Letters (complete)

Eusebius to Constantius, emperor, Augustus, greeting. Seeing, most clement emperor, that your devout mind desires this, that ecclesiastical peace should endure throughout the world, I received your letter with great joy. I also received a letter from my brothers and fellow bishops, in which they deigned to make known to me that I should hasten to come to Milan, so that a full report might be given me through them; and I judged it necessary to obey your piety in this. Whatever, lord emperor, shall appear just and pleasing to the Lord when I have come into your presence, I promise that I will do. God keep you, most glorious emperor.

To my most beloved brothers and most longed-for presbyters, and also to the holy peoples standing firm in the faith, of Vercelli, Novara, Ivrea, and also Tortona: Eusebius, bishop, eternal greeting in the Lord. [I.] Although our Lord cherished us, separated from you in body, with many good things, and showed us your presence very fully in the coming and visiting of very many brothers, yet we were not without sorrow and sadness and tears, because for a long interval of time we did not receive any writing from your holiness. For we feared that some devilish cunning had seized you, or that human power had subjected you to the unbelievers. While I was affected by these thoughts, and was turning all the consolation of the brothers who came to us from various provinces rather to grief at your absence than to joy, the Lord deigned to grant that I might learn what I was anxious about, not only from the letters of your sincerity, but also from the presence of our dear Syrus the deacon and Victorinus the exorcist. So I learned, dearest brothers, that you were safe, as I desired. And as though suddenly snatched across the whole distance of lands (as happened to Habakkuk, who was carried by an angel to Daniel), so I judged that I had reached you, while I received the letters of each of you and ran through your holy minds and love in your writings. [II.] Tears mingled with my joy, and my mind, eager to read, was held back by the tears that occupied it. And both were necessary, so that each feeling might desire to anticipate the duties of love in this fulfilment of desire. So for days, judging myself to be serving with you in this occupation, I forgot past labours; for joys surrounded me on every side, offering here a steadfast faith, here love, here fruit; so that, placed among so many and such great goods, I suddenly judged, as I said above, that I was not in exile but with you. I rejoice, then, dearest brothers, in your faith; I rejoice in the salvation that follows the faithful; I rejoice in your fruits, that you go forward not only where you are, but even far away. For as a farmer serves a good tree, which for the sake of its fruit does not suffer the axe nor is handed over to the fire, so we too wish and desire to render to your holiness not only service according to the flesh, but to spend our very lives for your salvation. You have stretched out, as I said, firm branches with fruit, and have laboured to reach me across such long distances of land. I rejoice as a farmer, and gladly pluck the fruits of your labour, because you have been willing to do so much; and not only I, or our most holy presbyters and deacons who are with me, or the other brothers, but all of us who long for you. For, as the most blessed apostle says, you have refreshed my heart, when you fulfilled the divine commands which Christians ought to fulfil toward a bishop or churchmen whom you know to be labouring in exile for the faith's sake. You have done what brothers ought to do for brothers, and sons render to a father. But since we, following the divine commands, wished to make for you heavenly fruits from earthly, lasting from perishable, everlasting from frail, we began, through necessity, patiently to sow every day. The poor rejoiced in your fruits; not only the people of this city glorified God, but all did; and those who could see what love you had for me, seeing it from those very fruits, glorified God and spoke of us with all honour together with your blessing. [III.] The devil, enemy of the innocent, foe of righteousness, adversary of faith, seeing this, because God was being blessed in this work, inflamed against us his Ario-maniacs, who had long been sighing not only over this work, but also over their own unbelief, to which they could not persuade us, to become violent, in the way he has always used, to terrify by force and power those whom he could not persuade. So he gathered a multitude of his own, who seize us and mock us at the workshop of their unbelief; and they say that all this power has been given them by the emperor. When they said much and boasted of their power, I wished to show them in this that what they could do was nothing, when I silently handed over my body as to executioners, the body which the Lord said could be handed over in persecutions. How free my mind was while I suffered at their hands, and was shut up, and kept for four days, and heard the