Acacius (3)
Acacius
Bishop of Beroea. Born in Syria c. 322; died c. 432. While still very young he became a monk in the famous community of solitaries, presided over by Asterius, at a place just outside Antioch. He seems to have been an ardent champion of orthodoxy during the Arian troubles, and suffered greatly for his courage and constancy. After Eusebius of Samosata returned from exile on the death of Valens in 378, he gave public recognition to the great services of Acacius and ordained him to the See of Beroea. We next hear of Acacius in Rome, apparently as a deputy on the part of Meletius and the Fathers of the Antiochene Synod, when the questions connected with the heresy of Apollinaris came up for discussion before Pope Damasus. While fulfilling this difficult embassy he attended the meeting of the prelates summoned to decide upon the errors of Apollinaris, and subscribed the profession of faith in the Two Natures. It was thus largely due to his efforts that the various schismatical movements at Antioch were ended. A little later we find him at Constantinople whither he had gone to take part in the second General Council convened in 381 to reemphasize the Nicene definitions and to put down the errors of the Macedonians or Pneumatomachians. Meletius of Antioch died in the same year and Acacius, unfortunately, took part in the illegitimate consecration of Flavian. For this constructively schismatical proceeding — schismatical in the sense that it was an explicit violation of the agreement entered into between Paulinus and Meletius and tended unhappily to keep the Eustathian party in power — Acacius fell under the displeasure of Pope Damasus, who refused to hold communion with him and his supporters. This Roman excommunication lasted some ten or eleven years until the Council of Capua readmitted him to unity in 391 or 392 (Labbe, Conc., II, 1072). In 398 Acacius, who was now in his seventy-sixth year, was charged once more with a delicate mission to the Roman Church. Having been selected by Isidore of Alexandria to convey to Pope Siricius the news of St. John Chrysostom’s election to the See of Constantinople, he was especially exhorted by the Egyptian metropolitan to do all in his power to remove the prejudice which still existed in the West against Flavian and his party. In this, as in the previous embassy, he displayed a tactfulness that disarmed all opposition. The reader will find in the pages of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret an estimate of the high value which the entire Oriental episcopate put upon the services of Acacius who is described as “famous throughout the world” (Theod., V, xxiii). We now come to the two incidents in the career of this remarkable man which throw so perplexing a light upon the problem of his real character that he may be called one of the enigmas of ecclesiastical history. We refer to his sustained hostility towards St. John Chrysostom and to his curious treatment of Cyril of Alexandria during the Nestorian controversy.
Acacius was always an avowed rigorist in conduct and enjoyed great repute for piety. Sozomen (VII, xxviii) tells us that he was “rigid in observing all the regulations of the ascetic life” and that when raised to the episcopate his life was lived practically and austerely “in the open.” Theodoret is consistent in his admiration for his many episcopal qualities and calls him “an athlete of virtue” (V, iv). Early in the episcopate of St. John Chrysostom, in the year 398, Acacius came to Constantinople, where he was treated with less distinction than he had apparently looked for. Whatever may have been the nature of the slight put upon him, he seems to have felt it keenly; for Palladius, St. John’s biographer, records a most unepiscopal saying of the injured prelate to the effect that he would one day give his brother of Constantinople a taste of his own hospitality — ego auto artouo chytran (Pallad., Vita Chrys., VI, viii in P.G., XLVII, 22-29). It is certain, at any rate, that from this time forth, Acacius showed himself indefatigable in working for the great orator-bishop’s removal and was not the least active of those who took part in the disgraceful “Synod of the Oak” in the year 403. Indeed, he was one of the notorious “four” whom the Saint particularly named as men at whose hands he could not expect to obtain common justice. In every one of the various synods convened for the Saint’s undoing, the restless old man of Beroea took a leading and almost acrimonious part, and even made a laborious, but happily futile, effort to win over Pope Innocent to his uncharitable view. He was excommunicated for his pains and remained under ban until 414. Nor was his implacability quenched either by his great antagonist’s death or by the lapse of time. Fourteen years after St. John had died in exile, Acacius is found writing to Atticus of Constantinople, in 421, to apologize for the conduct of Theodotus of Antioch, who had, in spite of his better judgment, placed the Saint’s name upon the diptychs. The same perplexing inconsistency of character, considering his advanced years, his profession, and the wide repute for sanctity he enjoyed, may be seen also in the attitude which Acacius maintained towards Nestorius. When his violent plea for leniency towards the heresiarch failed to produce its effect, he worked adroitly to have Cyril hoist with his own petard and charged with Apollinarianism at Ephesus. Acacius spent the last years of his life in trying, with edifying inconsistency, to pour the water of his charity upon the smouldering embers of the feuds which Nestorianism had left in its train. His letters to Cyril and to Pope Celestine make curious reading on this score; and he has the amazing distinction of having inspired St. Epiphanius to write his “History of Heresies” (Haer., i, 2, in P.G., XLI, 176). He died at the extraordinary age of one hundred and ten years.
