. of Vartan in Public. of Orient. Trans. Fund, London, 1830). The Armenian church through their labours possessed a vernacular edition of the Bible in 410. Mesrobes also invented an alphabet for Georgia similar to the Armenian but containing 28 letters. Both alphabets had the letters arranged after the Greek order. The Armenians attribute to him the settlement of their liturgy. Sahag died Sept.9, 440, and was succeeded as bishop by Mesrobes, until he died on Feb.19, 441. The Life of Mesrobes by Goriun, pub. by the Mekhitarite Fathers at Venice in 1833, was trans. into German and pub. by Dr. B. Welte (Tübingen, 1841). See Moses Choren. Hist. Armén. lib. iii. cc. xlvii. lii.-liv. lvii. lviii. lx. lxi. lxvi. lxvii. for copious details of his life, and an art. by Petermann s.v. in Herzog's Real Encyklop.

[G.T.S.]

Methodius
Methodius (called also Eubulius), commemorated June 20 (Basil, Menol.) and Sept.18 (Mart. Rom.), a Lycian bp. highly distinguished as a writer, bp. first of Olympus, afterwards of Patara, early in 4th cent. Jerome (Cat.83), Socrates (vi.13), and Maximus (in Schol. Dionys. Areop.7) state that he was bp. of Olympus. Leontius of Byzantium calls him bp. of Patara, and he is thus known to all later Greek authorities. Jerome's unsupported statement that he was translated to Tyre was probably due to a transcriber's error for Patara m the authority which Jerome followed.

Jerome states that "he was crowned with martyrdom at the end of the last [i.e. Diocletian's] persecution; or as some affirm under Decius and Valerian, at Chalcis in Greece." The earlier date is inconsistent with the facts that Methodius wrote against Porphyry and that Eusebius speaks of him as a contemporary (ap. Hieron. Apol. adv. Rufin. I. vol. ii.). The martyrdom of a Lycian or Phoenician bp. at a place so remote as Euboea must also be pronounced incredible. The places were not then even under the same ruler, Greece being under Licinius and the Eastern provinces under Maximin. Accordingly Sophronius, the Greek translator of St. Jerome, substitutes for Chalcis "in Greece," "in the East," whence some modern critics have concluded that Methodius suffered at Chalcis in Syria. But no weight can fairly be attached to this correction of Sophronius; and it is more probable that a Methodius whose name tradition had preserved as a martyr at Chalcis under Decius was wrongly identified with the better-known Lycian bishop. The evidence that the latter was a martyr at all is weak, and the silence of Eusebius is a difficulty; but Theodoret calls him bishop and martyr, as do the late Greek writers, while the Menaea make the mode of death decapitation.

Methodius wrote much, and his works were widely read and highly valued. Jerome several times refers to him: Epiphanius calls him aner logios kai sphodra peri tes aletheias agonisamenos; Gregory Nyssen or Anastasius Sinaita (for the authorship is disputed), ho polus en sophia; Andrew of Caesarea, ho megas; Eustathius of Antioch, ho tes agias axios mnemes; and he is quoted by Theodoret, besides many later writers. Photius has preserved copious extracts (Codd.234-237); other shorter extracts are to be found in Catenae, and others are given in the Nitrian MSS. (see Wright, Cat. MSS. Syr. in Brit. Mus.). The works of which we have knowledge are:

(1) The only one extant entire is the Symposium, or Banquet of the Ten Virgins. It reveals Methodius as an ardent admirer of Plato, from whom he probably derived his preference for dialogue form. In the present case he has not only imitated him in several passages, but has taken from him the whole idea of his work. As in Plato's Symposium the praises of Love are celebrated, so here are proclaimed the glories of Virginity. The imitation of the form of Plato's work is even kept up in not presenting the dialogue directly, but as reported by one present at it. Eubulius, or Eubulium, receives from a virgin Gregorion an account of a banquet in the gardens of Areté, not under Plato's plane-tree, but under an agnus-castus, in which ten virgin guests, at their hostess's command, pronounce ten successive discourses in praise of chastity. At the end of the banquet the victor Thecla leads off a hymn, to which the rest standing round as a chorus respond. But Methodius has caught very little of Plato's style or spirit. He has little dramatic power, and there is often little to distinguish one speaker from another. Of his general soundness on our Lord's Divinity there can be no doubt; and we have not found anything in the writings ascribed to him which an orthodox man might not have written, especially before the Arian disputes had made caution of language necessary. Elsewhere (Cod.162) Photius mentions Methodius with Athanasius and other great names as one from whose writings Andrew had produced extracts garbled and falsified so as to teach heresy.

(2) In the Catalogue of Jerome he gives the first place to the writings of Methodius against Porphyry. He elsewhere refers to them (in Comm. in Dan. Pref. c.13, vol. v. pp.618, 730; Apol. ad Pammach. vol. i.; Ep.70 ad Magnum, i.425), stating in Ep.70 that they ran to 10,000 lines. Philostorgius (viii.14) rates the reply of Apollinarius to Porphyry as far superior to either that by Eusebius or by Methodius. All three replies have perished.

(3) On the Resurrection. -- This work has been lost, but large extracts have been preserved by Epiphanius, Haer.64, and by Photius, Cod.234, see also Johan. Damasc. de Imag. Orat.2. The text as given by Combefis and reprinted by Migne suppresses the heretical portions of the Epiphanian extracts. This work also is in the form of a Platonic dialogue, and is in refutation of Origen. The Origenist speakers deny the materiality of the resurrection body, and urge that it is enough if we believe that the same form shall rise again, beautified and glorified. In heaven our bodies will be spiritual; and so St. Paul teaches: "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body"; "Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Man had been originally in Paradise, that is, in the third heaven (II. Cor. xii.), having there none but a spiritual body; having sinned he was east down to earth, where God made him "coats of skins," that is to say, for a punishment clad him in our present gross material bodies, which clog and fetter the soul and out of which spring our temptations to sin; for without the body the soul cannot sin. When we rise therefore to dwell where sin cannot be, we shall be like the angels, liberated from the flesh which has burdened us here. In reply, Methodius acutely points out the inconsistence of teaching that the soul cannot sin without the body, and at the same time that the body had been imposed on the soul as a punishment for sins previously committed; and in truth the body is an instrument for good as well as for evil. Paradise and the third heaven are not identified (II. Cor. xii.); two distinct revelations are spoken of. It is said that we shall hereafter be as the angels, that is, like them, not subject to change or decay; but not that we shall be angels or without earthly bodies. God does not make mistakes; if He had meant us to be angels He would have made us so at first. His creatures are diverse: besides angels; there are thrones, principalities, and powers. By death He does not design to turn us into something different in kind from what He at first meant us to be; but only as an artificer, when a work of his is polluted with stains which cannot otherwise be removed, melts it down, and makes it anew; so by death we shall be remade free from the pollution of sin. Similarly the world will not be destroyed, but made into a new and purer earth, fit for the risen saints.

(4) De Pythonissa. -- Jerome tells us that this work, now lost, was directed against Origen. We may presume, therefore, that its scope was the same as that bearing the same title by Eustathius of Antioch, viz. to refute the opinion held by Origen after Justin Martyr that the soul of Samuel was under the power of Satan, and was evoked by the magical art of the witch of Endor. Methodius's view, however, could not have been the same as that of Eustathius, for a passage at the close of Photius's extracts from the treatise on the Resurrection implies a belief that the appearance of Samuel was real.

(5) Xeno. -- Socrates (vi. i3), expressing his indignation against the reviling of Origen by worthless writers who sought to get into notice by defaming their betters, names Methodius as the earliest of Origen's assailants; adding that he had afterwards by way of retractation expressed admiration of him in a dialogue entitled Xeno. We believe the dialogue referred to by Socrates to be identical with (6). There is nothing in Methodius's confutations of Origen inconsistent with his having felt warm admiration for the man; and he has certainly followed him in his allegorical method of interpretation.

(6) Peri ton geneton. -- This work "on things created" is only known by extracts preserved by Photius (Cod.235). It is a refutation of Origenist doctrine as to the eternity of the world, the principal arguments with which Methodius deals being that we cannot piously believe that there ever was a time when there was no Creator, no Almighty Ruler, and that there cannot be a Creator without things created by Him, a Ruler without things ruled over, a pantokrator without kratoumena. Further, that it is inconsistent with the unchangeableness of God to suppose that, after having passed ages without making anything, He suddenly took to creating. The orthodox speaker deals with his opponent by the Socratic method of question and answer. Photius's extracts begin with a discussion of the text, "Cast not your pearls before swine"; and we have near the commencement the phrase, margaritas tou xenonos. It is hard to get good sense by translating "pearls of the guest-chamber"; and with the knowledge we have that one of Methodius's dialogues was called Xeno, we are disposed to think that Xeno was one of the speakers in this dialogue, and that we are to translate "Xeno's pearls," i.e. pearls which Xeno presumably had mentioned, or else that the words tou Xenonos have got transposed and ought to be prefixed to the extract, the whole being taken from a speech by this interlocutor. Photius says that Methodius calls Origen a centaur, and interpreters have puzzled as to what he could have meant. In the extracts preserved the orthodox speaker addresses his Origenist interlocutor as o Kentaure without the slightest air of uttering a sarcasm, so that we should be disposed to think that the name of the Origenist speaker in this dialogue was Centaurus.

(7) On Free Will. -- [[412]MAXIMUS (24)].

For the works of Methodius see Migne, vol. xviii.; Eng. trans. in Schaff's Ante-Nicene Fathers; Jahn; S. Methodii opera, and S. Method. Platonizans, Halis. Sax.1865.

[G.S.]

Miltiades, 2nd cent. Christian writer
Miltiades (1), an active Christian writer of the 2nd cent. Eusebius tells us (H. E. v.17) that, besides leaving other records of his diligent study of the divine oracles, he composed a treatise "against the Greeks," another "against the Jews," and an "Apology" addressed to the rulers of this world on behalf of the school of philosophy to which he belonged. It is a natural inference from the plural "rulers" that there were, when Miltiades wrote, two emperors, probably Aurelius and Verus. The Apology may be supposed to have been a learned plea for toleration of Christianity, the purity of whose doctrines may have been favourably contrasted with the teaching of heathen philosophy. It is not extant, but seems to have had at the time a high repute. The writer of the "Little Labyrinth" (Eus. v.28) names Miltiades in company with Justin, Tatian, and Clement among the writers in defence of the truth or against contemporary heretics who, before Victor's episcopate, had distinctly asserted the divinity of Christ. Tertullian (adv. Valentin.5) names him with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus as a writer against heresy, giving him the appellation, evidently intended in an honourable sense, "Sophista Ecclesiarum." St. Jerome twice mentions him (Catal.39; Ep. ad Magnum, vol. i. p.427), but gives no clear indication that he knew more of him than he had learned from Eusebius.

Great obscurity hangs over his relation to Montanism, owing to a strange confusion, either on the part of Eusebius or of his copyists, between the names Miltiades and Alcibiades. In H. E. v.2 Eusebius tells a story about one of the Lyons confessors named Alcibiades, and, going on to speak about Montanism, mentions an Alcibiades as among its leaders. After the death of Montanus, his sect seems to have been known in Phrygia by the name of its leader for the time being; and in an anti-Montanist document preserved by Eusebius, v.16, the sect is called the party of Miltiades. This is the reading of all the MSS.; yet having regard to the earlier passage, editors are disposed here to substitute Alcibiades for Miltiades. If we are not permitted to think that there might have been Montanists of both names, it would seem more natural to make the opposite correction. In c.16 there was nothing to lead copyists astray; in c.2 Eusebius, having named an Alcibiades just before, might easily by a slip of the pen have repeated the same name. This view is strengthened by the fact that at the close of the Muratorian fragment, a name transcribed as "Mitiades" occurs as that of one the ecclesiastical use of whose writings was totally rejected by the church. This would be explained by the supposition that a Miltiades had written records of Montanist prophesyings or some other document, which that sect had regarded as inspired and admitted to church use. But the case is complicated further in c.17 of Eusebius. He begins by saying that the anti-Montanist document mentioned Miltiades as having written against Montanus; and then, having given extracts from the document, goes on to give the account we have already used of the other works of Miltiades. But the extract, according to the reading of all the MSS., names not Miltiades but Alcibiades as the author of an anti-Montanist treatise, "that a prophet ought not to speak in ecstasy." Here editors are compelled to correct the Alcibiades of the extract into Miltiades to make Eusebius consistent; yet this leaves it unexplained why transcribers should go so strangely wrong. Cf. Otto, Corpus Apol. ix.364.

[G.S.]

Miltiades, bishop of Rome
Miltiades (2) (Melchiades), bp. of Rome after [413]EUSEBIUS, from July 2, 310, to Jan.10 or 11, 314, the see having been vacant for 10 months and 14 days. The long vacancy is accounted for by the circumstances of his predecessor's death in exile and the divided state of the Roman church at the time.

