(Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 709). It appears to have been situate on the edge of Isauria. [ὴ Διοκαισαρέων ὀλίγη πόλις, as Gregory calls Nazianzus, is more northerly than Gibbon supposed, lying on the road from Iconium to Tyana; about six hours due east of Archelais; Ramsay, Asia Minor, 285.]
Ref. 034
See Ducange, Constant. Christiana, l. iv. p. 141, 142. The θεία δύναμις of Sozomer. (l. vii. c. 5) is interpreted to mean the Virgin Mary. [The site of the Church of Anastasia, S.W. of the Hippodrome, is marked now by the mosque of Mehmed Pasha Djemi; see Paspatês, Βυζάντιναι Μελέται, 369.]
Ref. 035
Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. ix. p. 432, &c.) diligently collects, enlarges, and explains the oratorical and poetical hints of Gregory himself.
Ref. 036
He pronounced an oration (tom. i. Orat. xxiii. p. 409 [= xxv. Migne, p. 1197 sqq.]) in his praise; but after their quarrel the name of Maximus was changed into that of Heron (see Jerom, tom. i. in Catalog. Script. Eccles. p. 301). I touch slightly on these obscure and personal squabbles. [For an account of Maximus, see Hodgkin, i. 346 sqq. Cp. also J. Dräseke, Z. f. Wiss. Theologie, 36 (1893), p. 290 sqq.]
Ref. 037
Under the modest emblem of a dream, Gregory (tom. ii. carmen ix. p. 78 [ed. Migne, 3, p. 1254]) describes his own success with some human complacency. Yet it should seem, from his familiar conversation with his auditor St. Jerom (tom. i. Epist. ad Nepotian, p. 14 [ep. 52; Migne, i. p. 534]), that the preacher understood the true value of popular applause.
Ref. 038
Lachrymæ auditorum, laudes tuæ sint, is the lively and judicious advice of St. Jerom [ib.].
Ref. 039
Socrates (l. v. c. 7) and Sozomen (l. vii. c. 5) relate the evangelical words and actions of Damophilus without a word of approbation. He considered, says Socrates, that it is difficult to resist the powerful; but it was easy, and would have been profitable, to submit. [Date of entry of Theodosius, 14th Nov., Idacius, Fast. C.; but 24th Nov., acc. to Pasch. Chron. and Socrates, v. 6, which Clinton accepts and Hodgkin supports.]
Ref. 040
[Not St. Sophia, which was not yet the chief church, but the Church of the Twelve Apostles; see Plan in vol. iii. opposite p. 100.]
Ref. 041
See Gregory Nazianzen, tom. ii. de Vitâ suâ, p. 21, 22 [l. 1331 sqq.]. For the sake of posterity, the bishop of Constantinople records a stupendous prodigy. In the month of November, it was a cloudy morning, but the sun broke forth when the procession entered the church.
Ref. 042
Of the three ecclesiastical historians, Theodoret alone (l. v. c. 2) has mentioned this important commission of Sapor, which Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 728) judiciously removes from the reign of Gratian to that of Theodosius.
Ref. 043
I do not reckon Philostorgius, though he mentions (l. ix. c. 19) the explusion of Damophilus. The Eunomian historian has been carefully strained through an orthodox sieve.
Ref. 044
Le Clerc has given a curious extract (Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. xviii. p. 91-105) of the theological sermons which Gregory Nazianzen pronounced at Constantinople against the Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, &c. He tells the Macedonians, who deified the Father and the Son, without the Holy Ghost, that they might as well be styled Tritheists as Ditheists. Gregory himself was almost a Tritheist; and his monarchy of heaven resembles a well-regulated aristocracy.
Ref. 045
The first general council of Constantinople now triumphs in the Vatican: but the popes had long hesitated, and their hesitation perplexes, and almost staggers, the humble Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. ix. p. 499, 500). [It had no good claim to be ecumenical, for the 150 bishops present were entirely from the eastern provinces of the Empire. It put forward no new doctrines, but simply reasserted the Nicene Creed. See Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 262.]
Ref. 046
Before the death of Meletius, six or eight of his most popular ecclesiastics, among whom was Flavian, had abjured, for the sake of peace, the bishopric of Antioch (Sozomen, l. vii. c. 3, 11. Socrates, l. v. c. 5). Tillemont thinks it his duty to disbelieve the story; but he owns that there are many circumstances in the life of Flavian which seem inconsistent with the praises of Chrysostom and the character of a saint (Mém. Ecclés. tom. x. p. 541). [Gregory of Nyssa pronounced the funeral oration on Meletius.]
Ref. 047
Consult Gregory Nazianzen, de Vitâ suâ, tom. ii. p. 25-28 [1509 sqq.]. His general and particular opinion of the clergy and their assemblies may be seen in verse and prose (tom. i. orat. i. p. 33 [= or. ii. Migne], epist. lv. [= ep. cxxx. Migne, iii. p. 225] p. 814, tom. ii. carmen x. [leg. xi.] p. 81 [Migne, ib. p. 1227]). Such passages are faintly marked by Tillemont, and fairly produced by Le Clerc.
Ref. 048
See Gregory, tom. ii. de Vitâ suâ, p. 28-31 [1680 sqq.]. The fourteenth [22nd], twenty-seventh [36th], and thirty-second [42nd] orations were pronounced in the several stages of this business. The peroration of the last (tom. i. p. 528), in which he takes a solemn leave of men and angels, the city and the emperor, the East and the West, &c., is pathetic, and almost sublime.
Ref. 049
The whimsical ordination of Nectarius is attested by Sozomen (l. vii. c. 8); but Tillemont observes (Mém. Ecclés. tom. ix. p. 719), Après tout, ce narré de Sozomène est si honteux pour tous ceux qu’il y mêle, et surtout pour Théodose, qu’il vaut mieux travailler à le détruire, qu’à le soutenir; an admirable canon of criticism.
Ref. 050
I can only be understood to mean that such was his natural temper; when it was not hardened, or inflamed, by religious zeal. From his retirement [at Arianzus, a farm close to the village of Karbala (now Καλβαρή, Turk. Gelvere), 2½ hours south of Nazianzus, containing “a church full of relics of S. Gregory.” Ramsay, Asia Minor, 285], he exhorts Nectarius to prosecute the heretics of Constantinople.
Ref. 051
See the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 6-23, with Godefroy’s commentary on each law, and his general summary, or Paratitlon, tom. vi. p. 104-110.
Ref. 052
They always kept their Easter, like the Jewish Passover, on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox; and thus pertinaciously opposed to the Roman church and Nicene synod, which had fixed Easter to a Sunday. Bingham’s Antiquities, l. xx. c. 5, vol. ii. p. 309, fol. edit.
Ref. 053
Sozomen, l. vii. c. 12.
Ref. 054
See
