intercalary month. For eight having been subtracted, which the previous embolismus had exhausted, twenty-five remain, to which A in order to complete the syzygies, other days are anticipated, and in the eleventh year Adar is inserted. The same is the ratio for the fourteenth year. For thirty-two days pass, from which, when five days are exempted, which had been anticipated, twenty-nine days remain, and two days are taken from the following [years] to accumulate the embolismus. Then in the seventeenth year, the epacts arrive at thirty days, and, that intercalated two-day period being restored, Adar is intercalated from the thirty-one remaining, and one day is left over. Thus, at the end of the cycle, twenty-seven days remain, and nonetheless, an embolismus is intercalated in the nineteenth year. This is the Gloss concerning the context of the Jewish cycle. In which you see that the syzygy is not yet completed B and several days are anticipated: against which Scaliger (lib. VII, De emendat.) very imprudently denies that the embolisms in the Jewish cycle are anticipated. Although that Gloss fixes the lunar year precisely at 354 days, and does not include the appendages of hours and minutes, which, collected for the whole cycle, amount to six days, with twenty-one hours and fifty-one minutes, by which the defects of the first and last embolisms are compensated. For this reason, that description of the Jewish cycle is crude and shadowy, and arranged for an easier method and popular comprehension, when in the meantime there is a different conformation of epacts and years among the Jews. The same can be pronounced regarding Epiphanius’s octaeteris, which either no one, or, if perhaps a very few, used for Paschal observance after the Nicene canon was established. This discussion regarding embolisms was brought forth for us by the arrangement of the Epiphanian octaeteris. Which had to have a place here, until the same might be treated in a more plentiful commentary, which we intend to write on the doctrine of times.
CONCERNING THE PSEUDO-SYNOD OF SIRMIUM AND ANCYRA, AND OTHER ACTS OF THE SEMI-ARIANS, A NARRATIVE OF SOCRATES, SOZOMEN, AND OTHERS, On Heresy LXIX.
When the Arian perfidy poured itself out into the Christian world, it was split into various parts, and the divorces of multiple sects and factions were born. To pass over the others for now, most prominent of all was the impiety of Photinus of Sirmium, who revived the dogmas of Sabellius and Samosatenus after a long interval. Epiphanius placed and refuted his heresy in order, as the 60th. D In order to suppress him, and to ward off such hatred and ignominy from themselves, the Arians—professing at last that they were Catholics—by command of Emperor Constantius, convened the Eastern bishops at Sirmium, which is a city of Pannonia, just as Socrates (lib. II, cap. 29) and others narrate. They wish for this to have happened after the consulate of Sergius and Nigrianus, which is the year of Christ 351. There were present at the synod, first of all, the Eastern bishops: Marcus of Arethusa, George of Alexandria, Basil, bishop of Ancyra, Pancratius of Pelusium, Hypatianus of Heraclea. From the Westerners, however, tainted by the same contagion, Valens, bishop of Mursa; and also Osius of Corduba, the pillar of the Catholic Church during those times, who went there, though unwillingly. In this council, after the condemnation of Photinus, a triple formula of faith was published by the Arians: the first conceived in Greek by Marcus of Arethusa, which Socrates in chapter 25, and before him Athanasius in the book *De Synodis*, record in Greek; but in Latin, Hilary [records it] in the book *De Synodis*. Two others are in Latin, of which the first is contained as described by Socrates and Athanasius in the same places; the last, which was later recited by Valens in the synod of Ariminum and rejected by the Catholics, it has...
produced mention in the Photinian heresy by Epiphanius. A Osius, indeed, struggled for a long time against the perfidy of the Arians and the cruelty of the emperor, and, having been tortured with the most severe torments, finally subscribed to that same impiety. Following these things, Constantius, after Magnentius was killed—whose slaughter occurred in the consulship of Constantius for the sixth time and Gallus for the second, which is the year 353—and the remaining tyrants were most successfully crushed or extinguished, and Gallus moreover was killed in the consulship of Constantius for the seventh time and Gallus for the third, in the year 354, finally in the consulship of Arbetio and Lollianus, in the year 355, set out for Rome to celebrate a triumph and gathered a synod at Milan against Athanasius. When the Catholic bishops, especially Eusebius of Vercelli, Dionysius of Milan, Paulinus of Trier, and Lucifer of Cagliari, resisted this most fiercely, they were ordered into exile.