The pontificate of Miltiades was marked by the accession, and so-called conversion, of Constantine the Great, and the definite termination of Diocletian's persecution. To Miltiades the possessions of the Christians at Rome, including the cemeteries, were at length restored by Maxentius: "Melchiades was recorded to have sent deacons with letters from the emperor Maxentius and from the prefect of the Praetorium to the prefect of the city, that they might recover possession of what had been taken away in the time of persecution, and which the aforesaid emperor had ordered to be restored" (Augustine, Brevic. Collat. cum Donat.; die iii. c.34). Constantine, after the defeat and death of Maxentius (Oct.28, 312), promulgated at Milan in 313 with Licinius the full edict of toleration known as "the Edict of Milan," which Licinius proclaimed in June 313 at Nicomedia in the East. All these important events were during the episcopate of Miltiades, who would be a personal witness of Constantine's entry into Rome after the battle of the Milvian bridge, with the labarum borne aloft, and the monogram of Christ marked upon the shields of his soldiers. But the pope's name does not become prominent until the complications which soon arose in connexion with the African Donatists. Constantine, according to Optatus, was greatly annoyed at being called upon to settle disputes among the clergy, but he complied with the request, nominating three Gallic bishops whom he commanded to go speedily to Rome to adjudge the matter in conjunction with Miltiades. He wrote a letter preserved by Eusebius, addressed to Miltiades and an unknown Marcus. There is no evidence, in this or other acts of Constantine, that he regarded the bp. of Rome as the sole or necessary judge of ecclesiastical causes on appeal. He was, indeed, careful to refer spiritual cases to the spirituality, and he naturally and properly referred the chief cognizance of a case arising in W. Africa to the Roman see, though not to the pope singly, but to him assisted by assessors whom he named himself. The three bishops of Gaul are named in the letter as colleagues of Miltiades and Marcus, and it appears from Optatus that 15 Italian bishops were added to the conclave, summoned, we may suppose, by Miltiades himself, so that he might hear the case canonically in synod with the assistance of the Gallic assessors. The decisions of the conclave were duly transmitted to Constantine, whom they fully satisfied (Ep. Constant. ad vicar. Africae; ejusd. ad Episc. Syrac. -- Labbe, i. p.1445; Eus. H. E. x.5). Moved, however, by the continued complaints of Donatus and his party, he summoned the general synod of Arles (a.d.314) with a view to a final settlement. In these further proceedings the bp. of Rome does not appear to have been consulted by the emperor, or regarded as possessing any position of supremacy. Constantine, professing great reverence for the episcopate in general, and recognizing the right of the clergy to settle cases purely ecclesiastical, himself set in motion and regulated ecclesiastical proceedings, delegated their administration to such ecclesiastics as he chose, and certainly shewed no peculiar deference to the Roman see. Nor do we find any protest on the part of the church of his day against his mode of procedure.

The fact that the conclave under Miltiades met in the Lateran palace (in the house of the empress Fausta) is adduced by Baronius (A.D.312) as proving the tradition true that Constantine had made over that palace to the pope as a residence. But it is not known with any certainty when the popes came into permanent possession of the Lateran.

Miltiades was, in the time of St. Augustine, accused by African Donatists of having, as one of the presbyters of pope [414]MARCELLINUS, with him given up the sacred books and offered incense under the persecution of Diocletian. Augustine treats the whole charge as unsupported by documentary evidence, and probably a calumny; and we find no mention of any such charge against Miltiades during his life, when the party of Donatus was likely to have made a strong point of it had it been known of them. Further, in the conference with the Donatists held a.d.411 by order of the emperor Honorius the charge was alleged, but all proof of it broke down (Augustine, u.s.).

Miltiades was buried, as his predecessors since Pontianus till the commencement of persecution had been, in the cemetery of St. Callistus on the Appian Way. There also he had deposited the remains of his immediate predecessor Eusebius (Depos. Episc. Liber.). Yet neither of these two popes (according to early recensions of the Pontifical) lay in the old papal crypt of that cemetery, but each in a separate cubiculum apart from it. De Rossi supposes the approaches to the old crypt to have been blocked up by the Christians to save it from profanation; and the state in which the passages leading to it have been found confirms this supposition. He has identified positively the cubiculum of Eusebius, but that of Miltiades only conjecturally (see Northcote and Brownlow, Rom. Sotter. p.146). Miltiades was the last pope buried in this cemetery.

[J.B.-Y.]

Minucius Felix, Marcus
Minucius Felix, Marcus, one of the earliest and most pleasing of the Latin Christian apologists. His personal history can only be gathered from his own book. The earliest writer to mention him by name is Lactantius (Institut. v.1), who describes him as a lawyer, "non ignobilis inter causidicos loci," but Lactantius may be merely drawing a natural inference from the introduction to the book itself, where Minucius tells how he had taken advantage of the court holidays to leave Rome for Ostia, "ad vindimeam feriae judiciariam curam relaxaverant." St. Jerome three times mentions Minucius (Ep.48 ad Pammach. vol. i. p.221; Ep.70 ad Magnum, vol. i. p.427; de Vir. Illust. c.58, vol. ii. p.883), and describes him as "insignis causidicus Romani fori"; but it seems clear that Jerome drew this description from Lactantius, whom he quotes. It has been attempted to deduce the date of Minucius from the place which Jerome assigns him in his list of illustrious men; but there is no evidence that Jerome really knew more than we know ourselves. Still more may the same be said of Eucherius, who speaks of Minucius (Ep. ad Valer. in Patr. Lat. l.719). The gens Minucia was widely spread at Rome, and an inscription (Gruter, p.918) shows among its families one with the cognomen Felix.

The only extant work of Minucius is a dialogue entitled "Octavius," modelled on the philosophical works of Cicero, whose writings, particularly de Natura Deorum and de Divinatione, Minucius has carefully studied. Minucius recalls a conversation of his lately deceased friend Octavius which resulted in the conversion to Christianity of their common friend Caecilius. He tells how Octavius had come to Rome, and gives a charming description of the morning walk on the beach taken by the three friends after they had gone from Rome to Ostia, until at last they sat down for rest and serious discussion on large stones placed for protection of the baths. At the beginning of the walk the heathen Caecilius, as they were passing an image of Serapis, had saluted it, as was customary, by kissing hands, whereupon Octavius charged Minucius with culpable negligence in having allowed his friend to continue in such degrading superstition. Caecilius challenges Octavius to a formal dispute.. The little treatise then divides itself into two parts, containing first a lively attack by Caecilius on the Christian doctrines and practices, then a reply, about twice as long, by Octavius, refuting and retorting the heathen arguments. Each point of the attack is dealt with in order. Caecilius confesses himself vanquished, gladly ranging himself on the conquering side.

The following is an abstract of the arguments used by Caecilius on the heathen side. He censures the presumption of the Christians, who, though unlettered men, venture to pronounce positively on questions about which the greatest philosophers have doubted; he denies that there is any good ground for believing in the existence of a God, since the chance concourse of atoms will sufficiently account for the origin of the world, while the prosperity of the wicked and the misfortunes of the good shew that the world is governed by no Providence. Then shifting his ground, he urges the duty of worshipping the gods whom their ancestors had worshipped, and the folly of rejecting what universal experience and the consent of all nations had found to be salutary. Each nation had its peculiar god: the Romans, the most religious of all, worshipped gods of all nations, and so had attained the highest prosperity. The power of their deities bad been exhibited in many oracles and prodigies; only one or two philosophers had ventured to deny their agency, and one of these, Protagoras, had in consequence been banished by the Athenians. Was it not then deplorable that the gods should be assailed by men of the dregs of the people, who, collecting credulous women and silly men, banded them in a fearful conspiracy, cemented by secret and detestable rites? Tales are repeated, for some of which the authority of Fronto is cited, of the initiation of Christian neophytes by partaking of the blood of a slaughtered infant, and other customary charges. If these things were not true, at least the obscurity in which they shrouded their rites shewed that they were such as they had cause to be ashamed of. These members of an illegal society dreaded to bring their doctrines into the light of day; they had no altars, no temples, no images, and were not even in their manner of worship like the Jews, the only people besides themselves who worshipped that wretched lonely God Who had not been able to save His own people from captivity; yet wished to meddle with everything and pry into every thought and every action. Nor was this the only absurdity of Christian doctrine. They threatened destruction to the world, which always had lasted and was bound together by fixed laws, and said that one day it would be burnt up. Yet for themselves, who were not eternal like the world, but were seen to be born and die, they dared to hope for immortality, and expect that their dust and ashes would live again. In the prospect of this imaginary life they gave up all enjoyment of their real present life, trusting in a God Whose impotence was exhibited in their daily sufferings from which He was unable to save His worshippers. In fine, if the Christians had any modesty, let them give up philosophy, of which their want of education had made them incapable; or if they must philosophize, let them fallow that greatest of philosophers, Socrates, whose maxim was, "What is above us we have nothing to do with," otherwise the result will be either the destruction of all religion or the adoption of anile superstition.

Octavius replies that a hearing shall not be refused to the arguments of Christians because of their low worldly condition. Reason is the common property of all men. It is the rich who, intent on their wealth, are too often unable to lift their eyes to things divine. Some of those afterwards recognized as the greatest philosophers were at first despised as poor and plebeian. He then establishes, by the ordinary arguments from the order of the universe, the existence and providence and unity of God, confirming his conclusions by the authority of various philosophers, whose opinions respecting the Deity he extracts from Cicero's treatise. In proof how natural is the belief in God's unity, he appeals to the common use of the singular Deus, both in common speech and in the writings of the poets. He shews that the gods whom the heathen worshipped were but deified men, and exposes the absurdity of the fables commonly told of them, the folly of image-worship, and the cruelty and licentiousness of the rites by which the gods were honoured. He shews that it is false that the Romans owed their prosperity to their religion, since it was by a multitude of irreligious acts that their empire grew, and because their original native gods, to whom, if to any, must be ascribed the origin of their greatness, had been deposed from their position by the adoption of gods of the conquered peoples. He traces the source of all idolatry to the operation of the demons who, having lost their first estate, desired to draw others into the same ruin as themselves, who inspired oracles, wrought fictitious cures and other pretended miracles to deceive men, and were also the inventors and instigators of the calumnies against Christianity. All this was attested by their own confession when exorcised by Christians. Turning to the charges made against the Christians, Octavius not only denies and refutes them, but retorts them on the heathen, who had been the more ready to believe that others had been guilty of them because they had done the like themselves. If the Christians had not temples, or images, or altars, it was because they would not degrade the majesty of the infinite God by limiting Him to a narrow place. Man himself was God's best image, a holy life the best sacrifice that could be offered Him. God is invisible, but so is the wind whose effects we witness; so is our own soul; the sun itself, the source of all light, we cannot look at. As for the Christian doctrines which Caecilius had represented as absurd and incredible, different heathen philosophers had taught a future destruction of the world by fire or otherwise; some of them had taught a transmigration of souls, a doctrine quite as difficult as that of the resurrection of the body and less natural. The doctrine of a future life is recommended by countless analogies of nature; and though men whose lives are bad dislike to believe in future retribution, and prefer to think that death ends all, yet the current popular belief in Pyriphlegethon and Styx, a belief derived from information given by demons and from the Jewish prophets, shews how deep-seated is the conviction that the time will come when it shall not be well with the wicked. Nor is it to be thought that God deals ill with His worshippers because He does not give them a larger share of prosperity in this life: the Christians do not covet earthly riches; they look on trials as their discipline, persecutions as their warfare, in which they are not deserted by their God, but combat under His eye. The Romans honour with their praises such sufferers as Mucius Scaevola and Regulus, yet the heroism of these men has been repeatedly surpassed by that of Christian women and children. Lastly, we need not be disturbed by the failure of sceptical philosophers to arrive at any certain knowledge of truth. These men's lives gave the lie to their professions of wisdom; we, whose excellence is in life and not merely in word, may boast that we have succeeded in finding what they sought in vain, and have only cause for gratitude that a revelation was reserved for our hands which was denied to them.

It will be seen how meagre Minucius is in his exposition of Christian doctrine, thus differing from all the other apologists. The doctrines of the unity of God, the resurrection of the body, and future retribution make up nearly the whole of the system of Christian doctrine which he sets forth. The doctrine of the Logos, so prominent in the apologies of Justin, Athenagoras, and Tertullian, is absent; our Lord's name is not mentioned, and though from the manner in which Octavius repels the charge that the Christians worshipped a man who had been punished for his crimes, it may reasonably be inferred that he believed our Lord to be more than man, yet this is not plainly stated. Minucius clearly shews that the topics he omits are excluded, not from disbelief in, or ignorance of, them, but from a designed limitation of the objects of his work, because at the end, when Caecilius has declared himself satisfied on the main questions of the existence of God and of Providence and of the general truth of the Christian religion, he asks for another conversation, not because of remaining doubts, but because he desires to be taught other things still necessary to perfect instruction. It cannot be accident that Minucius does not imitate the entire unreserve with which Justin speaks of Christian doctrines and Christian rites. The work of Minucius was doubtless intended mainly to influence intelligent heathen; and we must infer that in the West at least the feeling prevailed when Minucius wrote which made Christians fear to cast their pearls before swine. One striking difference between Minucius and Justin is the former's complete omission of the argument from prophecy, yet the inspiration of the Jewish prophets is incidentally recognized (c.35). Minucius never mentions the writings of either O. or N. T., and has scarcely any coincidence of language with them. There is (c.29) an echo of Jer. xvii.5, and perhaps (c.34) of I. Cor. xv.36, 42.