rebukes and persuasions of various men, I showed in this: I did not say a single word. They wished to add to their malice that the brothers, that is, the presbyters and deacons, should keep away from me; and they said they would also forbid the others to come near me. So that I should not, as the apostle says, eat food from the hands of unbelievers, or rather of transgressors (which is worse than unbelievers), I made a written statement to them in this form. COPY OF THE STATEMENT MADE TO PATROPHILUS AND HIS COMPANIONS. Eusebius, servant of God, with his fellow servants who labour with me for the faith's sake, to Patrophilus the jailer and his companions. [IV.] That by the force and fury of many you not only dragged me along the ground but at times carried me on my back with my body stripped, from this lodging which you gave me through your men and the officials, out of which I have never gone except by your violence: God knows it, and the city knows it, and you cannot deny it either here or in the future. Therefore I reserve the cause to God, so that it may come to an end as he himself shall order. Meanwhile know that I have resolved this (so that the account may stand both now and in the future, and here): in the lodging in which you keep me shut up, into which, after the first carrying away, you thrust me back more cruelly, and from which you dared to carry me in the same way and throw me into a single cell, I will not eat bread nor drink water unless each of you first professes, not only by word but also in your own hand, that you will not prevent my brothers, who gladly suffer these things with me for the faith's sake, from offering necessary food from the lodging where they stay, nor prevent those who have deigned to visit me. I ought indeed to have departed from the body, so as not to be forced to tell those who often wish to know of so great a crime as you have committed against divine and public law. But lest any unbeliever call you cruel toward us, and, ignorant of the divine precepts, think that we preferred to avoid shame rather than obey the Lord, I have therefore wished to take this step. I say again: unless you profess it both by word and in writing, you will be murderers by forbidding it. [V.] Almighty God knows this; his only-begotten Son knows it, ineffably born of him, who for the sake of our salvation, being God of everlasting power, put on perfect man, willed to suffer, triumphed over death and rose on the third day, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead; the Holy Spirit knows it; the catholic church is witness, which so confesses: that not I will be guilty in my own case, but you, who have wished to forbid my fellow servants who would minister necessities. And if you prepare this, know that you ought to despise it: not as though I fear death, but lest after my departure you say that I wished to leave life by a voluntary death, and invent some cloud of accusation against us. Know that I will address the churches which I may be able to reach by letters sealed in the meantime; I will address also the servants of God, so that, as they run together, the world may learn what the whole faith, approved by all the catholic bishops, suffers from the Ario-maniacs, whom it condemned beforehand. Likewise I, Eusebius, bishop, have signed. I adjure you who read this letter, by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, not to suppress it, but to give it to others to read. [VI.] So these men, softened by this statement scarcely on the fourth day, compelled us, still fasting, to return to the lodging in which we had stayed. Meanwhile they saw how the people received us with joy as we returned. They surrounded our lodging with lamps. By the Lord's favour we began again to minister to the needy. Their inhumanity did not endure this, and they turned our love into their hatred. They could scarcely bear it for some twenty-five days. They break out again, and with a desperate band of many come to our lodging armed with clubs; they break through the wall by way of another's enclosure and reach us with violence. Again they seize us and shut us in closer custody, with only our dearest Tegrinus the presbyter. Our brothers too, that is, all the presbyters and deacons, they seize and shut in. After three days, by their own authority, they send them into exile to various places. Other brothers, who had come to visit us, they put into the public prison and keep shut up for very many days. Flying again to the lodging, they tear apart everything that had been acquired either for expenses or for the poor. But because this public crime of theirs was noted by all the citizens, they used this device: they gave back some lesser things and boasted that they had returned our property to us. But the provisions they kept for themselves; and after so great a crime they sought, if it could be done, to deny it so far as to allow none of mine to come to me to bring food necessary for the body. Scarcely on the sixth day, when various people cried out to them, they allowed one to come. As far as