B In the same year, Liberius, the Roman pontiff, who had succeeded Julius, was also relegated because he would not condemn Athanasius, as the same historians together with Theodoret and Athanasius testify. Regarding Liberius, Ammianus also speaks in book XV. With these things thus finished, in the following year, three days before the Kalends of May, the emperor betook himself to Rome, as the same Ammianus is the authority in book XVI. When he wished to stay there longer, he heard of the incursions of the barbarians and set out for Illyricum on the fourth day before the Kalends of June. But while the emperor was still lingering at Rome, that is, before the fourth day before the Kalends of June, Eudoxius, bishop of Germanicia in Syria, upon the announcement of the death of Leontius, bishop of Antioch, having obtained permission from Constantius, arrived in Syria and occupied the Antiochene see. Having attained this dignity, he applied himself entirely to restoring Aetius, nicknamed the "godless" (ἄθεον), C and original prince of the Anomoeans, to his former rank. For he had been ordained a deacon by Leontius, but had been condemned and ejected because he asserted that the Son of God was created from nothing and was unlike the Father. Since Eudoxius fostered his impiety—having tried in vain to restore and revoke him, as Socrates writes—he began to preach his nefarious dogmas openly, all the more confidently because he brandished the letters of Osius of Córdoba, by which he had subscribed to the same error.
When George of Laodicea had noticed these things, he sent letters to Ancyra to Basil; who, at that time by chance, had summoned many of the neighboring bishops to dedicate the church which he had built. Therefore, after the Ancyran council was held and George’s letters were read, that decree of faith was established which Epiphanius and Hilary commemorate; in which, with the word *homoousios* suppressed, they professed that the Son is *homoiousios*, that is, of similar substance to the Father, from which they were called Semi-Arians. Then legates were sent from the synod to the emperor at Sirmium: Basil of Ancyra, Eustathius of Sebaste, and Leontius of Cyzicus. D Their request had been given to the presbyter and the supporter of Aetius, in letters written otherwise against Eudoxius to the Antiochenes. Socrates appends to these a narrative of the Council of Ariminum: in which that *Ekthesis* proposed by Ursacius and Valens, which had been conceived before at Sirmium, is. Sozomen, however, weaves the history of Liberius being recalled from exile and returning to Rome.
In this matter, contemporary authors of annals disagree with those ancient ones. What Socrates and Sozomen handed down regarding the time of the Sirmian council against Photinus—namely, that it was celebrated in the consulship of Sergius and Nigrianus, which is the year 351 of the Christian era—is refuted in the great Annals for the year 357 by two or three arguments in particular. Following their authority, the remaining compilers of ecclesiastical history and time, while blaming those same writers for error, assert that Photinus was condemned in the Sirmian concilabulum in the year of Christ 357, in the consulship of Constantius for the ninth time and Julian. Furthermore, the arguments are of this kind: first, Socrates and Sozomen testify that Osius of Córdoba came to the Sirmian synod against his will, and there the condemnation of Athanasius was extorted from him by force and torments. But Osius participated with the Arians only when Liberius had already been relegated, and after he had been detained by Constantius at Sirmium for an entire year besides; which Athanasius teaches in his *Epistola ad solitarios*: "He keeps him for this whole year at Sirmium." He keeps him for an entire year at Sirmium in the place of exile. Liberius, however, as is clear from Socrates and Ammianus, did not go into exile before the year of Christ 355, that is, in the consulship of Arbetio and Lollianus, when he had been called from Rome to Milan, where Constantius was at that time. Athanasius, however, writes in that same book that Osius first came to Milan summoned by the letters of Constantius from Spain; and from there was sent back by him to his homeland: shortly after he was recalled again and, after being worn down and tortured for a whole year at Sirmium, finally succumbed. But if Constantius in the year 356 alone, since he had set out from Sirmium to Italy, returned from Rome to Illyricum, as was argued above, it appears that the Sirmian synod, to which Osius came as a supporter, could not have been held before the year 357, with Osius's year-long relegation at Sirmium already finished. To these two reasons, that Osius was compelled to agree both after the exile of Liberius and after a year of imprisonment, he added a third from Hilary, who in his book *De synodis* affirms that the Sirmian council was celebrated after the third year from the time when communion was denied to the Arian Saturninus, bishop of Arles, by the Catholics. But the manifest defection of Saturninus happened when, after Magnentius was conquered, Constantius betook himself to Arles. It is certain, however, from Ammianus book XXII, that Constantius arrived at Arles in the year of Christ 355, in the consulship of Constantius for the sixth time and Gallus for the second, and there celebrated his birthday on the sixth of the Ides of October. Whence it is clear that in the year 357 at last, with the three years already completed, the Sirmian synod was finished.