His date is generally agreed to have been before 250, somewhere about which time Cyprian published his de Idolorum Vanitate, in which large use is made of Minucius. A nearer limit depends on settling the relation of Minucius to Tertullian. His dialogue and the apology of Tertullian have in common so many arguments, sometimes in nearly the same words, that one of the two undoubtedly used the work of the other, but as to which was the follower critics have held opposite opinions. The difficulty is mainly caused by the excellent use both writers have made of their materials, whencesoever obtained, and the thoroughness with which they have incorporated them. We have already shewn the perfect workmanship of the dialogue of Minucius. Tertullian's Apology is equally excellent, though its plan is entirely different. It is an advocate's speech, written for presentation to heathen magistrates to convince them that Christians did not deserve persecution. It is more loosely constructed, and evidently more hastily written, than that of Minucius, but bears a strong stamp of originality. Many points briefly touched on in Minucius are expanded in Tertullian, so that either Minucius has abridged Tertullian or Tertullian has used and developed the suggestions of Minucius. This has furnished the best argument for the priority of Tertullian. Tertullian, it has been said, is one of the most original of writers, Minucius quite the reverse. We have already mentioned his obligations to Cicero; his work is also largely indebted to Seneca, besides containing traces of Juvenal and other writers. Is it not, then, most natural to believe that as he has drawn his arguments for Theism from Cicero, he has taken his defence of Christianity from Tertullian? In the common matter there are considerable differences as to arrangement and form of expression. If Tertullian were the original, Minucius would have a change of arrangement forced on him by the plan of his work, while the changes in form of expression either improve the Latinity or make the sentence more pointed; whereas if Minucius were the original, Tertullian's changes can hardly have any other object than to disguise his obligation. Notwithstanding, a very careful comparison of the common matter led Ebert (K. Sächs. Ges. der Wissenschaften; philol.-histor. Classe, Bd. v.) to consider Minucius the original, and Ebert's ability in arguing the case obtained for a time general acceptance of his opinion. But recently new evidence has been obtained. The dialogue would seem to describe Minucius as a native of Cirta and fellow-townsman of Fronto, of whom he speaks as "Cirtensis noster," while Octavius refers to him as "Fronto tuus." Now at Cirta (Constantine in Algeria) the French have found six inscriptions containing the name of Caecilius Natalis (Mommsen, Lat. Insc. viii.6996 and 7094-7098). This Caecilius was chief magistrate of Cirta in 210, and on the completion of five years of office raised at his own expense a triumphal arch in honour of Caracalla, brazen statues in honour of "Indulgentia domini nostri," exhibited "ludos scenicos" for seven days, and in other ways exhibited munificence. See an art. by Dessau (Hermes, 1880, p.471). We see no good reason for refusing to identify this Caecilius Natalis with the Caecilius of the dialogue. He is not likely to have been a Christian when discharging the functions just described; the conversation related by Minucius would therefore have occurred somewhat later than 215; and the composition itself might be a score of years later. We thus fall back on the opinion held by the best critics before the publication of Ebert's memoir, that the work of Minucius was written in the peaceful days of Alexander Severus, say a.d.234.

A useful ed. is in Gersdorf's Bibl. Pat. Ecc. (Leipz.1847), one with variorum notes in vol. iii. of Migne's Patr. Lat., an excellent one by Holden (Camb.1853),and one by Halm (Vienna, 1867) founded on a new collation of the MS., which may therefore be regarded as the best authority for the text, but contains only critical notes. See also Waltzing, Bibliographie raisonnée de Min. Fel. in Muséon Belge (1902), vi. pp.216 ff.; also G. Bossier in La fin du Paganisme, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1898), i.261. There is an English trans. in the Lib of Ante-Nic. Fathers.

[G.S.]

Miro
Miro (Mirio, Mirus), king of the Suevi in Spain, 570-583.

Authorities. -- Greg. Tur. Hist. Franc. v.42, vi.43; Joannes Bicl. ap. Esp. Sagr. v.377, 380, 383; Isid. Hist. Suev. ib.506; Acts of the second council of Braga; Tejada y Ramiro, Colecc. de Lan. de la Igl. Esp. ii.620; Formula Honestae Vitae, by Martin of Braga; Pref. Esp. Sagr. xv.383.

Miro represents a period in the history of the Suevian kingdom of Gallicia, when, having renounced the Arianism imposed upon them in the 5th cent. by their then existing relations to the Visigoths, the Suevi entered into alliance with the Franks on the one hand and probably the Eastern empire on the other, with the view of checking the power of the Arian West-Gothic king [415]LEOVIGILD, which at the beginning of Miro's reign threatened the absorption of the Suevian state in the kingdom of Toledo, a result actually achieved two years after Miro's death. The known facts of his reign, which although few in number are often contradictorily given by the authorities, are as follows. In 572 the second council of Braga, a kind of supplementary council to the more important gathering of 561 [[416]MARTINUS (2)] was held, and the king is specially mentioned as contributing to its assembly. In the same year Miro conducted an expedition against the Ruccones in Cantabria, one of the restless Basque tribes, with whom Suevi and Goths alike were perpetually at war. Four years later Miro's great West-Gothic contemporary Leovigild appeared on the borders of Gallicia. Miro sued for peace, and obtained it for a short time. In 580 the Catholic rebellion of [417]HERMENIGILD against his father Leovigild broke out, and the rebellious son became the centre of Frankish, Suevian, and Byzantine policy in the peninsula. In 580 we hear of envoys sent by Miro to Guntchramn of Burgundy, Leovigild's worst enemy, and intercepted and detained on the way by Leovigild's ally, Chilperic of Soissons. In 583 Miro set out from Gallicia at the head of an army destined to raise the siege of Seville, then closely invested by Leovigild. He was met on the way by Leovigild, and, according to Gregory of Tours, who is evidently best informed on the matter, withdrew homewards, and died shortly after from the effects of the bad air and water of S. Spain. The two Spanish sources, Joannes Biclarensis and Isidore, say that he died before Seville, and describe him as assisting Leovigild in the siege of the town. On the reconciliation of these conflicting accounts, cf. Dahn, Könige der Germanen, vi.571; and Görres, Kritische Untersuch. über den Aufstand und das Martyrium der Westgoth. Königssohnes Hermenigald, in Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.1873, I. Miro's relations to Martin of Braga, the Catholic leader and organizer of Gallicia during his reign and that of his father, seem to have been intimate and friendly. Martin's principal work, Formula Vitae Honestae, is dedicated to him, and the Exhortatio Humilitatis, printed among Martin's works, is also probably addressed to him (Esp. Sagr. xv. Appendix).

[M.A.W.]

Modestus
Modestus (3), prefect of the Praetorium, persecutor of the Catholics under the emperor Valens (Socr. iv.16; Soz. vi.18; Theod. H. E. iv.18; Tillem. vi.510, 555, 562, 574), who commissioned him to offer Basil the choice between deposition and communion with the Arians. A severe sickness having supervened, which he regarded as a judgment for his insolent behaviour, he entreated Basil to visit his sick-bed, humbly asked pardon, and commended himself to his prayers. Attributing his recovery to St. Basil's intercessions, he regarded him with the greatest reverence (Greg. Naz. pp.352, 353). From this time Basil's influence with Modestus was so great that persons came from a great distance to request letters from him to the prefect. Six of these remain (Basil. Epp.104 [279], 110 [277], 111 [276], 279 [274], 280 [275], 281 [278]), in which Basil claims immunity from taxes for all ministers of the church, begs for a lessening of the taxes for the impoverished inhabitants of the Taurus range, commends to him a friend. summoned to the capital by legal charges, etc. Basil addresses Modestus with the respect due to his high official position, and expresses much gratitude for his readiness to listen to his requests.

[E.V.]

Monnica
Monnica, St. The name of this most celebrated of Christian mothers is spelt thus (not Monica) in the oldest MSS. of the writings of St. Augustine.

Her birthplace, nowhere explicitly named, may be assumed to be Tagaste, the home of her husband, Patricius. Her family was, probably, like his in point of social grade, curialis (Possidii Vita Aug. c.2) -- i.e. contributed a member or members to the senate of the colonia. Her parents' names are not known. They were consistent Christians; their home was (Conf. ix.8) "domus fidelis, bonum membrum Ecclesiae." Monnica was born 331 or 332. Her early domestic training was pure and severe, under the strong hand of an aged and trusted Christian nurse, who had once carried the child's father in her arms. By her Monnica and her sisters (no brothers are mentioned) were taught to abstain entirely from drinking even water between meal-times, with the aim of guarding them beforehand against habits of intemperance when, after marriage, they should become "dominae apothecarum et cellariorum" (ib.). Yet Monnica, when scarcely past her early childhood, was on the verge of a confirmed love of wine, as she confessed long after to her son (ib.). She was married, at what age we know not, to Patricius of Tagaste, "vir curialis"; a man passionate ("ferox"), immoral, and not formally a member of the church; perhaps what would now be called an "adherent." [102] With him Monnica lived patiently and faithfully, till at the age of 40 she was left a widow, tenderly attached to his memory, and longing to be laid at death in his grave (ib. ix.11). He was rough and eager, but not ungenerous; and she was permitted to win him to the Saviour before his end. A curious picture of the manners of that time and region appears (ib. ix.9) when Monnica, surrounded by her married female friends, and seeing on some of them, "quarum viri mansuetiores erant [Patricio]," the marks of blows, inflicted even on their faces, counselled them to adopt, for protection, her own method of calm and unwavering submission. The mother of Patricius was an inmate of the home, and her also Monnica completely won to respect and affection, in spite of the slanders of the female slaves, by a union of filial obedience with vigour as a mistress.

She bore children more than once, for Augustine not only mentions a brother expressly (ib. ix.11, etc.) but was the uncle of many nephews and nieces (Vita Benedictina Aug. c. i.). Augustine was born when Monnica was 23 years old, and when, as we gather from his language about her whole influence, she was already a Christian in the noblest sense, strong in the power of spiritual holiness, and ardently prayerful for the salvation of her child, and therefore for his personal acceptance of the faith. It is a sign of the popular Christian opinion and usage at the time that she did not bring him as an infant to baptism but merely to the initiation of a catechumen (Conf. i.11; vi.16), the sign of the cross and the salting with salt. She evidently thought that baptism required evidence of a previous true change of will. [103] In early boyhood, in extreme illness, he implored to be baptized, and she hastened to procure it; but on his sudden recovery again resolved to delay (ib. i.11).

Monnica joined cordially with Patricius in securing the highest education for Augustine and in stimulating his studies; and even during her widowhood made every effort to maintain him in them. But his impurity and unbelief caused her agonizing distress, aggravated by his cynical conduct. For a time she declined his presence beneath her roof and at her table, "aversans et detestans blasphemias [filii]" (ib. iii.11); but a memorable dream altered her decision. She saw a radiant being ("juvenum splendidum, hilarem, atque arridentem sibi") approach her as she stood on a wooden beam ("regula") bewailing her son's spiritual ruin; and he bade her be consoled, for where she was, there too her son should be. Augustine suggested that this might portend his mother's unbelief; but she instantly rejoined that the words were not "Where he is, there thou shaft be." This was nine years before his conversion. About the same time she received the well-known consolation from a bishop, wearied ("substomachans taedio") with her entreaties that he would reason with her son: "Go, prythee; the son of those tears cannot perish" (ib.12).

She sorely bewailed Augustine's resolve to migrate to Italy, and would not leave his side; and when he escaped her, affecting to bid a friend good-bye on board ship and persuading her to spend the night in a chapel dedicated to Cyprian, she would not give him up. Beside herself with grief (ib. v.8), she took ship and followed him, and on a stormy voyage consoled the terrified sailors, assuring them that she had seen a vision which promised safety (ib. vi.1). Augustine arrived before her at Milan, and was already under the influence of Ambrose, but not yet won to the orthodox faith ("non manichaeus, sed neque catholicus christianus"); but she calmly assured him of her certainty that she should see him a believer before she died (ib.).

The ministrations of Ambrose she attended with great and reverent delight ("diligebat illum virum sicut angelum Dei"), and gave a striking proof of her feeling in submitting at once to his judgment on a point that must have touched her nearly. She had been used to bring oblations of vegetables, bread, and wine to the shrines of the African martyrs, and began the like practice at Milan. But Ambrose had forbidden the usage, partly because it was much abused to intemperance, partly (a significant fact) because it so closely resembled the pagan parentalia. Augustine owns that probably his mother would have obeyed none but Ambrose in such a case; to him, however, she yielded without a murmur. Ambrose fully understood Monnica's strength of Christian character and delighted to praise her to her son (ib. vi.2). At Milan she was a most devout and diligent worshipper; liberal in alms; daily attending the Eucharist ("nullum diem praetermittebat oblationem ad altare [Domini]"), and was twice daily in the church, not to gossip there ("non ad vanas fabulas et aniles loquacitates") but to hear the word and pray (ib. v.9). During the struggle of Ambrose with the Arian empress-mother Justina (385) Monnica was the most devout among the host of worshippers who gathered for vigils and prayers in the church (ib. ix.7). The hymns of Ambrose she greatly loved, and treasured in her memory; the dialogue de Beatâ Vitâ closes with some noble words from Monnica, introduced by a quotation from the hymn "Fove precantes, Trinitas."

The final crisis of her son's conversion was instantly reported to her by Augustine and Alypius, to her extreme delight (ib. viii.12), though it involved not only his baptism but his acceptance of a life of celibacy. Between his conversion and baptism she retired with him to Cassiciacum, the campagna of his friend Verecundus. The dialogues de Ordine and de Beatâ Vitâ give a charming picture of this retirement, spent in holy intercourse and in lofty thought lighted up with eternal truth. Monnica appears as an interlocutor in both dialogues, conspicuous for strength of native sense, and occasionally speaking with a vigour and spirit evidently reported from the life; a woman who might have shone at any period for intellectual gifts. "We fairly forgot her sex, and thought that some great man was in our circle" (de B. V. § 10). At the close of the dialogue she speaks of the bliss of the Eternal Vision: "This beyond dispute is the blessed life, the perfect; at which we must look to be enabled to arrive, hastening on in solid faith, joyful hope, and burning love " (ib. ad fin.). In the dialogue de Ordine Augustine speaks of his mother's "ingenium, atque in res divinas inflammatus animus" (ii. § 1).

She was now near the end. Her son, an orthodox believer, was about to return with her to Africa. They were lodging at Ostia, and making the last preparations for the voyage (Conf. ix.10). Augustine records a conversation with his mother as they sat at a window looking on the viridarium of the house -- a delightful colloquy ("colloquebamur soli valde dulciter"), rising from theme to theme of subtle but holy thought to the height of the beatific vision. The "colloquy" was surely no mere monologue on Augustine's part, if he has drawn his mother truly in his two dialogues. It closed with a solemn utterance from her: "she had done with the wish to live; her son was a believer, and fully consecrated; what did she there?" (ib.). Five days later she was taken ill ("decubuit febribus"), and at once recognized the end. Her long-cherished wish to lie in the grave of Patricius was gone. "Nothing," she said, "is far from God. There is no fear lest He, at the last day, should not know whence to raise me up." "So on the ninth day of her illness, in the 56th year of her age, and in the 33rd of my own, that devout and saintly soul was released from the body." She died in the presence of Augustine, of another son, of her grandson Adeodatus, so soon to follow her, and of many others ("omnes nos") (ib.11, 12).

