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Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. IV: Arian H...

Arian ControversyAthanasiusNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

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This is a fragment of a 4th-century ecclesiastical polemic, almost certainly from Athanasius of Alexandria's *Historia Arianorum* (History of the Arians), written around 357 AD in the tradition of patristic apologetics and heresiological writing. The central argument is that Arianism is uniquely and supremely wicked among heresies — not merely because of its theology, but because it abandoned persuasion altogether in favor of imperial coercion, persecution, imprisonment, and murder to enforce compliance. The text moves through a catalogue of Arian atrocities, including the kicking to death of a Barka presbyter during Lent, and frames the heresy as having conscripted Emperor Constantius himself as a kind of Antichrist figure. A notably distinctive claim is the comparative ranking of heresies: unlike Greeks who use rhetoric, Jews who argue scripture, or Gnostics who fabricate texts, the Arians alone rely purely on state violence — making them, in the author's view, more wicked than all heresies combined and even worse than the pagans who sheltered Christians during Maximian's persecution. The portrait of Constantius is scathing and highly personal, accusing him of murdering relatives, breaking oaths, lacking independent judgment, and being manipulated by wicked eunuch-counselors. Readers interested in early Christian anti-heretical rhetoric, the Nicene controversy, or church-state conflict in late antiquity will find this a vivid primary source.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. IV: Arian H...

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