A Which, indeed, you have in Socrates, with the names of the consuls attached: for which reason it was received by all Catholics, and especially by Athanasius, with laughter and mockery. In the same year, Liberius, having been recalled from Beroea, subscribed at Sirmium to that first formula, which had been written in Greek by Marcus against Photinus; not to the second. Which having been obtained, he is sent back to Rome. Anno 358, the Sirmian pseudosynod having been completed, Constantius indicts another at Nicomedia. But it was prostrated by an earthquake, and soon after Nicæa, to which it had pleased them that the convention be transferred, was destroyed by the same ruin. Anno 359, the bishops having been distributed in two parts, synods are celebrated at the same time at Ariminum and Seleucia in Isauria. This history of those times, as it is handed down in the Annals, while Nicolaus Faber, a most learned man, does not reject it as it is in other matters, he dissents in this one point: that he denies that the third profession of faith, to which the consuls were added, was composed at the Sirmian synod. And so he thinks that only the two former ones were published when the Arians gathered against Photinus. But as for the last one, he thinks that indeed it was published at Sirmium, but in a fortuitous gathering of bishops, not in a legitimate and indicted synod. For thus he thinks in that Preface which he prefixed to Hilary's fragments: that Constantius, by letters written to Basil of Ancyra, ordered that he should deliberate with the Orientals concerning the place for holding the synod. But when it was not possible for them to agree among themselves, Basil went to the emperor and there found Marcus of Arethusa, Valens, and others. Then, having put their heads together and conspiring with minds bent on overturning the Nicene faith, they decided that a synod at Nicæa should be held. Afterward, when an earthquake had afflicted the same city, they decided that a part of the bishops should betake themselves to Seleucia. And at the same time at Sirmium, a new and third formula of faith was drafted by Marcus of Arethusa; as Nicolaus Faber observes from the letter of Germinius, which is read in the Fragments. D The historical narrative of all the above is refuted. It has been, therefore, until now persuaded to all, that Photinus was condemned by one and the same Sirmian synod, and that either three or at least two formulas of faith proceeded from it. The first of which was published against the dogmas of Photinus; in which the name *ousias* was attributed to God, which they decreed could neither be collated nor contracted: which Socrates, book II, cap. 25, also testifies was written in Greek by Marcus of Arethusa; the other was handed down in the Latin tongue, with Valens, Ursacius, Germinius, and the other bishops present, as the inscription itself conveys. In which the name *ousias*, as well as the words *homoousiou* and *homoiousiou*, because they did not exist in the Holy Scriptures, were effaced and proscribed forever; for concerning the third, as we shall see later, Nicolaus Faber rightly objects, which others think was written in that same synod. This hallucination of Socrates, Sozomen, and others, as will soon be evident, more recent historians have accumulated with new errors. Not the least of which is that they refer to the Ancyran Semiarian—
A synod, which was held against the second Sirmium formula, to the same year in which Photinus was condemned by the Council of Sirmium, namely 357 A.D. But we, having searched out the matter from the ancient Fathers, have discerned that there were in all three separate assemblies of bishops held in that same town of Sirmium, and not at the same times. The first of these was synodical and convoked by imperial letters when the bishops were summoned against Photinus; the remaining two were fortuitous, and by no means to be esteemed as councils in place or name, for in them only a few bishops, who perhaps happened to be near the emperor, participated and shared in deciding new decrees of faith. Wherefore, first of all, a general council against Photinus was celebrated at Sirmium by Constantius's order, concerning the year of which we shall speak later. In that, the formula of faith was published of which we have just spoken. Afterward, at different times, two others were issued by Ursacius and Valens and other Arian bishops, with the emperor’s knowledge. Lest I should seem to have asserted this rashly against the common consensus of so many writers, I shall briefly set forth the arguments upon which I do not hesitate to affirm it.