Augustine's grief was great. The burial was tearless ("cum ecce corpus elatum est, imus redimus sine lacrymis"), but another time of anguish followed, and a vain effort for relief at the bath. Then sleep came and a calmer waking, and now Augustine, like his blessed mother, found help in an Ambrosian hymn, "Deus creator omnium," and at last could weep calmly. He records his prayers for the departed soul, and begs those of the reader.

Monnica's character was equally strong, lively, and tender by nature and refined by grace to extraordinary elevation. Augustine lavishes his unique eloquence upon her heavenly tone of life and influence and the intensity of her longings for the salvation of the souls she loved. He calls her his mother both in the flesh and in the Lord. His whole being was due, under God, to Monnica. Christians who knew her " dearly loved her Lord in her, for they felt His presence in her heart " (ib.10). She was an eager student of the Scriptures (de Ord. i. § 32). In Brieger's Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. i. p.228, is printed (from Riese's Anthologia Latina, fasc. ii. p.127) an epitaph on Monnica, bearing the name of Bassus, ex-consul; probably Anicius Bassus, consul a.d.408, and therefore a contemporary of Augustine's. The lines are:

In tumulo Monicae. (sic.)

Hic posuit cineres genetrix castissima prolis

Augustine tui altera lux meriti,

Qui servans pacis caelestia jura sacerdos

Commissos populos moribus instituis.

Gloria vos major gestorum laude coronat

Virtutum mater felicior subolis.

In the last couplet Monnica and her son are, apparently, addressed together. The pentameter apostrophizes Monnica as "Mother of Virtues," and Augustine as her yet "happier offspring"; happier, it may be, as a celibate saint. This epitaph is an interesting proof of the religious reverence accorded from the first to Monnica. Brieger's Zeitschrift also mentions the translation of the bones of Monnica from Ostia to Rome, in 1430, in the reign of Martin V., and at the expense of Mapheus Veghius. The relics were deposited in a chapel dedicated on the occasion to Augustine, and on the sarcophagus were inscribed the following lines, a curious and instructive advance upon the older epitaph in their ascription of mediatorial powers to Monnica:

Hic Augustini sanctam venerare parentem,

Votaque fer tumulo, quo jacet illa, sacro.

Quae quondam gnato, toti nunc Monica mundo

Succurrit precibus, praestat opemque suis. [104]

This translation is dated, in the Roman Martyrology, April 9. Monnica appears as a saint in the Roman calendar, Sancta Monica vidua, Apr.4, and not infrequently as a figure in medieval art. Scheffer's picture, painted 1845, "St. Augustin et sa mère," gives a noble modern realization of Monnica.

Together 'neath the Italian heaven

They sit, the mother and her son,

He late from her by errors riven,

Now both in Jesus one:

The dear consenting hands are knit,

And either face, as there they sit,

Is lifted as to something seen

Beyond the blue serene.

Such, we believe, is the ordinary interpretation of the picture; as if it represented the colloquy at Ostia. But an interesting passage in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, p.314, seems to shew that Scheffer had in view some moment before Augustine's conversion; perhaps that recorded Conf. vi.1, when Monnica assures Augustine that she should yet see him a believer.

[H.C.G.M.]

Monoimus
Monoimus (a form, possibly representing the Jewish name Menaham), an Arabian Gnostic of 2nd cent. His name had been only preserved by a brief notice in Theodoret (Haer. Fab. i.18) until the recovery of the lost work of Hippolytus against heresies shewed that from this work Theodoret derived his knowledge. Hippolytus gives a short abstract of the doctrine of Monoimus and an extract from a letter of his to one Theophrastus. The system described might at first seem one of mere pantheism; but a closer examination shews Christian elements in it, so that it is rightly classed as a heresy, and not as a form of heathenism. There is an express quotation from Colossians and a probable reference to the prologue of St. John's Gospel. The starting-point of the speculation is the ascription in N.T. of the work of creation to the Son of Man, whence it was inferred that the first principle was properly called Man. It follows that it is a mistake to look for God in creation; we must seek Him in ourselves, and can best find him by the study of the involuntary operations of our own soul. The relation between the "Man" and "Son of Man" exists from beyond time. The latter is derived from the former, but, it would seem, by an immediate and eternal necessity of His nature, just as from fire is necessarily derived the light which renders it visible. Thus, concerning the first principle, the Scriptures speak both of a "being" and a "becoming" (en kai egeneto), the first word properly applying to the "Man," the second to the "Son of Man." The speculations of Monoimus, as reported to us, relate only to the creation; we are told of none as to redemption.

His use of the phrases "Man" and "Son of Man" reminds us of the system of the Naassenes (Hippol. Ref. § 7; see also our art. [418]GNOSTICISM), and a closer examination shews that Monoimus is really to be referred to that sect, although Hippolytus has classed them separately; for Monoimus describes his first principle as bisexual, and applies to it the titles "Father, Mother, the two immortal names," words taken out of a Naassene hymn. But there is a common source of this language in the Apophasis megale of Simon, this passage also being clearly the original of the description given by Monoimus of the contradictory attributes of his first principle. Further traces of the obligations of Monoimus to Simon are found in the reference to the six powers instrumental in creation, which answer to Simon's six "roots," while a similar indebtedness to Simon on the part of the Naassene writer in Hippolytus is found on comparing the anatomical speculations connected with the name Eden (v.9; vi.14). It is more doubtful whether there is any relation of obligation between Monoimus and the Clementine Homilies; both contrast "the Son of Man" with those "born of women" (Hom. ii.17). Monoimus has mysteries in connexion with the number 14, shewing that he attached importance to Paschal celebration.

[G.S.]

Monophysitism
Monophysitism. The passionate protest raised in Egypt against the heresy of [419]NESTORIUS, supported as it was by court influence, was carried so far that it led to a strong reaction. The Nestorian heresy was condemned because it tended to separate Christ into two beings, one God and the other man, and to regard the inhabitation of the latter by the former as differing in degree only from the inhabitation by the Deity, of the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Dispensation. The cruel persecution of Nestorius himself (who, though he undoubtedly went too far in some of his statements, was willing to qualify many of them), the harsh treatment of the learned and holy Theodoret, and the forcible suppression of the teaching of the Syrian school, produced great indignation, and when the emperor Theodosius II. died, and was succeeded in 450 by Marcian, the reaction against Monophysitism broke out all the more fiercely in consequence of the violence and long duration of these measures of repression. Cyril had died in 444, and had been succeeded by Dioscorus, a man of equally violent passions and uncharitable spirit, but of far less self-control and diplomatic skill. Cyril had himself been guilty of confounding the divine and human natures of Christ as completely as Nestorius had been guilty of dividing them, and as long as he and Theodosius II. survived, what was afterwards condemned as Monophysite heresy was in the ascendant. Extremes very frequently meet, and it was not unfairly contended that Cyril, when he insisted on the personal supremacy of the Logos over the Manhood, had practically divided the Person of Christ as much as Nestorius had, when he taught that the human nature was no more than a mere adjunct to the Godhead (Dorner, On the Person. of Christ, I. div. ii. pp.67-71, where, however, there seems some "confusion of substance" in the way in which the author treats the question whether the Godhead could itself suffer pain, augmentation, or diminution through association with the manhood).

History of the Controversy. -- When Theodosius and Cyril, with the aid of Rabbulas, endeavoured altogether to suppress the Syrian school in the East, considerable resistance was offered. As early as 435 Cyril had begun to resume his attacks on the reputation of Diodorus and Theodore. Even the patriarch Proclus [[420]NESTORIUS] endeavoured to moderate the violence of Cyril's methods. John of Antioch informed the latter that the Syrian bishops would rather be burned than condemn their great teacher Theodore. The emperor was prevailed upon to forbid further proceedings, and Cyril himself found it necessary to yield. But he kept up the irritation by writing a treatise on the oneness of Christ's Person, to which Theodoret felt bound to reply, so that though repressive measures were abandoned, the controversy continued. Dioscorus, Cyril's successor, was not inclined to let it drop. He intrigued at Constantinople, and encouraged two monks named [421]EUTYCHES, and Barsumas to insist on something which approached very near to the absorption of the Manhood by the Godhead of Christ. Theodoret came forward once more (447) with his Eranistes (contributor to a club repast), a work in which he contended that the Logos was atreptos (unchangeable), asunchutos (i.e. His two natures were incapable of being confounded), and apathes (i.e. the Godhead was incapable of suffering). Dioscorus next wrote to the patriarch of Antioch accusing Theodoret of Nestorianism; and when Theodoret defended himself with temper and moderation, pointing out that he had condemned those who had denounced the term theotokos and divided the Person of Christ, and appealing to the authority of Alexander, Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory, Dioscorus encouraged his monks to anathematize Theodoret openly in the church (448). By imperial decree Theodoret was ordered to keep in his own diocese, and not to cause synods to be summoned at Antioch or elsewhere. Just then a synod was held at Constantinople (448), under the patriarch Flavian (who had lately succeeded Proclus, and who is sometimes confounded with Flavian of Antioch, who died c.408), for the dispatch of general business, and Eusebius, bp. of Dorylaeum in Phrygia, brought a complaint against the abbot Eutyches as a disturber of the public peace. Flavian bade him visit Eutyches; for Eutyches, like Dalmatius, had gained great credit for piety by never leaving his cell. Eusebius declined to do this, and Eutyches, when summoned, refused to come forth. When he found that he was about to be condemned for contumacy, he came forth, but brought a large assembly of monks, notables, and even soldiers in his train. By this means he secured a safe return to his monastery, but his adversaries continued to attack him, and to charge him with calling Christ's Body God's Body, and with asserting that It was not homoousion with other bodies. When questioned, he denied that our Lord possessed two natures after His Incarnation. He was therefore deposed and excommunicated. The party of Eutyches had recourse to court intrigue, and the empress Eudocia contrived to deprive her sister-in-law Pulcheria, who favoured Flavian, of all her influence with the emperor. Eutyches next demanded a new trial, but though the emperor granted his request, Flavian refused to revise the sentence. Eutyches then, relying on the support of Dioscorus and the emperor, and also of Leo of Rome, whose predecessor had condemned Nestorius, appealed to an oecumenical council. But he tried to secure his safety by declaring his willingness to confess the two natures intheone Christ, if Dioscorus and Leo of Rome should require it. Flavian wished the matter to remain as it had been settled at Constantinople, but he was overruled, and a synod called together at Ephesus in 449.

Of this synod Dioscorus, not Flavian, was appointed president, and Flavian was present rather as an accused person than as a judge. The violence displayed at it by Dioscorus and his party caused it to be universally rejected by the Catholic church. It obtained the name of the Synod of Brigands, or Robber Synod (Latrocinium), which it has ever since retained. By trickery and tumult the bishops were forced to declare that there was but one nature in Christ, and the patriarch Flavian was so roughly handled at the council that he died shortly after of the injuries he had received. Flavian and Eusebius of Dorylaeum were deposed. Domnus of Antioch yielded to the clamour, in spite of the warnings of Theodoret,but he also was afterwards deposed. Theodoret was exiled to the monastery in which he had been brought up. For fuller details of this synod see [422]DIOSCORUS; [423]EUTYCHES. Within a few months, however, the situation underwent a great change. Theodosius died (450), and was succeeded by Marcian. The new emperor had previously espoused Pulcheria, who had contrived to regain her influence over the deceased emperor before his death, and who had already honoured the remains of the martyred patriarch Flavian with a public funeral. The bishops who had disgraced themselves by their craven submission to the decrees of the "Robber
Synod" -- "chameleons," as Theodoret calls them -- now further disgraced themselves by as sudden a recantation. Leo, who had sent four representatives to Ephesus, had by this time learned from them the true history of the proceedings there. One of them, Hilary the deacon, had made a formal protest against these proceedings. Hilary had also taken with him from Ephesus the appeal of Flavian for a rehearing of the case in Italy. Leo now determined, if possible, to decide the question himself. As in the Arian, so in the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies, the West displayed a marked capacity for seizing on the salient points of the question at issue, which the Easterns often failed to grasp in consequence of their taste for metaphysical subtleties. Leo himself was a man "of strong character, undaunted courage, and clear, practical understanding," though "more skilled in liturgical than in theological questions" (Dorner). He was also by no means averse from making these controversies a means for increasing the prestige of his see. Socrates (H. E. vii.7, 12) has remarked on the use which the patriarchs of Rome and Alexandria alike were making at this period of all opportunities of adding to their secular importance. Accordingly Leo held several synods at Rome in which the decrees of the "Robber Synod" were rejected. And even before the assembling of that synod he had written his celebrated letter to Flavian which, though suppressed at Ephesus, was afterwards read at Chalcedon, and accepted as an accurate statement of the doctrine handed down from the first in the church. He now made use of Flavian's appeal to him to procure the assembling of a council at Rome. But the emperor was too politic to permit this, and sent out letters for a council to be held at Nicaea. Such serious riots, however, broke out there that the emperor ultimately resolved to assemble it at Chalcedon, on the opposite side of the Bosphorus to Constantinople, where he could more easily prevent disturbances. There 630 bishops assembled. Leo now pretended that it was not only contrary to ecclesiastical custom, but derogatory to his dignity, for him to be present at the council. He further claimed to exercise the presidency through his five delegates, but his claim was not admitted, and Anatolius, the new patriarch of Constantinople, was associated with the absent Leo in the office of president. The delegates of Leo protested against Dioscorus being allowed to sit with his brother-patriarchs, considering the very serious imputations under which he lay, and they stated that unless their demands were acceded to, they would withdraw from the council. It should be remarked in passing that the presence and action of Leo's delegates dispose of the objections some theologians and historians have made against the oecumenical character of the synod. Eusebius of Dorylaeum now demanded that his petition against Dioscorus should be read. It was couched in the following striking terms (so Evagr. H. E. ii.4): "I have been wronged by Dioscorus; the faith has been wronged; the bishop Flavian has been murdered, and, together with myself, unjustly deposed by him. Give directions that my petition is to be read." It was read accordingly. Eusebius is further declared by Evagrius (ii.2) to have accused Dioscorus to the emperor of having personally inflicted the injuries of which Flavian died. Dioscorus was convicted of having suppressed Leo's letter to Flavian at the "Robber Synod"; he was deposed; the bishops deposed by him -- Theodoret and Ibas among them -- were reinstated; and Leo's letter to Flavian accepted by the council amid loud shouts of "Peter has spoken by Leo; Cyril and Leo teach alike." Dioscorus was deposed, but permission was given to the Egyptian bishops to defer their subscription to the Acts of the synod until their new patriarch had been consecrated. Eutyches also was condemned. The proceedings of the council were decidedly tumultuous. One day Theodoret was howled down by the Egyptian bishops; the day after Dioscorus met with a similar reception from the Syrian bishops. Some of the laity who were present as representatives of the emperor openly remarked on the unseemliness of such conduct on the part of bishops. The treatment of the venerable Theodoret was especially unseemly. The reason for which he was howled down was his refusal to anathematize Nestorius until he had an opportunity of explaining his position, though this was the position eventually accepted by the Catholic church at large -- namely, the rejection at once of the doctrine of two hypostases, and of the doctrine of only one nature, in Christ. It was only in consequence of the emperor's intervention that the reception of Theodoret by the council was secured.

