Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/653

 apostolic authority sealed and secured; Christ, as He had been foretold by prophets and announced to the world by apostles, is the assured ground of his faith (cf. Dial. 119, § 343 ; Apol. i. 39, 42). The apostles are the twelve bells on the border of the high-priest's garment, with the sound of whose ringing the whole world has been filled (Dial. 42, § 263 ); the apostles are the evangelical preachers in whose person Isaiah cried, "Lord, who hath believed our report?" the apostles are "the brethren in the midst of whom" Christ gives praise unto God (ib. 106, § 333 ). The Apologies have been pub. in Eng. in the ''Ante-Nic. Fathers (T. &amp; T. Clark) and in a cheap form in the A. and M. Theol. Lib.'' (Griffith).

[H.S.H.]

Justinus (3), a Gnostic writer, author of several books, only known to us by the abstract which Hippolytus (Ref. Haer. v. 23, p. 148) has given of one of them, called the book of Baruch. The account which that book gives of the origin and history of the universe makes it to have sprung from three underived principles, two male, one female. The first of these is the Good Being, and has no other name; He is perfect in knowledge, and is remote from all contact with the created world, of which, however, He is afterwards described as the Ultimate Cause. It is the knowledge of this Good Being which alone deserves the name, and it is from the possession of it that these heretics claimed the title of Gnostics. The second principle is called Elohim, the Father of the creation, deficient in knowledge, but not represented as subject to evil passion. The third, or female principle, identified with the earth, is called Eden and Israel, destitute of knowledge and subject to anger, of a double form, a woman above the middle, a snake below. Of her, Elohim becomes enamoured, and from their intercourse spring 24 angels—12 paternal, who co-operate with their father and do his will, and 12 maternal, who do the mother's will. The principal part is played by the third paternal angel, Baruch, the chief minister of good, and the third maternal, Naas, or the serpent, the chief author of evil.

Lipsius regards this work of Justinus as probably written later than the middle of 2nd cent., representing in its fundamental ideas one of the oldest, perhaps the very oldest, form of Gnosticism, and as exhibiting the passage of Jewish Christianity into Gnosis. We cannot share this view. On comparing the system of Justinus with that of the Ophite sect described by Irenaeus (i. 30), the points of contact are found to be too numerous to be all accidental. In the system of these Ophites the commencement is made with two male principles, and one female. On the whole, we feel bound to refer the system of Justinus to the latest stage of Gnosticism, when a philosophy, in which any unproved assumption was regarded as sufficiently justified by any remote analogy, had reached its exhaustion, and when its teachers were forced to seek for novelty by wilder and more audacious combinations; and we are not disposed to quarrel with the verdict of Hippolytus that he had met with many heretics, but never a worse one than Justinus.

[.]

Justinus (12) I., proclaimed emperor (July 9, 518) on the death of the emperor Anastasius by the troops under his command and by the people (Chron. Pasch. 331, in Patr. Gk. xcii. 858), the choice being approved by the senate (Marcell. Chron.). He was a man of no education, and the affairs of the state were managed chiefly by his prudent minister Proclus the quaestor and afterwards by his nephew and eventual successor Justinian. For the most memorable event of his reign, the end of the schism between the Eastern and Western churches, see. For his relations with Persia see I. in D. C. B. (4-vol. ed.).

In 523 Justin issued a constitution against the Manicheans and other heretics (Codex, i. tit. v. 12). The former were punished with exile or death; other heretics, pagans, Jews, and Samaritans, were declared incapable of holding a magistracy or entering military service. The allied Goths were exempted from these provisions. Because of the persecution of his Arian co-religionists, Theodoric sent pope John I. in 525 to Constantinople to remonstrate with the emperor. [ (17)]

In Apr. 527 Justin caused Justinian, who had long taken the chief part in government, to be proclaimed emperor and crowned, and on Aug. 1 died, in his 75th year.

[.]

Justinus (13) II., emperor, nephew of Justinian, son of his sister Vigilantia. He was appointed Curopalates or Master of the Palace by his uncle (Corip. i. 138). The night Justinian died, a deputation of the senate, headed by the patrician Callinicus, hurried to his house and persuaded him to accept the crown. In the early morning he was saluted emperor by the populace in the hippodrome. The same day (Nov. 14, 565) he was crowned by the patriarch John (Theophan. Cron. in Patr. Gk. cviii. 525), and received the homage of the senate and people in the hippodrome.

Justin, on his accession, declared himself an adherent of the decrees of Chalcedon, and restored to their sees the bishops who had been banished by his predecessor (Venantius Fortunatus, ad Justinum, 25–26, 39–44, in Patr. Lat. lxxxviii. 432). The edict is given in probably a corrupt form by Evagrius (H. E. v. 1, in Patr. Gk. lxxxvi. 2789), and also by Nicephorus Callistus (H. E. xvii. 33) Soon afterwards another edict was published, given at length by Evagrius (H. E. v. 4), in which, after setting forth the orthodox belief as to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, he exhorted all to return to the Catholic Church, which should remain firm and unchanged for ever; and that no one should for the future dispute about persons or syllables, probably referring to the person of Theodore and the writings of Theodoret and Ibas, and also to the question as to the Incorruptibility of the body of Christ. This edict gained general approval, as all interpreted it in favour of their own views, but none of the various sects returned to communion, in consequence of the emperor's declaration that no change was to be made in the church. Justin also early in his reign sent Photinus, the stepson of Belisarius, with full powers to reconcile the churches of Egypt and Alexandria, but his mission seems to have been fruitless.

For the secular events of his reign see II., D. of G. and R. Biogr.