The first of these is that Basil of Ancyra himself and the other leaders of the Semiarians, who subscribed to the Ancyran synod, expressly testified to this in the synodical letter which Epiphanius describes. They began their argument in this sense: that they had indeed desired that after the exposition of the faith which was published at Antioch at the Dedication (And after this, concerning Sardica, and the faith that flourished there again, and further after the events at Sirmium concerning Photinus), after the profession of faith at Sardica and the things decreed at Sirmium against Photinus, the Church would enjoy peace. Then, after some intervening words, they show that they wished to polish and explain the things which had been established in the previous synods, such as the Antiochene and the Sardican, which the council at Sirmium, they say, took up—that is, the Sirmium synod embraced or reiterated the faith of the Council of Sardica. Hence, the Ancyran synod approved the Sirmium synod. But on the contrary, the other formula of faith, which everyone thinks was published in the Sirmium council, not only did it not receive, but it was gathered precisely to overturn and destroy it. Hilary teaches this in his book *On the Synods*, where he explains more accurately and strongly commends the Ancyran synod and its decree (of the sort described here by Epiphanius), and prefixes to it the Sirmium profession of faith with this title: *An Example of the Blasphemy written at Sirmium by Osius and Potamius*; and he confirms that the Orientals met at Ancyra against this faith. Wherefore it is in no way possible that this formula of faith, which the Semiarians fought so strongly, was published in that council at which they not only were not present, but over which they also presided; and which they profess that they wish to receive and to keep whole and intact. Hear them B themselves as they plead their case to the emperor, according to Sozomen, b. IV, ch. 12, that those things decided in Sardica, and in Sirmium, and in other councils, might remain valid.
Furthermore, Basil of Ancyra in that same synodical letter of the Ancyran council demonstrates that that other Sirmium formula existed long after the Sirmium synod. For he writes that after the Sirmium council, which, as has been said, he means he wishes to observe and maintain, he had remained quiet until, stirred by the importunity of the new heretics and by the letters of George of Laodicea, he rose up with his bishops to defend the faith. It follows, therefore, that between the Sirmium synod and the Ancyran council there intervened the letters of George of Laodicea, which Sozomen recites (b. IV, ch. 12). But in a previous chapter he writes that Eudoxius, as soon as he set foot in possession of the see of Antioch, turned himself entirely to promoting the perfidy of Aetius along with Acacius of Caesarea and Uranius, bishop of Tyre, and gave the appearance that the bishops of the West had voted in favor of it: namely, Osius, who had unwillingly consented with Ursacius and Valens that *homoousion* and *homoiousion* should be stricken out. Having received these letters of Osius, they gave thanks to Valens and Ursacius, because through their work the bishops of the West had embraced the true faith. Stimulated by these things, George of Laodicea, patron of the Semiarians, when at about the same time the neighboring bishops were called together by Basil to dedicate a new basilica at Ancyra, wrote a letter to them and exhorted them to restrain with their authority the rampant impiety of Eudoxius and Aetius. That was the occasion for the Ancyran assembly, from which deputies were sent to the emperor—Basil himself, and Eustathius of Sebaste, and Leontius, bishop of Cyzicus—who requested by name that the decrees of the councils of Sardica and Sirmium be observed.