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The ecclesiastical historians SOCRATES, in P.G., LXVII; SOZOMEN, in P.G., LXVII; THEODORET, in P.G., LXXXII; PALLADIUS, Vita Chrys., VI, viii, in P.G., XLVII; BARONIUS, Ann. Eccl. (PAGI, Crit.); TILLEMONT, M moires; NEWMAN, Ar. IV Cent. (4th ed.); GWATKIN, Studies in Arianism (2d ed.); HEFELE, Hist. Ch. Counc. (tr. CLARK; ed. OXENHAM), II.
CORNELIUS CLIFFORD
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Acacius (1)
Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, disciple and biographer of Eusebius, the historian, whose successor in the See of Caesarea he became in 340. Nothing is known of the date or country of his birth, but he was probably a Syrian; and throughout his life bore the nickname of monophthalmos (one-eyed); no doubt from a personal defect (S. Hier. Viri III., XCVIII), but possibly with a maliciously figurative reference, also, to his general shiftiness of conduct and his rare skill in ambiguous statement. He was a prelate of great learning, a patron of studies (S. Hier., Epist. ad. Marcellam, 141), and was the author of a treatise on Ecclesiastes. He also wrote six books of miscellanies (symmikta zetemata) or essays on various subjects which have come down to us only in fragments. The student may consult these fragments in detail in Fabricius, “Bibliotheca Graeca”, vii, 336, and ix, 254 sqq. (ed. Harless). He is remembered chiefly for his bitter opposition to St. Cyril of Jerusalem and for the part he was afterwards enabled to play in the more acute stages of the Arian controversy. There is a significant passage in the famous twenty-first oration of St. Gregory Nazianzen, in which that champion of orthodoxy speaks of “the tongue of the Arians” (Orat., xxi, 21) in dubiously complimentary terms.
If, as seems probable, it is Acacius who is there referred to, it can only be said that the story of his career fully justifies the implication so darkly made. He was one of those imperial prelates so effectively described by Newman (Arians 4th Cent., 4th ed., 274) as “practised in the gymnastics of the Aristotelic school”; and his readiness in debate and genius for intrigue, joined to the prestige he already possessed as the friend and successor of the great Church historian of Caesarea, naturally singled him out as the likeliest spokesman and guiding spirit of the Court faction, even before their first great leader, Eusebius of Nicomedia, had passed away. He was one of the notorious “ninety” who signed the ambiguous creeds at Antioch, in the presence of Constantius in 341 (Sozomen, III, v), on the occasion of the dedication of the Golden Basilica. For his part in this transaction and for his open advocacy of a policy of reticence towards the Nicaean formula, we find his name mentioned in the list of those who were deposed by the Council of Sardica in 347 (Athanasius, Hist. Ar., XVII; Epist. ad. Ægypt., VII). Refusing to acquiesce in the sentence passed upon him, he withdrew with the other bishops of the Court faction to Philippopolis, where he in turn helped to secure a sentence of excommunication and deposition against his judges and also against Pope Julius, the patron and defender of St. Athanasius, and against Hosius of Cordova (Soc., II, xvi; Soz., III, xiv; Theod., II, xxvi; Labbe, Conc., II, 625-629). These penalties which were inflicted on him at the hands of the orthodox did nothing, of course, to diminish his prestige. If we may trust the testimony of St. Jerome, his credit with Constantius was so great during all these years that when Pope Liberius was deposed and driven into exile, in 355 or 357, Acacius was able to secure the intrusion of Felix the Antipope in his place.
