Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 1 1911.djvu/204

160 the Arian trouble presbyters were not allowed to preach there. At any rate it is just down to the time of Alexander and his successor, Athanasius, that those writers who testify to peculiar privileges of the Alexandrine presbyterate in the appointment of the patriarch suppose them to have survived. The most precise evidence comes from a tenth century writer, Eutychius, who relates that by ordinance of St Mark twelve presbyters were to assist the patriarch, and at his death to elect and lay hands upon one of themselves as his successor, Athanasius being the first to be appointed by the bishops. Severus of Antioch, in the sixth century, mentions that “in former days” the bishop was “appointed” by presbyters at Alexandria. Jerome (in the same letter that was cited alx>ve, but independent for the moment of Ambrosiaster) deduces the essential equality of priest and bishop from the consideration that the Alex- andrine bishop “down to Heraclas and Dionysius” (232-265) was chosen by the presbyters from among themselves without any special form of consecration. Earlier than any of these is the story told. in connexion with the hermit Poemen in the Apophthegms of the Egyptian monks. Poemen was visited one day by heretics who began to criticise the arch-bishop of Alexandria as having only presbyterian ordination, a* on '''rraph. 7rp€<r/3vTepo)v 2ot ttjv x«f)orovuiv'''. Unfortunately the hermit declined to argue with them, gave them their dinner, and promptly dismissed them.

It is clear that an Alexandrine bishop of the fourth century slandered by heretics can be no one but Athanasius; and therefore this, the earliest evidence for presbyterian ordination at Alexandria, is just that which is most demonstrably false. For Athanasius was neither elected nor consecrated by presbyters: not more than ten or twelve years after the event, the bishops of Egypt affirmed categorically that the electors were “the whole multitude and the whole people” and that the consecrators were “the greater number of ourselves.” Yet this very emphasis on the part of the supporters of Athanasius reveals one line of the Arian campaign against him ; and the conjecture may be there- fore hazarded that it was by Arian controversialists that the allegations of Alexandrine “presbyterianism” were first circulated, and that their real origin lay in the desire to turn the edge of any argument that might be based upon the solidarity of the episcopate. If the Catholics called upon the bishops of the East not to champion a rebellious presbyter, their opponents would, on this view, “go one better” in their enthusiasm for episcopacy, and answer that Athanasius was no more than a presbyter himself. It is difficult for us, who have to reconstruct the history of the fourth century out of Catholic material, to form any just conception either of the mass of the lost Arian literature—exegetical and historical, as well as doctrinal and polemical—or of its almost exclusive vogue for the time being throughout the East, and of the influence which, in a thousand indirect ways, it must have exerted