Now we have learned from the above that Eudoxius in the year 356, when he was in Rome with the emperor, having heard of the death of Leontius, had left for Antioch on the fifth day before the Kalends of June. In that city he received the letters of Ursacius and Valens with the formula of faith which ordered the words *homoousion* and *homoiousion* to be obliterated. But that same formula, as we have shown from Hilary, is the very one which everyone thinks was dictated in the second place in the Sirmium synod. But if the Sirmium council was held the following year, that is 357, as the same authors hold, then neither Eudoxius, Acacius, and Uranius, nor Basil himself and George of Laodicea were present at the Sirmium synod or the condemnation of Photinus. Which is truly very false regarding Basil, who was a great part of the Sirmium council, as the one by whose work Photinus was convicted and defeated. D Nay, that the truth may shine forth from every side, accept this other point. The Ancyran synod, as its synodical letter teaches, was celebrated before Easter, *tês hagias hêmeras tou Pascha epikeimenês* [while the holy day of Easter was approaching], for which reason...
most of the bishops who had been summoned could not be present because of the inclemency of the winter. What, then, could be imagined to be more absurd than what follows from their narrative, that the synod of Ancyra was celebrated before the one at Sirmium? For if Eudoxius obtained the Antiochian see in the year 356, and the council of Ancyra in the following year, then if the council of Sirmium was convoked in that same year, it could only have been celebrated after the winter and Easter, and therefore after the one at Ancyra. But it should have been finished already; for the formula of the Sirmium council, edited by Hosius, had already been published to the world. Therefore, Photinus was condemned and the Sirmium council was concluded even in the absence of Basil and the other bishops; and because of other causes it could not have been begun before, since the Ancyran council must be subsequent to the Sirmium one.
It is evident, however, that when that later Sirmium formula was issued, neither Eudoxius nor Basil nor Georgius was at Sirmium: since Eudoxius and the others gave thanks by letter for that formula, which had been received and sent to Sirmium, and, being intended solely for the Westerns, was therefore composed in Latin: "He makes a pretext," he says, "as if the bishops in the West had voted for these things." Alleging this very thing for the patronage of his own impiety, that the Westerns had professed the same faith. Shortly after: "They sent a letter to them, thanking Valens, Ursacius, and Germinius, and attributing to them the grounds for the Westerns to hold the right opinions." All these things—that it was sent to the Westerns and to the bishops of the West, namely Hosius, Valens, and Ursacius, and that it is called an exposition of the faith written for the sake of the Westerns—sufficiently indicate that it was composed at a time other than that of the Sirmium synod. For that synod was not only general; it was also celebrated by Orientals, and especially by Greeks: by whom, before others, as has been said, the error of Photinus was refuted by disputation. And if that second formula were considered to be among the Acts of the Sirmium council, the Semi-Arians would never have praised it, or demanded that it be ratified without any exception, but would have repudiated the later ones by name and taken heed concerning its earlier Acts. But why do we tergiversate here? For there is an evident and truly lucid testimony of Hilary concerning this matter, which in his book *De synodis* removes every doubt. Hilary wrote this book to the Gallican bishops a little before the synod of Ariminum, when he had been asked by them to write about the Acts of the Ancyran assembly of Orientals and the condemnation of the Sirmian blasphemy. Complying with them, he first sets forth the Sirmian *ekthesis*, the very same one that Socrates and Athanasius report: whose authors he makes to be Hosius and Potamius. He then adds the decree of the Orientals that was established in the Ancyran council against that formula; and this he not only marvelously praises, but also most abundantly declares its individual propositions and anathemas. Finally, he sets forth the remaining professions issued by the Orientals, which are consistent with the Catholic faith; he prefaces them thus: "It is fitting for common knowledge to know also the other *Fides* [confessions of faith] written by the same Oriental bishops at different places and times, so that through many confessions the sincerity of conscience may be understood." He then adds the formula of the Oriental synod of Sardica. Then he proceeds thus: "It is consequently necessary that we now review that faith which was written not long ago, when Photinus was deposed from his episcopate." Shortly after, he describes the profession of the Sirmium council. Does he not openly separate that later Latin formula, edited by Hosius as he writes, from the council of Sirmium, which he affirms was celebrated at a different time? But also when he speaks thus: *When Photinus was deposed from his episcopate*; and likewise when he begins, in explaining the exposition of the faith written against Photinus, with these words: *Necessity and time warned those who had gathered then, through many and various questions, to ordain the exposition of the faith more broadly and diffusely*, etc., he does not obscurely signify that its time was different. For we wish this to be attentively considered: that when he subsequently announced that he would explain the other *Fides* written by those same Oriental bishops in different places and times, he produced none but the Sardican and the Sirmian edited against Photinus. From which it necessarily follows that the latter, no less than the Sardican, was written at a time—if not in places—different from the later Osian and Latin one, and certainly not at the same time.