The year 358 marks the culmination of his acrimonious and undignified quarrel with Cyril of Jerusalem. The misunderstanding, which dated back to a period not long after Cyril’s installation, had arisen ostensibly over a question of canonical precedence, but was most probably rooted in the chagrin that Acacius characteristically felt at being unable to sway Cyril’s policy entirely to his own liking. Charges and counter-charges of heresy followed for some years, until Acacius managed to secure the deposition of Cyril, through the assistance of the Palestinian bishops, whom he had induced to examine a wholly ridiculous charge of contumacy. Cyril went into exile, but was restored to his church within two years by a decision of the famous Council of Seleucia. But the extraordinary credit enjoyed by Acacius with the weak-minded Constantius was able to undo this act of ordinary justice, and, in 360, Cyril was condemned once more — this time through the influence which Acacius was able to exercise at the Synod of Constantinople. Cyril was forced to yield. He left his see and remained in exile until the accession of Julian, in 361. The fact, however, that Acacius received a temporary check in the reinstatement of Cyril, at the hands of the Synod of Seleucia, must not blind the reader to the real weight of his influence either in the Council itself or in the ecclesiastical politics of the time. He was among the foremost of the Arianizing prelates who succeeded in carrying through the idea of a divided Synod to solve the problems created by the Sirmian manifesto. In this sense he may be charged with the bulk of the mischief created by the definitions of Ariminum and Seleucia. The turbulent and unscrupulous faction which rallied to the support of his ideas in both gatherings was entirely his creation and rightly bore his name — oi peri Akakion.
The detailed account of his activities at Seleucia belongs rather to the history of that gathering than to the present sketch of his life; but some notice of his mode of procedure will not be out of place here. The number of bishops present has been variously estimated as somewhere between one hundred and fifty and one hundred and sixty (Gwatkin, Studies in Arianism, V, note G, where the original authorities are ably discussed). The Semi-Arians were in a large majority; and Acacius had a well-disciplined following, which, with the Anomoeans whom he had won to his side, by holding out hopes of a compromise, amounted to some forty in all. The first critical stage of events was soon marked by the re-adoption of the Semi-Arian Creed of Antioch, known popularly as the “Creed of the Encaenia”, or “Creed of the Dedication” (he en tois egkainiois) which was a negatively unsatisfactory profession of faith — the only distinct character about it being that it was Anti-Nicene in scope and had been framed by men who had deliberately confirmed the deposition of St. Athanasius. The next stage of events was more significant still; for it gave Acacius and his followers the opportunity to reveal their strength. Silvanus of Tarsus proposed to confirm the famous Lucianic Creed, when Acacius and his party arose and left the assembly, by way of protest. In spite of this move the Creed was signed the next morning with closed doors; a proceeding which Acacius promptly characterized as a “deed of darkness.” On Wednesday Basil of Ancyra and Macedonius of Constantinople arrived with Hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Eustathius. Cyril was already under censure; and Acacius refused to bring his followers back to the synod until he and some other accused bishops who were present had withdrawn. After a stormy debate his plan was agreed to and Leonas, the Comes, or representative of Constantius at the deliberation, rose and read a copy of a new Creed which Acacius had put into his hands. While not expressly repudiating the Lucianic formulas, it nevertheless objected to the terms homoousion and homoiousion as being alike unscriptural. This led to a very heated discussion, and on Thursday Acacius found himself bluntly attacked by Eleusius, the ex-soldier and Semi-Arian Bishop of Cyzicus.