The resolution first proposed to the synod was not adopted, it being considered too favourable to the party of Dioscorus. The Roman delegates threatened to leave the council unless Leo's letter were accepted as an authoritative statement of doctrine. If this were not done, they intimated that the question should be settled at Rome. As many points of importance connected with the relations between the churches of the East and of the West remained unsettled, especially the question of the status of the patriarch of Constantinople, some of the Eastern prelates feared the prolongation of these disputes which would result from the retirement of Leo's representatives. Therefore, though not without many energetic protests, Leo's letter was recognized, at the request of the emperor, and a definition of doctrine in accordance with that letter was drawn up. The synod first recognized the creed put forth at Nicaea (325), and next the enlarged form of it adopted at Constantinople (381). Whether such a creed was actually promulgated at Constantinople has been disputed of late. But much of the evidence existing in 451 has disappeared, and it seems hardly safe to conclude from the silence of contemporary writers that the 630 bishops at Chalcedon had been misinformed on so vital a point. The synod went on to condemn the vain babblings (kenophonias) of those who denied to the Virgin the title of theotokos, as well as those who, on the other hand, affirmed a confusion and mixture (sunchusin kai krasin) in Christ, under the foolish impression that there could be one nature (consisting) of the Flesh and the Deity in Him, and who, in consequence of (this) confusion, resorted to the amazing suggestion that the divine nature of the Only-begotten was capable of suffering. After having formally accepted Leo's treatise as in conformity with this statement, the decree went on to declare that Jesus Christ was "Perfect in Godhead and Perfect in Manhood, truly God and truly Man; that He was possessed of a reasonable or rather rational (logikes) soul and body, of the same substance (homoousion) with the Father according to His Godhead, and of the same substance with us as regards His Manhood"; and that He is "to be recognized as existing in two natures, without confusion, without change, indivisibly, and inseparably (asunchutos, atreptos, adiairetos, achoristos), the distinction of the natures being in no way removed by their union, but rather the speciality (idiotes) of each nature being preserved, coalescing (suntrechouses) in one Person (prosopon) and one hypostasis, not divided nor separated into two Persons, but being one and the same Son, and Only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ." There can be no doubt that the decision thus promulgated was a sound one, and that, as Leo did not fail to remark pertinently more than once, the doctrines condemned at the two councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon pointed out two rocks on which the doctrine of Christ might be shipwrecked. "The Catholic church," he goes on to say, "could not teach the Humanity of Christ apart from His true Divinity, nor His Divinity without His true Humanity" (Letter to Flavian, c.5). Yet he did not feel compelled, as Dorner observes, to explain "the internal relations of the two natures." That was, and has remained, a mystery which the human intellect has been unable to unravel. All he had to do was to lay down the particular propositions which, when enunciated by too daring theologians, were in plain conflict with the express teaching of God's Word, and must therefore tend to mislead mankind on points essential to their salvation. The general reception of the via media laid down by the council, emphasised as it was at two subsequent councils held at Constantinople [see below and [424]NESTORIUS], leaves no doubt that it represents the mind of Christendom upon the point. This conclusion is further accentuated by the fact that, though some Nestorian and Monophysite communities continue to exist, even they are no longer unwilling to hold communion with those who receive the doctrines promulgated by the council on the questions at issue.

The resistance against the decrees of the council of Chalcedon has nevertheless been even more formidable than against those of Ephesus, and the communities still in existence which are separated from the church at large on the question of the decrees of Chalcedon are more numerous, less scattered, and more thoroughly organized than those called into existence by the decrees of Ephesus. Yet this can hardly be attributed to the more harmless character of Monophysitism, because as a fact the opinions advocated by Dioscorus and Eutyches were pushed to far greater extremes and far less carefully qualified than those expressed by theologians so competent as Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus. The survival, in forms so fully organized, of Monophysitism seems rather due to the break-up of the Roman empire, and the progressive decline of its political power, as well as to the spread of Mohammedanism in N. Africa and Armenia. In both cases the attempt at translation of Greek ideas into the Syrian and Egyptian vernacular had been an additional reason for the long continuance of the controversy.

A violent controversy at once sprung up, and a schism was organized, followed by violent disturbances. But it is notable that Dioscorus disappears from history after his deposition. His adversaries did not subject him to the same severities as those under which Nestorius perished. He had reason to be thankful that the fair-minded and gentle-hearted Theodoret was the leader of his opponents, and not the hard, intolerant, and relentless Cyril. Marcian contrived to restore order. But on his death fresh tumults arose. A rival patriarch, Timotheus Aelurus, was nominated, and Proterius, who had succeeded Dioscorus, was slain. The new emperor, Leo, deposed Timotheus. But the schism continued. The emperor Zeno next (482) issued his famous [425]HENOTICON, in which, while Nestorius and Eutyches were anathematized, twelve chapters (or selections) from the works of Cyril were accepted. But Zeno's manner of life evoked no enthusiasm, and Philoxenus -- favourably known to us as the patron of the Philoxenian-Syriac version of the Scriptures -- "Peter the clothier," and Severus, organized a formidable Monophysite party in Syria, Egypt, and Constantinople respectively. Justinian, emperor from 527-565, did his utmost to support the decrees of Chalcedon, while his consort, the famous, or, as some historians prefer to put it, the infamous, Theodora, did her best to thwart her husband, at the instance of some ecclesiastical intriguers who had contrived to worm themselves into her confidence. For the controversy of the "Three Chapters" see [426]NESTORIUS. Its result was to encourage Monophysitism, and that form of Christian belief rooted itself in Armenia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and ultimately in Abyssinia. The Coptic (the word Coptic is etymologically the same as Egyptian) church has remained as a separate body in Egypt to the present day. The Maronites in Armenia form another community which owes its existence to the Monophysite controversy. The Monophysites called their orthodox opponents Melchites, on the ground that they had accepted their opinions from the civil government and its head, the emperor; while the orthodox bestowed on their opponents the name of Jacobites, from Jacob of Edessa, an enthusiastic disseminator of Monophysite views.

It is unnecessary to follow out in full detail the history of the Monophysite schism. It only remains to mention that a reaction dating from the condemnation of the "Three Chapters" issued in Monotheletism, or the assertion of only one will in Christ. This controversy led to the summoning of a sixth oecumenical council at Constantinople in 680, in which Monotheletism was condemned, after having been anathematized at Rome, under Martin I., in 649. Communion between the East and the West had been broken off for some time on this point, and pope Honorius, like his predecessors Liberius and Vigilius, fell into suspicion of heresy in the course of the controversy. But the decision of the above-mentioned council restored the interrupted communion, and more friendly relations between the East and the West continued to subsist for above 300 years. The Coptic church, persecuted first by its orthodox sister, and afterwards by the Mohammedans, has obstinately maintained a precarious and downtrodden existence from the 6th cent. to the present moment. It has practically ceased to be heterodox, and in 1843 Proposals for union with the Orthodox church would have been carried into effect, but that when the Moslem Government heard of them, the Coptic patriarch was invited to take coffee with a prominent Government official, and went home to die of poison. Since the British occupation in 1882 the Coptic church has begun to emerge from its long period of depression. The lay Copts have become educated and even wealthy. Though but a seventh of the population, they own one-fifth of the property of their country. One of their number became prime minister -- the first Coptic prime minister for a very long period -- but was unfortunately murdered in an outburst of political and religious fanaticism early in 1910. Though the Coptic clergy are still ignorant and fanatical, and the aged patriarch refuses to take any steps towards their better education, the laity have extorted a permission from him for the appointment of a certain number of laity authorized to give instruction to their co-religionists on the truths of the Christian religion. The educated laity are decidedly friendly towards the Anglican church. Two missions to the Copts have been sent of late years from England, one in 1843 and the other in the last decade of the 19th cent. Neither of them were successful, and the Copts will probably be allowed for the future to carry out the much-needed reforms in their system in their own way. The Maronites of the Lebanon have remained apart from the Orthodox church of the East up to the present time, but the French political influence in the Lebanon since 1860 has caused a considerable number of them to join the church of Rome. The church of Abyssinia, though its Liturgy shows some beautiful traces of the purer ages of Christianity, has fallen into many superstitions and corruptions. Yet that church has had sufficient vitality to claim representation among the numerous churches and denominations which now gather at the cradle of Christianity, and not the least imposing religious edifice to be seen at Jerusalem is the Abyssinian church.

General Effect of the Controversies about the Person of Christ. -- It may not be out of place, in conclusion, to endeavour to arrive at some estimate of the influence of these prolonged and bitter controversies upon the history of the Christian church. On the surface that influence appears unfavourable. Not only was the church of Christ broken up into antagonistic sections which mutually hated each other, but a divided Christendom fell an easy victim to the Mohammedan invader. Western theology, when deprived of the balance afforded by the more purely intellectual characteristics predominant in the East, crystallized into a Roman mould. Not even the revival of letters cured this evil, and we find that even post-Reformation theology has not altogether escaped from the long domination of purely Western forms of thought. But to stop short here would be one-sided and superficial. The effect of these prolonged controversies has undoubtedly been to clear up the confusion which long existed in the Christian mind about the relations of the three Persons (or distinctions) in the Trinity, and of the two natures in the one Christ. The two conflicting tendencies at work in the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies were (1) the disposition to divide the Redeemer into two separate beings, united to one another for God's purpose of salvation, and (2) the disposition either (a) to make the Redeemer a Being compounded out of two other beings, God and Man, being Himself neither one nor the other, or (b) to regard the Humanity of Christ as swallowed up by His Divinity. Of these two forms of Monophysite doctrine the former is ultimately unthinkable. An Infinite Being and a finite one cannot possibly coalesce into a third being, which is neither the one nor the other. The second view, though in itself by no means inconceivable, has been felt to contradict the definite statements of Scripture on the nature of the union between God the Word and the Man Christ Jesus, and is therefore inadmissible. The controversy, pursued with great virulence for about a century and a half, ended by the definite establishment of a mean between the two extremes, namely, that Christ consisted of two separate natures, the Godhead and the Manhood, conjoined into one Personality or Individuality, i.e. one ultimate source of thought and action. Not that there was only one mind, or one will, in the Personality underlying these two natures, but that the action of the lower will was confined within certain limits, and ultimately determined by the fiat of the Divine and Higher Will. If it was permitted to the theologian to speak of a communicatio idiomatum (transfer of attributes), this involved no confusion nor amalgamation of the two natures, no absorption of the one by (or into) the other. Each remains separate and complete. But some attributes of the one nature may be spoken of as transferred to the other, by reason of the inseparable conjunction of both in the One Person (hupostasis or prosopon). Thus if, as is sometimes the case, God is spoken of as suffering or dying, it is not to be supposed that the Godhead, as such, is capable of suffering or of death. The expression is only permissible in consequence of the inseparable conjunction of Christ's Godhead and Manhood in one Personality. The same caution must be borne in mind when the Blessed Virgin is spoken of as theotokos. God cannot be brought forth into this world as man is brought forth. Yet the Divine Word and the Man Christ Jesus are inseparably one. Another point must not be lost sight of. In the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies the word Hypostasis is applied to the Personal Mind and Will which separates the Being thus indicated from any other existence. But when, as in the Arian controversy, the word Hypostasis is applied to the so-called Persons in the Godhead, it is not used to indicate separate sources of thought and action, but is employed to denote certain eternal distinctions declared in Holy Scripture to exist within the Godhead Itself, where there can be only one Mind and Will. We confess that the Father's sole prerogative is to originate, the Son's to reveal, the Spirit's to guide, direct, inspire. But all these prerogatives co-exist harmoniously in Him, Who is above all, and through all, and in us all. The decisions of the four great oecumenical councils are thus a standing witness to the fact that the church, from the beginning till now, has taught consistently that Jesus Christ was (1) alethos (truly), (2) teleos (completely), (3) adiairetos (indivisibly), and (4) asunchutos (without confusion [of nature]) the Word, or Son of the Eternal God, Who in the last times, "for us men and for our salvation," took upon Him our flesh, and manifested Himself to the world "in the form of a bond-slave," and that His two natures remained separate and uncombined. And so, being at once Perfect God and Perfect Man, He is able, not only to reconcile God and Man, and to destroy the empire of sin in the latter, but can in the end present us, reconciled and saved, as perfect and unblamable before the God and Father of us all.