Finally, Sulpicius Severus in Book II of his *Sacred History* confirms this much more validly with a clear and open narrative. For he writes that after the synod of Sardica and the repentance of Ursacius and Valens, an interval of time having passed, when Athanasius had suspended from communion Marcellus—who had been acquitted by the Catholics at the Sardican council—having found him to be of unsound faith, the Arians willingly used that opportunity to overturn the decrees of the Sardican synod. Therefore, with cunning strategy they mixed in the condemnation of Photinus, Marcellus, and Athanasius. For since the Arians did not dare to preach the dogmas of their error overtly, and pretended to be Catholics, they thought there was nothing they needed to do before removing Athanasius from the Church. But he writes that when they had given letters concerning that condemnation of Photinus, Marcellus, and Athanasius, the Catholics resisted; and among others, Paulinus of Trier signed in this way: that he offered his consent to the condemnation of Photinus and Marcellus, but did not approve of it regarding Athanasius. Therefore, when their judgment concerning Athanasius was rejected, many were relegated by Constantius; and at that time the synods of Arles and Béziers were celebrated: then the one at Milan, in which certain notable bishops were sent into exile, Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercelli, Lucifer of Cagliari; also Liberius and Hilary. He writes that all these things were done in the consulship of Arbetio and Lollianus. These are the things in summary from Sulpicius. By which the error previously recognized and exposed by us is convicted. For you see that after the Sardican synod...
A and the reception of Ursacius and Valens into communion, after some time had elapsed, the synod was celebrated at Sirmium against Photinus, before the synods of Arles and Milan, and also before Pope Liberius, Eusebius, and others were proscribed. Yet the conciliabulum of Arles, which was celebrated by Saturninus, occurred in the year of Christ 353, when Constantius had set out from Sirmium for the Gauls, as is read in the Annals; but the council of Milan occurred in the year 355, under the consulship of Arbetio and Lollianus. Therefore, Photinus was condemned and the Sirmium synod was held long before the time—the time when the second formula of faith from the same town of Sirmium went forth by Ursacius, Valens, and Osius, which was published after the exile of Hilary, and not long before the synod of Rimini, as is clear from the same Hilary; and the Sirmium council cannot in any way correspond to the year 357.
I trust that no one will be so tenacious of a most ancient error that, having been convicted by so many arguments, he does not lean toward our opinion—or rather, not conjecture, but most certain truth—and that he would not be so vehemently struck with astonishment that no mortal until now has—given such light in all doctrines and such an abundance of annals and chronicles—even slightly suspected such a huge blemish in history. And indeed, pardon must be given to our accurate and learned men who followed the footsteps of Socrates, Sozomen, and the ancients: I cannot excuse those very authors and leaders of the error who, as they were closer to those times, should have been better instructed to investigate their history.
After we have overturned the very foundation and head of the false narrative, the rest, which, leaning upon this, have less weight, will collapse of their own accord, no less broken and weakened by the error. Of this kind is that which is defined concerning the time of the Ancyran synod, that it fell into the same year in which Photinus was condemned in the Sirmium council, namely the year 357. This is not only false—because we have taught shortly before that that Sirmium synod was celebrated long before this year—but also because, even if it were performed in this very year, the Ancyran assembly cannot fall into the same one. For this was celebrated before Easter: whence also many are said in the synodical epistle to have been shut off on account of the winter. Therefore the Sirmium synod could not have taken place in the same year, unless you wish it to have been the later one, which is by far most absurd, since the Ancyran synod was assembled to attack that Sirmium formula, which they think was written in the council. Nay, even after this profession of faith was brought to Sirmium, some time elapsed before the Ancyran council. For Hilary, in his book *De synodis*, page 529, praises the Western bishops, because they had not only not accepted the impiety of the unfaithful faith sent to them from the town of Sirmium, but had also condemned it when it was announced and signified. With which example he writes that the Eastern bishops were aroused in the Ancyran council B by certain sentences to oppose the decrees of their own [opponents]. It is necessary, therefore, that some time after the publication of the Sirmium *ἔκθεσις*, the synod at Ancyra was brought together by Basil. What of the fact that Osius himself, from whom the author Hilary says that same formula originated, was kept at Sirmium for a whole year before he was driven to consent? Wherefore, since Constantius could not have been at Sirmium until after the month of June of the year 356, it follows that in the following year, at about the same time, the Arians extorted that profession from Osius. Yet long before, namely around the time of Easter, the Semi-Arians met at Ancyra. You see how great a conflict of reasons and speech exists among them. But from those things which we have established above, and which are to be discussed shortly, it appears that another time must be attributed to the Ancyran synod.