On Friday Acacius refused once more to take part in any further deliberations and Leonas joined with him, on the plea, as he averred, that the Emperor had not sent him to preside over a council of bishops who could not agree among themselves. The majority thereupon convened without them and deposed Acacius and some fifteen other prelates. That astute leader, however, did not wait for the formal vote of deposition against him, but set out immediately, with eight others, for Constantinople. On arriving there he discovered that his object had already been secured by the advent of a number of disaffected deputies from Ariminum. The famous conference of Niké (near Hadrianople) had taken place and the homoios, without the supposed safeguard of the kata panta, had been adopted. This led to a fresh synod held at the suggestion of Constantius in the imperial city itself. It meant the complete triumph of the indefatigable Acacius. Homoean ideas were established at Constantinople; and, although their influence never lasted very long in the West, they enjoyed a fluctuating but disquieting supremacy in the East for nearly twenty years longer. Acacius returned to his see in 361 and spent the next two years of his life in filling the vacant sees of Palestine with men who were thought to sympathize with his policy of theological vagueness and Anti-Nicenism. With characteristic adroitness he consented to a complete change of front and made a public profession of adherence to the Nicaean formularies on the accession of Jovian in 363. When the Arian Valens was proclaimed Augustus in 364, however, Acacius once more reconsidered his views and took sides with Eudoxius; but his versatility this time served him to little purpose. When the Macedonian bishops met at Lampsacus, the sentence previously passed against him was confirmed and he is heard of no more in authentic history. Baronius gives the date of his death as 366.
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For bibliography see ACACIANS.
CORNELIUS CLIFFORD
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Acacius (2)
Patriarch of Constantinople; Schismatic; d. 489. When Acacius first appears in authentic history it is as the orphanotrophos, or dignitary entrusted with the care of the orphans, in the Church of Constantinople. He thus filled an ecclesiastical post that conferred upon its possessor high rank as well as curial influence; and, if we may borrow a hint as to his real character from the phrases in which Suidas has attempted to describe his undoubtedly striking personality, he early made the most of his opportunities. He seems to have affected an engaging magnificence of manner; was openhanded; suave, yet noble, in demeanour; courtly in speech, and fond of a certain ecclesiastical display. On the death of the Patriarch Gennadius, in 471, he was chosen to succeed him, and for the first five or six years of his episcopate his life was uneventful enough. But there came a change when the usurping Emperor Basiliscus allowed himself to be won over to Eutychian teaching by Timotheus Ælurus, the Monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria, who chanced at that time to be a guest in the imperial capital. Timotheus, who had been recalled from exile only a short time previously, was bent on creating an effective opposition to the decrees of Chalcedon; and he succeeded so well at court that Basiliscus was induced to put forth an encyclical or imperial proclamation (egkyklios) in which the teaching of the Council was rejected. Acacius himself seems to have hesitated at first about adding his name to the list of the Asiatic bishops who had already signed the encyclical; but, warned by a letter from Pope Simplicius, who had learned of his questionable attitude from the ever-vigilant monastic party, he reconsidered his position and threw himself violently into the debate. This sudden change of front redeemed him in popular estimation, and he won the regard of the orthodox, particularly among the various monastic communities throughout the East, by his now ostentatious concern for sound doctrine. The fame of his awakened zeal even travelled to the West, and Pope Simplicius wrote him a letter of commendation. The chief circumstance to which he owed this sudden wave of popularity was the adroitness with which he succeeded in putting himself at the head of the particular movement of which Daniel the Stylite was both the coryphaeus and the true inspirer. The agitation was, of course, a spontaneous one on the part of its monastic promoters and of the populace at large, who sincerely detested Eutychian theories of the Incarnation; but it may be doubted whether Acacius, either in orthodox opposition now, or in unorthodox efforts at compromise later on, was anything profounder than a politician seeking to compass his own personal ends. Of theological principles he seems never to have had a consistent grasp. He had the soul of a gamester, and he played only for influence. Basiliscus was beaten.