Bibliography. -- Our authorities are nearly the same as those given under [427]NESTORIUS. We have no longer the help of Socrates, but Evagrius is vivid, and generally accurate, though often very credulous. He accepts implicitly the decisions of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and of the latter he gives a detailed and careful summary. The letters of Theodoret, and the collection of the letters of other men of mark in his day, found in many editions of his works [[428]NESTORIUS] are full of information on the Monophysite controversy. In later times Monophysitism does not seem to have attracted the attention of writers to the same extent as Nestorianism has done. There is no work on the former corresponding to those of Assemani and Badger on the latter. Neander, Dorner, Canon Bright, and, more recently, Mr. Bethune Baker are as useful here as on Nestorianism. Canon Bright has also translated and edited Leo's Sermons on the Incarnation. Gieseler is strangely brief on the controversy in the 5th cent., but has more information on its later developments. Mr. Wigram's Intro. to the Hist. of the Assyrian Church (S.P.C.K.1910) has some chapters on the later developments of Monophysitism in the East.

[J.J.L.]

Monothelitism
Monothelitism. [[429]MONOPHYSITISM.]

Montanus
Montanus (1), a native of Ardabau, a village in Phrygia, who, in the latter half of the 2nd cent., originated a widespread schism, of which traces remained for centuries.

I. Rise of Montanism. -- The name Montanus was not uncommon in the district. It is found in a Phrygian inscription (Le Bas, 755) and in three others from neighbouring provinces (Boeckh -- 3662 Cyzicus, 4071 Ancyra, 4187 Amasia). Montanus had been originally a heathen, and according to Didymus (de Trin. iii.41) an idol priest. The epithets "abscissus" and "semivir" applied to him by Jerome (Ep. ad Marcellam, vol. i.186) suggest that Jerome may have thought him a priest of Cybele. That after his conversion he became a priest or bishop there is no evidence. He taught that God's supernatural revelations did not end with the apostles, but that even more wonderful manifestations of the divine energy might be expected under the dispensation of the Paraclete. It is asserted that Montanus claimed himself to be the Paraclete; but we believe this to have merely arisen out of the fact that he claimed to be an inspired organ by whom the Paraclete spoke, and that consequently words of his were uttered and accepted as those of that Divine Being. We are told that Montanus claimed to be a prophet and spoke in a kind of possession or ecstasy. He held that the relation between a prophet and the Divine Being Who inspired him was the same as between a musical instrument and he who played upon it; consequently the inspired words of a prophet were not to be regarded as those of the human speaker. In a fragment of his prophecy preserved by Epiphanius he says, "I have come, not an angel or ambassador, but God the Father." See also Didymus (u.s.). It is clear that Montanus here did not speak in his own name, but uttered words which he supposed God to have put into his mouth; and if he spoke similarly in the name of the Paraclete it does not follow that he claimed to be the Paraclete.

His prophesyings were soon outdone by two female disciples, Prisca or Priscilla and Maximilla, who fell into strange ecstasies, delivering in them what Montanus and his followers regarded as divine prophecies. They had been married, left their husbands, were given by Montanus the rank of virgins in the church, and were widely reverenced as prophetesses. But very different was the sober judgment formed of them by some of the neighbouring bishops. Phrygia was a country in which heathen devotion exhibited itself in the most fanatical form, and it seemed to calm observers that the frenzied utterances of the Montanistic prophetesses were far less like any previous manifestation of the prophetic gift among Christians than they were to those heathen orgiasms which the church had been wont to ascribe to the operation of demons. The church party looked on the Montanists as wilfully despising our Lord's warning to beware of false prophets, and as being in consequence deluded by Satan, in whose power they placed themselves by accepting as divine teachers women possessed by evil spirits. The Montanists looked on the church leaders as men who did despite to the Spirit of God by offering the indignity of exorcism to those whom He had chosen as His organs for communicating with the church. It does not appear that any offence was taken at the substance of the Montanistic prophesyings. On the contrary, it was owned that they had a certain plausibility; when with their congratulations and promises to those who accepted them they mixed a due proportion of rebukes and warnings, this was ascribed to the deeper art of Satan. What condemned the prophesyings in the minds of the church authorities was the frenzied ecstasy in which they were delivered.

The question as to the different characteristics of real and pretended prophecy was the main subject of discussion in the first stage of the Montanist controversy. It may have been treated of by Melito in his work on prophecy; it was certainly the subject of that of Miltiades peri tou me dein prophete? en ekstasei lalein; it was touched on in an early anonymous writing against Montanism [[430]ABERCIUS], of which large fragments are preserved by Eusebius (v.16, 17). Some more of this polemic is almost certainly preserved by Epiphanius, who often incorporates the labours of previous writers and whose section on Montanism contains a discussion which is clearly not Epiphanius's own, but a survival from the first stage of the controversy. We learn that the Montanists brought as Scripture examples of ecstasy the text "the Lord sent a deep sleep (ekstasin) upon Adam," that David said in his haste (en ekstasei) "all men are liars," and that the same word is used of the vision which warned Peter to accept the invitation of Cornelius. The orthodox opponent points out that Peter's "not so" shews that in his ecstasy he did not lose his individual judgment and will. Other similar instances are quoted from O.T.

The same argument was probably pursued by Clement of Alexandria, who promised to write on prophecy against the Montanists (Strom. iv.13, p.605). He notes it as a characteristic of false prophets en ekstasei proepheteuon hos an Apostatou diakonoi (i.17, p.369). Tertullian no doubt defended the Montanist position in his lost work in six books on ecstasy.

Notwithstanding the condemnation of Montanism and the excommunication of Montanists by neighbouring bishops, it continued to spread and make converts. Visitors came from far to witness the wonderful phenomena; and the condemned prophets hoped to reverse the first unfavourable verdict by the sentence of a larger tribunal. But all the leading bishops of Asia Minor declared against it. At length an attempt was made to influence or overrule the judgment of Asiatic Christians by the opinion of their brethren beyond the sea. We cannot be sure how long Montanus had been teaching, or how long the excesses of his prophetesses had continued; but in 177 Western attention was first called to these disputes, the interference being solicited of the martyrs of Lyons, then suffering imprisonment and expecting death for the testimony of Christ. They were informed of the disputes by their brethren in Asia Minor, the native country no doubt of many of the Gallic Christians. Eusebius in his Chronicle assigns 172 for the beginning of the prophesying of Montanus. A few years more seems necessary for the growth of the new sect in Asia before it forced itself on the attention of foreign Christians, and the Epiphanian date 157 appears more probable, and agrees the vague date of Didymus, "more than 100 years after the Ascension." Possibly 157 may be the date of the conversion of Montanus, 172 that of his formal condemnation by the Asiatic church authorities.

Were the Gallic churches consulted by the orthodox, by the Montanists, or by both? and what answer did the Gallic Christians give? Eusebius only tells us that their judgment was pious and most orthodox, and that they subjoined letters which those who afterwards suffered martyrdom wrote while yet in prison to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia and also to Eleutherus, bp. of Rome, pleading (or negotiating, presbeuontes) for the peace of the churches. If, as has been suggested, the last expression meant entreating the removal of the excommunication from the Montanists, Eusebius, who begins his account of Montanism by describing it as a device of Satan, would not have praised such advice as pious and orthodox.

We think that the Montanists had appealed to Rome; that the church party solicited the good offices of their countrymen settled in Gaul, who wrote to Eleutherus representing the disturbance to the peace of the churches (a phrase probably preserved by Eusebius from the letter itself) which would ensue if the Roman church approved what the church on the spot condemned. We have no reason to think of Rome as then enjoying such supremacy that its reversal of an Asiatic excommunication would be quietly acquiesced in. Yet the Asiatic bishops might well be anxious how their decision would commend itself to the judgment of a stranger at a distance. To such a one there would be nothing incredible in special manifestations of God's Spirit displaying themselves in Phrygia, while the suggestion that the new prophesying was inspired by Satan might be repelled by its admitted orthodoxy, since all it professed to reveal tended to the glory of Christ and to the increase of Christian devotion. To avert, then, the possible calamity of a breach between the Eastern and Western churches, the Gallic churches, it would appear, not only wrote, but sent Irenaeus to Rome at the end of 177 or the beginning of 178. This hypothesis relieves us from the necessity of supposing this presbeia to have been unsuccessful, while it fully accounts for the necessity of sending it.

The Asiatic churches laid before the Christian world justification for their course. Their case was stated by one of their most eminent bishops, Claudius Apolinarius of Hierapolis. Apolinarius gives the signatures of different bishops who had investigated and condemned the Montanist prophesyings. One of these, Sotas of Anchialus, on the western shore of. the Black Sea, was dead when Apolinarius wrote; but Aelius Publius Julius, bp. of the neighbouring colony of Debeltus, gives his sworn testimony that Sotas had tried to cast the demon out of Priscilla but had been hindered by the hypocrites. We learn from a later writer that Zoticus of Comana and Julianus of Apamea similarly attempted to exorcise Maximilla, and were not permitted to do so. Another of Apolinarius's authorities adds weight to his signature by appending the title martyr, then commonly given to those who braved imprisonment or tortures for Christ. The result was that the Roman church approved the sentence of the Asiatic bishops, as we know independently from Tertullian.

II. Montanism in the East, second stage. -- For the history of Montanism in the East after its definite separation from the church, our chief authorities are fragments preserved by Eusebius of two writers, the anonymous writer already mentioned and Apollonius of Ephesus. The date of both these writings is considerably later than the rise of Montanism. Apollonius places himself 40 years after its first beginning. In the time of the Anonymous the first leaders of the schism had vanished from the scene. Montanus was dead, as was Theodotus, an early leader in the movement, who had probably managed its finances, for he is said to have been towards it a kind of epitropos. The Anonymous states that at the time he wrote 13 full years had elapsed and a 14th had begun since the death of Maximilla. Priscilla must have died previously, for Maximilla believed herself to be the last prophetess in the church and that after her the end would come.

Themiso seems to have been, after Montanus, the head of the Montanists. He was at any rate their leading man at Pepuza; and this was the headquarters of the sect. There probably Montanus had taught; there the prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla resided; there Priscilla had seen in a vision Christ come in the form of a woman in a bright garment, who inspired her with wisdom and informed her that Pepuza was the holy place and that there the New Jerusalem was to descend from heaven. Thenceforth Pepuza and the neighbouring village Tymium became the Montanist holy place, habitually spoken of as Jerusalem. There Zoticus and Julianus visited Maximilla, and Themiso was then at the head of those who prevented the intended exorcism.

Montanus himself probably did not live long to preside over his sect, and this is perhaps why it is seldom called by the name of its founder. The sectaries called themselves pneumatikoi, spiritual, and the adherents of the church psuchikoi, carnal, thus following the usage of some Gnostic sects. In Phrygia itself the Catholics seem to have called the new prophesying after its leader for the time being. Elsewhere it was called after its place of origin, the Phrygian heresy. In the West the name became by a solecism the Cataphrygian heresy.

Apparently after Themiso [431]MILTIADES presided over the sect; the Anonymous calls it the heresy ton kata Miltiaden. One other Montanist of this period was Alexander, who was honoured by his party as a martyr, but had, according to Apollonius, been only punished by the proconsul, Aemilius Frontinus, for his crimes, as the public records would testify. We cannot, unfortunately, fix the date of that proconsulship.

Taking the Eusebian date, 172, for the rise of Montanism, Apollonius, who wrote 40 years later, must have written c.210. The Epiphanian date, 157, would make him 15 years earlier. The Anonymous gives us a clue to his date in the statement that whereas Maximilla had foretold wars and tumults, there had been more than 13 years since her death with no general nor partial war, and the Christians had enjoyed continual peace. This, then, must have been written either before the wars of the reign of Severus had begun or after they had finished. The latest admissible date on the former hypothesis gives us 192, and for the death of Maximilla 179. It is hardly likely that in so short a time all the original leaders of the movement would have died.

Before the end of the 2nd cent. Montanist teachers had made their way as far as Antioch; for Serapion, the bishop there, wrote against them, copying the letter of Apolinarius. It is through Serapion that Eusebius seems to have known this letter.

Early in the 3rd cent. the church had made converts enough from Montanists born in the sect for the question to arise, On what terms were converts to be received who had had no other than Montanist baptism? Matter and form were perfectly regular; for in all essential points of doctrine these sectaries agreed with the church. But it was decided, at a council held at Iconium, to recognize no baptism given outside the church. This we learn from the letter to Cyprian by Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, when the later controversy arose about heretical baptism. This council, and one which made a similar decision at another Phrygian town, Synnada, are mentioned also by. Dionysius of Alexandria (Eus. vii.7). Firmilian speaks as if he had been present at the Iconium council, which may be dated c.230.

So entirely had the Catholics ceased to regard the Montanists as Christian brethren that, as stated by the Anonymous, when persecution by the common enemy threw confessors from both bodies together, the orthodox persevered till their final martyrdom in refusing to hold intercourse with their Montanist fellow-sufferers; dreading to hold any friendship with the lying spirit who animated them. Epiphanius states that in his time the sect had many adherents in Phrygia, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Cilicia, and a considerable number in Constantinople.