Not less is that which they fight for so bitterly refuted from the same source: that Pope Liberius subscribed to that former profession of faith which was issued in the Sirmium synod against Photinus. For the condemnation of Photinus preceded not only the restitution of Liberius, but his exile itself, by several years. Whether Liberius did or did not do what most of the ancient Fathers, such as Athanasius, Jerome, and others agree he did, pertains nothing to the initiated dispute. For it is possible that while he indeed held communion with Ursacius, Valens, and the remaining Arians, and condemned Athanasius, he nevertheless in no way subscribed to the heretical pravity, and that the heretics even falsely boasted that the heresy was approved by him. This, however, is most certain: that he neither subscribed to that former one issued against Photinus, and if he admitted any from the three Sirmium ones, he did not approve any other than the second, to which Osius also assented. And to me, indeed, an easy and ready way occurs for clearing Liberius from all suspicion of heresy, if we say that the second Sirmium *ἔκθεσις* was offered to him: not, however, in its entirety, or of the sort that is read in Socrates, Athanasius, and Hilary, but its former part, in which it is decreed that the terms *consubstantial* (ὁμοούσιον) or *like-in-substance* (ὁμοιούσιον) should be passed over in silence: which he embraced in his zeal for peace and quiet. But the Arians later interwove the rest into the same formula, and sold their dogma under the specious name and authority of the Roman pontiff. I shall say more: that Liberius did not even subscribe to this profession, but to another, by which this one thing was guarded, that no one should thereafter use the term *consubstantial*. Which, when Liberius had relaxed from Catholic severity, and had moreover consented to the condemnation of Athanasius, he appeared to have fallen into heresy; and that opinion later grew strong by the frauds and calumnies of the Arians, when, publishing the Sirmium formula of faith at the same time, they lied that it was that very one to which Liberius had assented. A conjecture of which matter may be taken from Sozomen: who, in Book IV, chapter 14, writes that when Valens and Ursacius had expressed agreement from Liberius, and in turn received from him another profession, by which they [condemned them...]
all those who did not assert that the Son is in substance and in other respects similar to the Father were to be sent away. He then adds: that Eudoxius and the rest of the Anomoeans, who were staying at Antioch, having received the letter of Osius, that is to say the Sirmium formula, had spread it among the people, and reported that Liberius had repudiated the *homoousion* and asserted that the Son was dissimilar to the Father. Whence it is clear that Liberius by no means subscribed to that Sirmium profession—which Hilary calls the blasphemy of Osius and Potamius—in which the *homoousion* is expressly rejected, just as the *homoiousion* is; nay, the very name of *ousia* is rejected; and furthermore, it is pronounced that the Father is greater than the Son in honor, dignity, splendor, and majesty, the Son being Himself subject to the Father together with all things subject to Him. For how could these things have been approved by Liberius, who in categorical terms declared that the Son was by all means similar to the Father, and thus similar in *ousia*? But clearly, when they had extorted from him the simple suppression of a controversial term, they attached the rest to it; and that matter, on account of the odium against the condemned Athanasius, gained favor among the Arians just as it did among the Catholics.