He withdrew his offensive encyclical by a counter-proclamation, but his surrender did not save him. His rival Zeno, who had been a fugitive up to the time of the Acacian opposition, drew near the capital. Basiliscus, deserted on all sides, sought sanctuary in the cathedral church and was given up to his enemies, tradition says, by the time-serving Patriarch. For a brief space there was complete accord between Acacius, the Roman Pontiff, and the dominant party of Zeno, on the necessity for taking stringent methods to enforce the authority of the Fathers of Chalcedon; but trouble broke out once more when the Monophysite party of Alexandria attempted to force the notorious Peter Mongus into that see against the more orthodox claims of John Talaia in the year 482. This time events took on a more critical aspect, for they gave Acacius the opportunity he seems to have been waiting for all along of exalting the authority of his see and claiming for it a primacy of honour and jurisdiction over the entire East, which would emancipate the bishops of the capital not only from all responsibility to the sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, but to the Roman Pontiff as well. Acacius, who had now fully ingratiated himself with Zeno, induced that emperor to take sides with Mongus. Pope Simplicius made a vehement but ineffectual protest, and Acacius replied by coming forward as the apostle of reunion for all the East. It was a specious and far-reaching scheme, but it laid bare eventually the ambitions of the Patriarch of Constantinople and revealed him, to use Cardinal Hergenröther’s illuminating phrase, as “the forerunner of Photius.”
The first effective measure which Acacius adopted in his new role was to draw up a document, or series of articles, which constituted at once both a creed and an instrument of reunion. This creed, known to students of theological history as the Henoticon, was originally directed to the irreconcilable factions in Egypt. It was a plea for reunion on a basis of reticence and compromise. And under this aspect it suggests a significant comparison with another and better known set of “articles” composed nearly eleven centuries later, when the leaders of the Anglican schism were thridding a careful way between the extremes of Roman teaching on the one side and of Lutheran and Calvinistic negations on the other. The Henoticon affirmed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (i.e. the Creed of Nicaea completed at Constantinople) as affording a common symbol or expression of faith in which all parties could unite. All other symbola or mathemata were excluded; Eutyches and Nestorius were unmistakably condemned, while the anathemas of Cyril were accepted. The teaching of Chalcedon was not so much repudiated as passed over in silence; Jesus Christ was described as the “only-begotten Son of God . . . one and not two” (homologoumen ton monogene tou theou ena tygchanein kai ou duo . . . k.t.l.) and there was no explicit reference to the two Natures. Mongus naturally accepted this accomodatingly vague teaching. Talaia refused to subscribe to it and set out for Rome, where his cause was taken up with great vigour by Pope Simplicius. The controversy dragged on under Felix II (or III) who sent two legatine bishops, Vitalis and Misenus, to Constantinople, to summon Acacius before the Roman See for trial. Never was the masterfulness of Acacius so strikingly illustrated as in the ascendancy he acquired over this luckless pair of bishops. He induced them to communicate publicly with him and sent them back stultified to Rome, where they were promptly condemned by an indignant synod which reviewed their conduct. Acacius was branded by Pope Felix as one who had sinned against the Holy Ghost and apostolic authority (Habe ergo cum his . . . portionem S. Spiritus judicio et apostolica auctoritate damnatus); and he was declared to be perpetually excommunicate — nunquamque anathematis vinculis exuendus. Another envoy, inappropriately named Tutus, was sent to carry the decree of this double excommunication to Acacius in person: and he, too, like his hapless predecessors, fell under the strange charm of the courtly prelate, who enticed him from his allegiance. Acacius refused to accept the documents brought by Tutus and showed his sense of the authority of the Roman See, and of the synod which had condemned him, by erasing the name of Pope Felix from the diptychs. Talaia equivalently gave up the fight by consenting to become Bishop of Nola, and Acacius began by a brutal policy of violence and persecution, directed chiefly against his old opponents the monks, to work with Zeno for the general adoption of the Henoticon throughout the East. He thus managed to secure a political semblance of the prize for which he had worked from the beginning. He was practically the first prelate throughout Eastern Christendom until his death in 489. His schism outlived him some thirty years, and was ended only by the return of the Emperor Justin to unity, under Pope Hormisdas in 519.