it lay with them, they showed the minds of murderers; and the first man, so as not to cease from malice, they dismissed on the fourth day. Afterwards, scarcely on the sixth day, when we were failing, they allowed one to come with food. These, then, are the works of the Ario-maniacs. [VII.] See, most holy brothers, whether it is not persecution, when we who guard the catholic faith suffer these things; and consider more deeply whether it is not even much worse than that which was carried out by those who served idols. They sent people to prison, yet they did not forbid their own to come to them. How greatly, then, Satan has wounded the churches through the cruelty of the Ario-maniacs! Those who ought to set free send people into the public prison. Those who learn to suffer for righteousness' sake do violence. Those who are taught from the divine law not to reclaim what is taken from them plunder the goods of others. I pass over how great a cruelty has seized them while they rejoice in temporal wealth. To robbers shut in prison the interrogators or judges do not deny the opportunity of seeing their own: from us even our own are kept away; and devout brothers are not only driven from the lodging in which we are held, lest they come, but are frightened with threats lest they approach the prison. They have so subdued everyone that I have recognized most clearly — I will begin with the bishops — that some, while they fear to lose their honour, have lost the faith itself, and while they are unwilling to lose earthly wealth and immunities, have counted the heavenly treasures and true security as nothing. So the rest too, led on, seeing the bishops fearing to lose these things, have begun to love what they cannot always have. [VIII.] So the Ario-maniacs terrify the rich by threatening them with proscription, and the poor because they have the power to shut them in prison. And how great is the madness! In the place where we are held, they not only send to prison the men who serve us, but also shut up consecrated virgins in public custody without any fear of God. But as the wicked elders who sought to violate the chastity of Susanna did not rejoice, so neither will these rejoice for ever, who try to subject the church to their unbelief by various persecution and excessive oppression. For holy Daniel said to them: "Thus the daughters of Israel, out of fear, lay with you." But let human fear depart from your minds, most holy ones, since you have the Lord's consolation, who says: "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." It is a time of testing; it is the time for the approved to become known openly. They have accepted human help because they do not have divine help; if they had it, they would never subject the souls of the innocent to themselves by earthly power. [IX.] We ought to have written much about their evils, by which not I alone but very many are oppressed; but, so that we could not do this and make their cruelty known by letter, we are kept by them in the strictest custody. That is why our own people and friends are forbidden to come to us. But the Lord has granted me to send this letter to you through our dearest Syrus the deacon, whom I had in my power to send, because by the providence of our Lord he had at that time gone to see the holy places and was not found among the other brothers. [X.] For the rest, we have scarcely written this letter in whatever way we could, always praying God to restrain the guards from hour to hour, and to grant that the deacon should not bring you news of our labour rather than a letter of greeting of whatever kind. Therefore I earnestly ask you to guard the faith with all vigilance, keep concord, be instant in prayer, and remember us without ceasing, that the Lord may deign to free his church, which is in labour throughout the whole world, and that we who are oppressed may, once freed, rejoice with you: which the Lord will deign to grant at your asking, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed with him from the ages and for all ages of ages. Amen. [XI.] Again I ask, and I beg you by the mercy of God, that each of you take his own greeting in this letter, since, compelled by necessity, I could not write to each as I used to. So in this one I address all of you, brothers, and also holy sisters, sons and daughters; I appeal to every sex, every age, that you be content with this greeting, and deign, as a service to us, to greet also those who are outside and deign to love us. Our brothers who are with me, presbyters and deacons, and all our people greet you; they join me in earnestly asking that, remembering us, you deign to greet all your people as a service to us. I have also sent the letter which I made to Patrophilus my jailer, so that you may learn from it that we can be neither frightened by the threats of the Ario-maniacs nor drawn into their fellowship by their serpentine, flattering cunning. May the Godhead protect you and make you live flourishing here and in the future, with all your people, dearest and most longed-for brothers.