III. Montanism in the West. -- If we set aside the worthless Praedestinatus, there is no evidence whatever that any Roman bp. before Eleutherus had heard of Montanism, and the history of the interference of the Gallic confessors in 177 shews that it was then a new thing in the West. The case submitted to Eleutherus no doubt informed him by letter of the events in Phrygia; but apparently no Montanist teachers visited the West at this time, and after the judgment of Eleutherus the whole transaction seems to have been forgotten at Rome. It was in a subsequent episcopate that the first Montanist teacher, probably Proclus, appeared at Rome. There was no reason to regard him with suspicion. He could easily satisfy the bishop of his perfect orthodoxy in doctrine; and there was no ground for disbelieving what he might tell of supernatural manifestations in his own country. He was therefore either received into communion, or was about to be so and to obtain authority to report to his churches in Asia that their commendatory letters were recognized at Rome, when the arrival of another Asiatic, Praxeas, changed the scene. Praxeas could shew the Roman bp. that the Montanist pretensions to prophecy had been condemned by his predecessors, and probably the letter of Eleutherus was still accessible in the Roman archives. The justice of this previous condemnation Praxeas could confirm from his own knowledge of the Montanist churches and their prophesyings; and his testimony had the more weight because, having suffered imprisonment for the faith, he enjoyed the dignity of a martyr. The Montanist teacher was accordingly put out of communion at Rome. This story, which has all the marks of probability, is told by Tertullian (adv. Prax.), who probably had personal knowledge of the facts. The bishop could only be Zephyrinus, for we cannot go later; and as predecessors in the plural number are spoken of, these must have been Eleutherus and Victor. The conclusion which we have reached, that Montanism made no appearance in the West before the episcopate of Zephyrinus, is of great importance in the chronology of this controversy.

The formal rejection of Montanism by the Roman church was followed by a public disputation between the Montanist teacher Proclus, and Caius, a leading Roman presbyter. Eusebius, who read the record of it, says it took place under Zephyrinus. The Montanist preachers, whatever their failures, had one distinguished success in the acquisition of Tertullian. Apparently the condemnation of the Roman bishop was not in his mind decisive against the Montanist claims, and he engaged in an advocacy of them which resulted in his separation from the church. His writings are the great storehouse of information as to the peculiarities of Montanist teaching. The Italian Montanists were soon divided by schism arising out of the violent Patripassian controversy at Rome at the beginning of the 3rd cent. Among the Montanists, Aeschines was the head of the Patripassian party, and in this it would appear from an extract in Didymus that he followed Montanus himself; Proclus and his followers adhered to the orthodox doctrine on this subject.

IV. Montanism and the Canon. -- The most fundamental innovation of Montanist teaching was the theory of an authorized development of Christian doctrine, as opposed to the older theory that Christian doctrine was preached in its completeness by the apostles and that the church had merely to preserve faithfully the tradition of their teaching. The Montanists did not reject the apostolic revelations nor abandon any doctrines the church had learned from its older teachers. The revelations of the new prophecy were to supplement, not to displace, Scripture. They believed that while the fundamental truths of faith remained unshaken, points both of discipline and doctrine might receive correction. "A process of development was exhibited in God's revelations. It had its rudimentary principle in the religion of nature, its infancy in the law and the prophets, its youth in the gospel, its full maturity only in the dispensation of the Paraclete. Through His enlightenment the dark places of Scripture are made clear, parables made plain, those passages of which heretics had taken advantage cleared of all ambiguity" (Tert. de Virg. Vel. i.; de Res. Carn.63). Accordingly Tertullian appeals to the new revelations on questions of discipline, e.g. second marriages, and also on questions of doctrine, as in his work against Praxeas and his treatise on the Resurrection of the Flesh. Some have thought it a thing to be regretted that the church by her condemnation of Montanism should have suppressed the freedom of individual prophesying. But each new prophetic revelation, if acknowledged as divine, would put as great a restraint on future individual speculation as words of Scripture or decree of pope or council. If Montanism had triumphed, Christian doctrine would have been developed, not under the superintendence of the church teachers most esteemed for wisdom, but usually of wild and excitable women. Thus Tertullian himself derives his doctrine as to the materiality and the form of the soul from a revelation made to an ecstatica of his congregation (de Anima, 9). To the Montanists it seemed that if God's Spirit made known anything as true, that truth could not be too extensively published. It is evident from quotations in Epiphanius and Tertullian that the prophecies of Maximilla and Montanus were committed to writing. To those who believed in their divine inspiration, these would practically form additional Scriptures. Hippolytus tells that the Montanists "have an infinity of books of these prophets whose words they neither examine by reason, nor give heed to those who can, but are carried away by their undiscriminating faith in them, thinking that they learn through their means something more than from the law, the prophets, and the gospels." Didymus is shocked at a prophetical book emanating from a female, whom the apostle did not permit to teach. It would be a mistake to suppose that the Montanistic disputes led to the formation of a N.T. canon. On the contrary, it is plain that when these disputes arose Christians had so far closed their N.T. canon that they were shocked that any modern writing should be made equal to the inspired books of the apostolic age. The Montanist disputes led to the publication of lists recognized by particular churches, and we consider that it was in opposition to the multitude of Montanist prophetic books that Caius in his disputation gave a list recognized by his church. The controversy also made Christians more scrupulous about paying to other books honours like those given to the books of Scripture, and we believe that it was for this reason that the Shepherd of Hermas ceased to have a place in church reading. But still we think it plain from the history that the conception of a closed N.T. canon was found by Montanism and not then created.

V. Montanist Doctrines and Practices. -- The church objected, as against Montanism, to any addition being made to the teaching of Scripture. What, then, was the nature of the additions actually made by the Montanists?

(1) New Fasts. -- The prophetesses had ordained that in addition to the ordinary Paschal fast of the church two weeks of what was called Xerophagy should be observed. In these the Montanists abstained, not only from flesh, wine, and the use of the bath, but from all succulent food, e.g. juicy fruit, except on Saturday and Sunday. The weekly stations also, or half fasts, which in the church ended at three p.m., were by Montanists usually continue till evening. The church party resisted the claim that these two new weeks of abstinence were divinely obligatory. The real question was, Had the prophetess God's command for instituting them? This particular revelation only came into prominence because at recurring intervals it put a marked difference between Montanists and Catholics, similar to that which the Paschal fast put between Christians and heathen.

(2) Second Marriages. -- On this subject again the difference between the Montanists and the church really reduces itself to the question whether the Paraclete spoke by Montanus. Second marriages had before Montanus been regarded with disfavour in the church. Tertullian deprecates them with almost as much energy in his pre-Montanist work ad Uxorem as afterwards in his Montanist de Monogamia. But however unfavourably such marriages were regarded, their validity and lawfulness were not denied. St. Paul had seemed to declare that such marriages were not forbidden (Rom. vii.3; I. Cor. vii.39), and the direction in the pastoral epistles that a bishop should be husband of one wife seemed to leave others free.

(3) Church Discipline. -- The treatise of Tertullian (de Pudicitia) shews a controversy of Montanists with the church concerning the power of church officers to give absolution. The occasion was the publication, by one whom Tertullian sarcastically calls "Pontifex Maximus" and "Episcopus Episcoporum," of an edict of pardon to persons guilty of adultery and fornication on due performance of penance. Doubtless a bp. of Rome is intended, and as Hippolytus tells (ix.12) of Callistus being the first to introduce such laxity in granting absolution, it seems plain that Callistus was referred to. Tertullian holds that for such sin absolution ought never to be given. Not that the sinner was to despair of obtaining God's pardon by repentance; but it was for God alone to pardon; man might not.

We refer to our art. [432]TERTULLIAN for other doctrines which, though advocated by Tertullian in his Montanist days, we do not feel ourselves entitled to set down as Montanistic, in the absence of evidence that Tertullian had learned them from Montanus, or that they were held by Eastern Montanists. The bulk of what Tertullian taught as a Montanist he probably would equally have taught if Montanus had never lived; but owing to the place which Montanism ascribed to visions and revelations as means of obtaining a knowledge of the truth, his belief in his opinions was converted into assurance when they were echoed by prophetesses who in their visions gave utterance to opinions imbibed from their master in their waking hours.

VI. Later History of Montanism. -- We gather from Tertullian's language (adv. Prax.) that it was some time before his persistent advocacy of Montanism drew excommunication on himself. To this interval we refer the Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, in the editor of which we may perhaps recognize Tertullian himself. Both martyrs and martyrologist had clearly been under Montanist influences: great importance is attached to visions and revelations, and the editor justifies the composition of new Acts, intended for church reading, on the grounds that the "last days" in which he lived had witnessed, as had been prophesied, new visions, new prophecies, new exhibitions of the mighty working of God's Spirit, as great as or greater than in any preceding age. Yet the martyrs are evidently in full communion with the church. The schism which soon afterwards took place appears to have been of little importance either in numbers or duration. We hear nothing of Montanists in the writings of Cyprian, whose veneration for Tertullian would scarcely have been so great if his church were still suffering from a schism which Tertullian originated. In the next cent. Optatus (i.9) speaks of Montanism as an extinct heresy, which it were slaying the slain to refute. Yet there were some who called themselves after Tertullian in the 4th cent. Augustine (Haer.86) at Carthage heard that a well-known church which formerly belonged to the Tertullianists had been surrendered to the Catholics when the last of them returned to the church. He had evidently heard no tradition as to their tenets, and set himself to search in Tertullian's writings for heresies which they presumably may have held. Elsewhere in the West Montanism entirely disappears.

In the East, we have already mentioned the councils of Iconium and of Synnada. There is a mention of Montanism in the Acts of Achatius (Ruinart, p.152). Though these Acts lack external attestation, internal evidence strongly favours their authenticity. Their scene is uncertain; the time is the Decian persecution a.d.250. The magistrate, urging Achatius to sacrifice, presses him with the example of the Cataphrygians, "homines antiquae religionis," who had already conformed. Sozomen (ii.32) ascribes the extinction of the Montanists, as well as of other heretical sects, to the edict of Constantine depriving them of their places of worship and forbidding their religious meetings. Till then, being confounded by heathen rulers with other Christians, they could meet for worship, and, even when few in number, keep together; but Constantine's edict killed all the weaker sects, and among them the Montanists, everywhere except in Phrygia and neighbouring districts, where they were still numerous in Sozomen's time. He says (vii.18) that, unlike Scythia, where one bishop ruled over the whole province, among these Phrygian heretics every village had its bishop. At last the orthodox zeal of Justinian took measures to crush out the remains of the sect in Phrygia, and the Montanists in despair gathered with wives and children into their places of worship, set them on fire, and there perished (Procop. Hist. Arc.11). In connexion with this may be taken what is told of John of Ephesus in the same reign of Justinian (Assemani, Bibl. Or. ii.88), that a.d.550 he had the bones dug up and burned of Montanus and of his prophetesses Carata, Prisca, and Maximilla. What is disguised under the name Carata we cannot tell. It is hardly likely that Montanism survived the persecution of Justinian. Besides Cataphrygians they were often called from their headquarters, Pepuzans, which Epiphanius counts as a distinct heresy. The best monograph on Montanism is by Bonwetsch (Erlangen, 1881). See also Zahn, Forschanger zur Gesch. des N. T. Kanons, etc. (1893), v.3 ff., on the chronology of Montanism.

[G.S.]

Montanus, bishop of Toledo
Montanus (3), bp. of Toledo, c.523-c.531.

Authorities. -- (1) His Life by Ildefonsus (de Vir. Ill. c.3). (2) Two letters printed by Loaysa (Conc Hisp. p.88), Aguirre (Coll. Max. Conc. Hisp. ii.159), and Florez (Esp. Sagr. v, 409, 415). (3) The Acts of the second council of Toledo (Tejada y Ramiro, Coll. de Can. de la Igl. Esp. ii.701).

His Life. -- The facts related by Ildefonsus are meagre. We are told that Montanus was the successor of Celsus in the "prima sedes" of the province of Carthaginensis; that he defended and maintained his office; that he wrote two letters on points of church discipline, one to the inhabitants of Palencia, the other to a certain Turibius, a "religious"; and that he rebutted a scandalous accusation by the help of a miracle wrought in his favour. These Acts of the second council of Toledo are curious and important, and have been suspected of at least containing interpolations, if not of being altogether supposititious, but there seems no sufficient reason for doubting their genuineness. The council opened on May 17 in the 5th year of Amalaric (a.d.527) according to the reckoning generally adopted since Florez's day, 531 according to the older reckoning. The bishops began by expressing their intention of adding to the Codex Canonum certain provisions not already contained in the ancient canons on the one hand, and of reviving such prescriptions as had fallen into disuse on the other. The material of these canons is common to most of the various Spanish councils of the first half of 6th cent. It is the concluding passage of the Acts which makes the council of special interest in Spanish ecclesiastical history. "According to the decrees of ancient canons, we declare that, God willing, the council shall be held in future 'apud' our brother, the bishop Montanus, so that it will be the duty of our brother and co-bishop Montanus, who is in the metropolis, to forward to our co-principals, bishops of the Lord, letters convening the synod when the proper time shall arrive." An expression of thanks "to the glorious king Amalaric," with regard to whom the bishops pray that "throughout the unnumbered years of his reign he may continue to afford us the licence of carrying through all that pertains to the cultus fidei," concludes the Acts. In the words in italics is contained the first mention of Toledo as the ecclesiastical metropolis of Carthaginensis, the first indication of that commanding position to which the see was to attain under its 7th-cent. bishops. The passage also indicates the relations of Montanus with king Amalaric. Relying upon his support, upon the physical advantages of Toledo, and upon an ecclesiastical tradition capable of various interpretations, Montanus sought permanently to exalt the power and position of his see. But the time was not yet come, and the question still remained an open one in 589 when Leovigild fixed the seat of the consolidated Gothic power at Toledo, and practically settled the long-vexed question. Cartagena was in the hands of Byzantium, whereas the bp. of Toledo was the bishop of the urbs regia. It took some time to accomplish, but the Decretum Gundemari as a first step, and the Primacy Canon of the 12th council of Toledo as a second, were the inevitable ecclesiastical complements of physical and political facts. Hefele, Conc. Gesch. ii.700; Esp. Sagr. v.131, c. iii.