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MANSI, Coll. Concil., (Florence, 1742) VII, 976 1176; Epp. Simplicii, Papae, in P.L., LVIII, 4160; Epp. Felicis, Papae, ibid., 893 967; THEODORET, Hist. Eccl.; EVAGRIUS, Hist. Eccl.; SUIDAS, s. v.; TILLEMONT, Mémoires, XVI; HERGENRÖTHER, Photius, Patr. von Constant. (Ratisbon, 1867) I; MARIN, Les moines de Constantinople (Paris, 1897).
CORNELIUS CLIFFORD
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Acacius
(surnamed Monophthalmus, from his having but one eye), was the disciple of Eusebius of Caesarea, in Palestine, whom he succeeded in the see of Caesarea in 340. He was one of the chiefs of the Arian party, and a man of ability and learning, but unsettled in his theological opinions. He was deposed as an Arian by the Synods of Antioch (A.D. 341) and Seleucia (359). Subsequently he subscribed the Nicene creed, and therefore fell out with the Anomaeans, with whom he had before acted. He died A.D. 363. St. Jerome (de Scrip. cap. 98) says that he wrote seventeen books of commentaries upon Holy Scripture, six on various subjects, and very many treatises, among them his book Adversus Marcellum, a considerable fragment of which is contained in Epiphanius, Haeres. 72. Socrates (lib. 2, cap. 4) says that he also wrote a life of his predecessor, Eusebius. Cave, Hist. Lit. anno. 340; Lardner, Works, 3, 583.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Acacius (2)
bishop of Berea, was born about the year 322, in Syria. He embraced the monastic life at an early age under the famous anchorite Asterius. About A.D. 378 he was promoted to the see of Berea by Eusebius of Samosata; and after 381 Flavian sent him to Rome, to obtain for him communion with the Western bishops, and to effect the extinction of the schism in the Church of Antioch, in both which designs he succeeded. At the commencement of the 5th century he conspired with Theophilus of Alexandria and others against Chrysostom, and was present in the pseudo- council ad Quercum, in 403, where Chrysostom was deposed. In the great contest between Cyril and Nestorius, Acacius wrote to Cyril, endeavoring to excuse Nestorius, and to show that the dispute was in reality merely verbal. In 431 the Council of Ephesus assembled for the decision of this question. Acacius did not attend, but gave his proxy to Paul of Emesa against Cyril, and addressed a letter to the Oriental bishop, accusing him of Apollinarianism. In 432 he was present in the synod of Berea, held by John, and did all in his power to reconcile Cyril and the Orientals. His death occurred about 436, so that he must have attained the age of 114 years. Of the numerous letters which he wrote, three only, according to Cave, are extant, viz., two Epistles to his Primate, Alexander of Hierapolis; one to Cyril. Cave, Hist. Lit. anno 430; Theodoret, Hist. Ecc 4:1-16.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Acacius (3)
bishop OF AMIDA, in Mesopotamia, lived about. A.D. 421. Vaarannes V, king of Persia, having, at the instigation of the magi, commenced a persecution of the Christians, war followed between the Romans and Persians, in which the former made about 10,000 prisoners, who were left by their captors in a most miserable condition. These men found in the bishop an unlooked-for friend, who sold all the gold and silver vessels and ornaments of his Church in order to purchase their liberty, and sent them back to their country. The Persian monarch. struck by this act of Acacius, sent for him, and the interview ended in the restoration of peace between the two nations. The Roman Church celebrates his festival April 9. See Socrates, Hist. Eccles. 7, 21 Baillet,: Vies des Saints, vol. 1, April 9.