.—Successors of Theodosius the Great. Rufinus, the Prætorian Prefect, is Slain. The Chief Priests of the Principal Cities. Differences among the Heretics. Account of Sisinius, Bishop of the Novatians.
was the death of
Theodosius, who had contributed so efficiently to the aggrandizement of
the Church.
He expired in the sixtieth year of his age, and the sixteenth of his
reign. He left his two sons as his successors. Arcadius, the elder, reigned in the East, and Honorius in the West. They both held the same religious sentiments as their father.
Damasus was dead; and at this period Siricius was the
leader of the church of Rome; Nectarius, of the church in
Constantinople; Theophilus, over the church of Alexandria; Flavian, over the church of Antioch; and John, over that of Jerusalem. Armenia and the Eastern provinces were at this time overrun by the barbarian Huns.
Rufinus, prefect of the East, was suspected of having clandestinely
invited them to devastate the Roman territories, in furtherance of his
own ambitious designs; for he was said to aspire to tyranny. For this
reason, he was soon after slain; for, on the return of the troops from
the conquest of Eugenius, the Emperor Arcadius, according to custom, went forth from Constantinople to meet them; and the soldiers took this opportunity to massacre Rufinus. These circumstances tended greatly to the extension of religion. The emperors attributed to the piety of their father, the ease with which the tyrant had been vanquished, and the plot of Rufinus to gain their government arrested; and they readily confirmed all the laws which had been enacted by their predecessors in favor of the churches, and bestowed their own gifts in addition. Their subjects profited by their example, so that even the pagans were converted without difficulty to Christianity, and the heretics united themselves to the Catholic Church.
Owing to the disputes which had arisen among the Arians
and Eunomians, and to which I have already alluded, these heretics
daily diminished in number. Many of them, in reflecting upon the
diversity of sentiments which prevailed among those of their own
persuasion, judged that the truth of God could not be present with
them, and went over to those who held the same faith as the
emperors.
The interests of the Macedonians of Constantinople were
materially affected by their possessing no bishop in that juncture; for, ever since they had been deprived of their churches by Eudoxius, under the reign of Constantius, they had been governed only by presbyters, and remained so until the next reign. The Novatians, on the other hand, although they had been agitated by the controversy concerning the Passover, which was an innovation made by Sabbatius, yet the most of them remained in quiet possession of their churches, and had not been molested by any of the punishments or laws enacted against other heretics, because they maintained that the Three Persons of the Trinity are of the same substance. The virtue of their leaders also tended greatly to the maintenance of concord among them. After the presidency of Agelius they were governed by Marcian, a good man; and on his decease,
a little while before the time now under consideration, the bishopric
devolved upon Sisinius,