[M.A.W.]

Moses
Moses (3) (Moyses), Roman presbyter (? of Jewish origin), a leading member of an influential group of confessors in the time of Cyprian, about the commencement of the Novatianist schism. The others were Maximus, Nicostratus, Rufinus, Urbanus, Sidonius, Macarius, and Celerinus. They wrote early in the persecution, urging the claims of discipline on the Carthaginian confessors (Ep.27) (cf. Tillem. t. iii. Notes s. Moyse, t. iv., S. Cyp. a. xv., Lipsius, Chr. d. röm. Bisch. p.200), and Moyses signed the second letter of the Roman clerus (viz. Ep.30), drawn up by Novatian according to Cyprian (Ep.55, iv.), and he wrote with the other confessors Ep.31 to Cyprian (Ep.32). When they had been a year in prison (Ep.37), or more accurately 11 months and days (Liberian Catalogue, Mommsen, Chronogr. v. Jahre 354, p.635). i.e. c. Jan.1, 251, Moyses died and was accounted a confessor and martyr (Ep.55). Shortly before his death he refused to communicate with Novatian and the five presbyters who sided with him (aposchisasin) because he saw the tendency of his stern dogma (Cornelius to Fabius of Antioch, Eus. vi.43, katidon).

Moyses' severance was not because Novatian had already left the Catholics, which he did not do till June 4, after the election of Cornelius; and Novatus, who induced it, did not leave Carthage for Rome until April or May (Rettberg, p.109). Moyses' great authority remained a strong point in Cornelius's favour, when the rest of the confessors (Ep.51) after their release threw their influence on the side of Novatian as representing the stricter discipline against Cornelius. The headship of the party belonged after Moyses' death to [433]MAXIMUS (3).

[E.W.B.]

Moses of Khoren
Moses (5), of Khoren (Moses Khorenensis) -- -called by his countrymen the Father of History -- the poet, grammarian, and most celebrated writer of Armenia, was the nephew and disciple of St. Mesrob, the founder of Armenian literature. [[434]MESROBES.] Born at Khoren or Khorni, a town of the province of Darou, he was one of a band of scholars sent by Mesrob to study at Edessa, Constantinople, Alexandria, Athens, and Rome. There he accumulated very wide historical knowledge (cf. Hist. Armen. iii.61, 62). Returning to Armenia, he assisted St. Mesrob in translating the Bible into his native language, a work which was accomplished between 407 and 433. This fixes his birth in the early part of cent. v.; though some place it in the latter part of cent. iv. Beyond his literary activity we do not know much about his life. He succeeded Eznig as bp. of Pakrevant, where he displayed great spiritual activity. According to the medieval Armenian chronicler, Samuel of Ani, he died in 488, aged 120. The following works attributed to him are extant: (1) Hist. of Armenia, (2) Treatise on Rhetoric, (3) Treatise on Geography, (4) Letter on Assumption of B. V. M., (5) Homily on Christ's Transfiguration, (6) Oration on Hripsinia, an Armenian Virgin Martyr, (7) Hymns used in Armenian Church Worship. He wrote also 2 works now lost, viz. Commentaries on the Armenian Grammarians, of which fragments are found in John Erzengatzi, an Armenian writer of cent. xiii., and Explanations of Armenian Church Offices, of which we have only some fragments in Thomas Ardzrouni (cent. vii.). The Hist. of Armenia is perhaps the work of a later writer, but it is in some respects one of the most important historical works of antiquity. It embodies almost our only remains of pre-Christian Armenian literature and preserves many songs and traditions retained at that time in popular memory. For special studies of it see Dulaurier in Journ. Asiat. Jan.1852. It is also very valuable because it preserves extensive remains of Assyrian, Chaldean, Syrian, and Greek writers. Moses had studied long at Edessa, where the library was very rich in ancient Assyrian chroniclers. This work also throws much light on the history of the Roman empire in cents. iv. and v., and its struggles against the renewed Persian empire and the efforts of Zoroastrianism. It has been translated into Italian by the Mechitarite Fathers (Venice, 1841); into French by V. Langlois in Historiens anciens de l'Arménie (Paris, 1867). See also AE. Carriére, Moise de Khoren, etc. (Paris, 1891); Id., Nouvelles sources de Moise de Kh. (Vienna 1894); Id., La. legende d'Abgar, dans l'hist. de Moise de Kh.; also F. C. Conybeare in Byzant. Zeitschr. (1901), x.489 seq.

[G.T.S.]

Muratorian Fragment
Muratorian Fragment, a very ancient list of the books of N.T. first pub. in 1740 by Muratori (Ant. Ital. Med. Aev. iii.851) and found in a 7th or 8th cent. MS. in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. The MS. had come from the Irish monastery of Bobbio, and the fragment seems to have been a copy of a loose leaf or two of a lost volume. It is defective in the beginning, and breaks off in the middle of a sentence, and the mutilation must have taken place in the archetype of our present copy. This copy was made by an illiterate and careless scribe, and is full of blunders; but is of the greatest value as the earliest-known list of N.T. books recognized by the church. A reference to the episcopate of Pius at Rome ("nuperrime temporibus nostris") is usually taken to prove that the document cannot be later than c.180, some 20 years after Pius's death (see infra). This precludes Muratori's own conjecture as to authorship, viz. that it was by Caius the presbyter, c.196; and Bunsen's conjecture that Hegesippus wrote it has nothing to recommend it. It is generally agreed that it was written in Rome. Though in Latin, it bears marks of translation from the Greek, though Hesse (Das. Mur. Frag., Giessen, 1873) and others maintain the originality of the Latin.

The first line of the fragment evidently concludes its notice of St. Mark's Gospel; for it proceeds to speak of St. Luke's as in the 3rd place, St. John's in the 4th. A notice of St. Matthew's and St. Mark's must have come before, but we have no means of knowing whether the O.T. books preceded that notice. The document appears to have dealt with the choice of topics in the Gospels and the point where each began (cf. Iren. iii.11). It is stated that St. Luke (and apparently St. Mark also) had not seen our Lord in the flesh. For its story as to the composition of St. John's Gospel see [435]LEUCIUS. The document goes on to say that by one and the same sovereign Spirit the same fundamental doctrines are fully taught in all concerning our Lord's birth, life, passion, resurrection, and future coming. At the date of this document, therefore, belief was fully established in the pre-eminence of the four Gospels, and in their divine inspiration. Next comes the Acts, St. Luke being credited with purposing to record only what fell under his own notice, thus omitting the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul's journey to Spain. Thirteen epistles of St. Paul are then mentioned. (a) epistles to churches, in the order: I. and II. Cor., Eph., Phil., Col., Gal., I. and II. Thess., Rom. It is observed that St. Paul addressed (like St. John) only seven churches by name, [105] shewing that he addressed the universal church. (b) Epistles to individuals: Philemon, Titus, and two to Timothy, written from personal affection, but hallowed by the Catholic church for the ordering of ecclesiastical discipline. Next follow words which we quote from Westcott's trans.: "Moreover there is in circulation an epistle to the Laodiceans, and another to the Alexandrians, forged under the name of Paul, bearing on [al. 'favouring'] the heresy of Marcion, and several others, which cannot be received into the Catholic church, for gall ought not to be mingled with honey. The epistle of Jude, however, and two epistles bearing the name of John, are received in the Catholic [church] (or, are reckoned among the Catholic [epistles]). And the book of Wisdom, written by the friends of Solomon in his honour [is acknowledged]. We receive, moreover, the Apocalypses of St. John and St. Peter only, which latter some of our body will not have read in the church." Marcion entitled his version of Eph. "to the Laodiceans," and there is a well-known pseudo-Pauline epistle with the same title. It has been generally conjectured that by the epistle "to the Alexandrians," Hebrews is meant; but it is nowhere else so described, has no Marcionite tendency, and is not "under the name of Paul." The fragment may refer to some current writing which has not survived, or the Ep. of Barnabas might possibly be intended. Though only two Epp. of John are mentioned, the opening sentence of I. John had been quoted in the paragraph treating of the Gospel, and our writer may have read that epistle as a kind of appendix to the Gospel, and be here speaking of the other two. The mention of Wisdom in a list of N.T. books is perplexing. Perhaps we should read "ut" for "et"; and the Proverbs of Solomon and not the apocryphal book of Wisdom may be intended. There may be an inaccurate reference to Prov. xxv.1 (LXX). The fragment next says that the Shepherd was written "very lately, in our own time" in the city of Rome, his brother-bishop Pius then occupying the chair of the Roman church; that, therefore, it ought to be read, but not in the public reading of the church. The text of the last sentence of the document is very corrupt, but evidently names writings which are rejected altogether, including those of Arsinous, Valentinus, and Militiades, mention being also made of the Cataphrygians of Asia.

Westcott has shewn that no argument can be built upon the omissions (Ep. of James, both Epp. of Peter, and Hebrews) of our fragment, since it shews so many blunders of transcription, and some breaks in the sense. Certainly I. Peter held, at the earliest date claimed for the fragment, such a position in the Roman church that entire silence in respect to it seems incredible. Of disquisitions on our fragment we may name Credner, N. T. Kanon, Volkmar's ed.141 seq.341 seq.; Routh, Rell. Sac. i.394; Tregelles, Canon Muratorianus; Hesse, op. cit.; Westcott, N. T. Canon, 208 seq.514 seq.; and esp. Zahn, Gesch. der N.T. Kanons, ii.1 (1890), pp.1-143; also Lietzman's Das Mur Frag. (Bonn, 1908), besides countless arts. in journals, e.g. Harnack, in Text und Unters. (1900); Overbeck, Zur Geschichte des Kanons (1880); Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift (1881), p.129. Hilgenfeld (Kanon, p.44), and Bötticher (De Lagarde) in Bunsen's Hippolytus i.2nd ed. Christianity and Mankind, attempted its re-translation into Greek; an ed., with notes and facsimile by S. P. Tregelles, is pub, by the Clar. Press. The present writer expressed in 1874 (Hermathena i.) an opinion which he now holds with more confidence that the fragment was written in the episcopate of Zephyrinus. The words "temporibus nostris" must not be too severely pressed. We have no evidence that the writer was as careful and accurate as Eusebius, who yet speaks (iii.28, cf. v.27) of a period 50 or 60 years before he was writing as his own time. There are also indications from the history of the varying position held by the Shepherd that the publication of our fragment may have been between Tertullian's two tracts de Oratione and de Pudicitia (see D. C. B.4-vol. ed. s.v.); and if it be true that MONTANISM only became active in the Roman church in the episcopate of Zephyrinus, the date of the Muratorian document is settled, for it is clearly anti-Montanist. If we regard it as written in the episcopate of Zephyrinus, Muratori's conjecture that Caius wrote it becomes possible; and we know from Eusebius that the disputation of Caius with Proclus, written at that period, contained, in opposition to Montanist revelations, a list of the books reverenced by the Catholic church.

[G.S.]

Musonius
Musonius (1), bp. of Neocaesarea, on whose death in a.d.368 Basil wrote a long letter of consolation to his widowed church (Ep.28 [62]), lauding him greatly and designating him no unworthy successor of Gregory Thaumaturgus. He describes him as a rigid supporter of old customs and the ancient faith, endeavouring to conform his church in all things to the primitive model. His watchful care had preserved his church from the storms of heresy ravaging all neighbouring churches. In so great reverence was he held that, though by no means the oldest of the bishops, the presidency in council was always his. He must have attained the episcopate comparatively young, for, though he ruled the church of Neocaesarea many years, he was not very aged when he died. Though Musonius had been prejudiced against Basil, and regarded his election to the episcopate with no friendly eyes, so that, though they were united in faith and in opposition to heresy, they were unable to co-operate for the peace of the church, Basil mentions him in a second letter to the Neocaesareans as the "blessed Musonius," the follower of the traditions of Gregory Thaumaturgus, "whose teaching was still sounding in their ears" (Ep.210 [64]).

[E.V.]

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Footnotes:

[98] Though the form Markianoi (Trypho 35) suggests followers of Marcus, we think Marcion is intended.

[99] They justified their practice by an appeal to Galatians 6:6 (see Hieron. in loc.).

[100] Although some of the dates are well established, considerable uncertainty prevails respecting others. Thus though his length of life seems unquestioned, its limiting dates are not quite settled. It is difficult to reconcile some of the statements of Severus with the chronology set forth by Gregory of Tours.

[101] The chronology is here painfully confused.

[102] Conf. vi. 16 states that both Augustine's parentes procured his initiation as an infant catechumen.

[103] We do not ignore the discussions upon this incident; see e.g. Wall on Infant Baptism, pt. ii. c. iii. 11. But we think the Confession does not imply that Patricius interfered to defer Augustine's baptism.

[104] v. 1. sibi, as the epitaph appears in Papebrochi, Acta Sanctorum Maii, t. i.[p. 491.

[105] I.e. "nomination," which might suggest the acknowledgment as St. Paul's of Hebrews as not addressed to a church by name. But no mention of that epistle follows, as we should in that case expect. Cyril's mention of Paul's Epp. to Seven Churches (de Exhort. Mort. 11, cf. Tert. adv. Jud. and Optatus, de Schism. Don. ii. 3) and the language of Augustine (de Civ. Dei. xvii. iv. 4), Victorinus of Padua (in Apoc. 1) and Pseudo-Chrys. (Op. imperf. in Matthew 1:6 pp. vi. xvii. Bened. ed.) suggest the acquaintance of those writers with our document.