Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Vol. 1 (Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine)

of commendation which served only to promote a wider growth of the same unhealthy sentiment.

In the fifth year of the persecution, Pamphilus was arrested and thrown into prison, where he remained for two years. He finally suffered martyrdom in the seventh year of the persecution, along with eleven others, some of whom were his disciples and members of his own household (Martyrs of Palestine, Cureton’s ed., p. 36; Church History, App. chap. ii). During the two years of Pamphilus’ imprisonment, Eusebius spent a great deal of time with him, and the two together composed five books of an Apology for Origen, to which Eusebius afterward added a sixth (see below, p. 36). Danz (p. 37) assumes that Eusebius was imprisoned with Pamphilus, which is not an unnatural supposition when we consider how much they must have been together to compose the Apology. There is, however, no other evidence that he was thus imprisoned; given Eusebius’ own silence, it is safer to assume (with most historians) that he simply visited Pamphilus in his prison.

How it happened that Pamphilus and so many of his followers were imprisoned and martyred, while Eusebius escaped, we cannot tell. In his Martyrs of Palestine, chapter 11, he states that Pamphilus was the only one of the company of twelve martyrs who was a presbyter of the Cæsarean church; from the fact that he nowhere mentions the martyrdom of other presbyters, we may conclude that they all escaped. It is not surprising, therefore, that Eusebius should have done the same. Nevertheless, it is somewhat difficult to understand how he could come and go so frequently without being arrested and condemned to a like fate. It is possible that he possessed friends among the authorities whose influence secured his safety. This supposition finds some support in the fact that he had become acquainted with Constantine—the Greek in Life of Constantine I. 19 has egnomen (we knew/became acquainted), which implies, as Danz remarks, that he not only saw, but became acquainted with Constantine—some years before in Cæsarea. He could hardly have made his acquaintance unless he had friends among the high officials of the city. Influential family connections may also account in part for the position of prominence he later acquired at the imperial court of Constantine. If he had friends in authority in Cæsarea during the persecution, his exemption from arrest is satisfactorily accounted for.

It has been suggested by some that Eusebius denied the faith during the terrible persecution, or that he committed some other questionable and compromising act, and thus escaped martyrdom. In support of this, it is urged that in 335 A.D., at the Council of Tyre, Potamo, bishop of Heraclea in Egypt, addressed Eusebius in the following words:

"Do you sit as a judge, O Eusebius; and is Athanasius, innocent as he is, judged by you? Who can bear such things? Pray tell me, were you not with me in prison during the persecution? And I lost an eye in behalf of the truth, but you appear to have received no bodily injury; neither have you suffered martyrdom, but have remained alive with no mutilation. How were you released from prison unless you promised those who put upon us the pressure of persecution to do that which is unlawful, or did so?"

Eusebius, it seems, did not deny the charge, but simply rose in anger and dismissed the council, saying: "If you come here and make such accusations against us, then your accusers speak the truth. For if you play the tyrant here, much more do you in your own country" (Epiphanius, Heresies LXVIII. 8). It must be noted, however, that Potamo does not directly charge Eusebius with dishonorable conduct; he simply conjectures that he must have acted dishonorably in order to escape punishment—as if everyone who was imprisoned with Potamo must have suffered as he did! As Stroth suggests, it is quite possible that Potamo's own excitable and violent temperament was one of the causes of his loss of an eye. In any case, he evidently had no knowledge of unworthy conduct on Eusebius' part, nor did anyone else, so far as we can judge. For in that age of bitter controversy, when characters were drawn by opponents in the blackest lines, Eusebius would have suffered at the hands of the Athanasian party if it had been known he had acted a cowardly part in the persecution. Athanasius himself refers to this incident (Contra Arian. VIII. 1), but only says that Eusebius was "accused of sacrificing," he does