C I see that the authority of Hilary can be objected to me above others, who, in the fragments edited by Nicolaus Faber, subjoins these words to a letter of Liberius which he wrote to the Orientals, and in which he recounts that he had learned from Demophilus the Catholic faith which was set forth at Sirmium: "But as for the perfidy described at Sirmium, which Liberius claims was set forth to him as Catholic by Demophilus, these are those who wrote it: Narcissus, Theodorus, Basilius, Eudoxius, Demophilus, Cecropius, Sylvanus, Ursacius, Valens, Macedonius, etc." But whatever is to be thought of those fragments, this subscription certainly does not appear to be from the hand of Hilary, but [rather] of some ignorant person who had not sufficiently perceived the schisms of the Arian sect. For that Basilius and Silvanus, as well as Macedonius, are considered by Epiphanius and others as the leaders of the Semi-Arians, whose most bitter zeal and contentions existed against that Sirmium profession. Nor indeed could Basilius have been at Sirmium at the time when it was published; nor even Eudoxius himself, who received this [formula] sent by Ursacius and Valens at Antioch, where he was then staying with his own, and testified in letters given to them that it had been written by the Westerners alone. All of which has been copiously declared above. Concerning what is to be decided about the third exposition of the faith, we shall speak at number 22.
A certain new series of the accomplished facts is set forth from the testimonies of ancient Fathers.
I shall proceed to deserve well of ecclesiastical histories and annals, and I shall set forth briefly in this place how they ought to be directed to the standard of truth, so that, this obstacle being removed, all may subsequently keep to the right path. I shall begin with the Council of Sirmium, which was assembled by Constantius against the Photinian dogma. Regarding which I establish as most true what Socrates and Sozomen wrote: that it was celebrated D under the consulship of Sergius and Nigrianus, in the year of Christ 351, which they had discovered without doubt from the Acts of the Council of Sirmium. For we have deduced this from the preceding, especially from the history of Sulpitius, that that synod had been indicted before the council of Arles and Bezier; that is, before the year 353. Therefore it fits that year which the ancient historians noted. But they were hallucinated in this, that because a triple confession of faith was published at Sirmium, they thought all of them were decreed by the synod at one and the same time. But the matter stands otherwise; for in the Council of Sirmium only that first [confession] was dictated, by which the Photinians are condemned, and which Hilary described and explained as pious and Catholic. Although Sulpitius testifies that in the same synod something else was decreed against Athanasius by the Arians. But the author of the errors of that Sirmium formula was not Marcus Arethusius, but the synod itself, as Hilary hints; for it was written by Marcus, as will be said in its own place, as the third [formula]. After the Council of Sirmium, and Photinus having been convicted by Basilius of Ancyra and condemned by all, when Magnentius had now been defeated by the legates of Constantius, the emperor set out for Gaul in the year 353. And then the conventicle of Arles is celebrated, in which most Catholic prelates were ordered into exile, with the perfidy of Saturninus spreading.
Then in the year 355, under the consulship of Arbetio and Lollianus, when Constantius had now arrived at Milan, a synod was held there, and the other things were done which are diligently explained by Baronius. In the rest, the *Annales* waver. In the year 357 at Sirmium, where the emperor had betaken himself the previous year, a new exposition of the faith is produced by a few Arian bishops, especially Westerners, among whom the leaders were Ursacius and Valens. To which Osius presently subscribes, though unwilling and resisting, yet he could not be induced to condemn Athanasius: which Athanasius himself confirms in his *Epistola ad solitarios*. This calamity of Osius happened at the end of the year 357: for a full year after he had been detained at Sirmium by Constantius, he was compelled to assent to the Arian profession. But Constantius could only have been at Sirmium in the month of June or July of the previous year, as has been proved above. Wherefore, around the same time in the following year, that perfidious confession seems to have been extorted from Osius. This is the Sirmium *Ekthesis*, which everyone numbers as the second, and which is named by Hilary the blasphemy of Osius and Potamius. When the Arians later repented of this, they gave effort that it should be suppressed everywhere, the power of the emperor also being interposed, who threatened punishment to those who kept it in their possession: the author is Socrates, book II, chap. 25. During the same time the pontiff Liberius, who in the Council of Milan two years before, that is in the year 355, had been most gloriously relegated to Beroea, broken by the frauds and terrors of the emperor Constantius and the Arians, and at the same time by the desire of recovering his see and his homeland, was summoned to Sirmium and subscribed to the condemnation of Athanasius, and at the same time gave a profession of faith, by which for the sake of concord he left out the word *homoousiou*.