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| Assault upon the Monks, and Banishment of their Superiors, who exhibit Miraculous Power.
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Chapter XXIV.—Assault
upon the Monks, and Banishment of their Superiors, who exhibit
Miraculous Power.
The emperor Valens having
issued an edict commanding that the orthodox should be persecuted both
in Alexandria and in the rest of Egypt, depopulation and ruin to an
immense extent immediately followed: some were dragged before the
tribunals, others cast into prison, and many tortured in various ways,
and in fact all sorts of punishments were inflicted upon persons who
aimed only at peace and quiet. When these outrages had been perpetrated
at Alexandria just as Lucius thought proper, Euzoïus returned to
Antioch, and Lucian the Arian, attended by the commander-in-chief of
the army with a considerable body of troops, immediately proceeded to
the monasteries of Egypt, where the general in person assailed the
assemblage of holy men with greater fury even than the ruthless
soldiery. On reaching these solitudes they found the monks engaged in
their customary exercises, praying, healing diseases, and casting out
devils. Yet they, regardless of these extraordinary evidences of Divine
power, suffered them not to continue their solemn devotions, but drove
them out of the oratories by force. Rufinus declares that he was not
only a witness of these cruelties, but also one of the sufferers. Thus
in them were renewed those things which are spoken of by the
apostle:635
‘for they were mocked, and had trial of scourgings, were stripped
naked, put in bonds, stoned, slain with the sword, went about in the
wilderness clad in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute,
afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in
deserts, in mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.’ In all
these things ‘they obtained a good report’ for their faith
and their works, and the cures which the grace of Christ wrought by
their hands. But as it appears Divine Providence permitted them to
endure these evils, ‘having for them provided something
better,’636
that through their sufferings others might obtain the salvation of God,
and this subsequent events seem to prove. When therefore these
wonderful men proved superior to all the violence which was exercised
toward them, Lucius in despair advised the military chief to send the
fathers of the monks into exile: these were the Egyptian Macarius, and
his namesake of Alexandria, both of whom were accordingly banished to
an island where there was no Christian inhabitant, and in this island
there was an idolatrous temple, and a priest whom the inhabitants
worshiped as a god. On the arrival of these holy men at the island, the
demons of that place were filled with fear and trepidation. Now it
happened at the same time that the priest’s daughter became
suddenly possessed by a demon, and began to act with great fury, and to
overturn everything that came in her way; nor was any force sufficient
to restrain her, but she cried with a loud voice to these saints of
God, saying:—‘Why are ye come here to cast us out from
hence also?’637
Then did the men there also display the peculiar power which they had
received through Divine grace: for having cast out the demon from the
maid, and presented her cured to her father, they led the priest
himself, and also all the inhabitants of the island to the Christian faith.
Whereupon they immediately brake their images in pieces, and changed
the form of their temple into that of a church; and having been
baptized, they joyfully received instruction in the doctrines of
Christianity. Thus these marvelous individuals, after enduring
persecution on account of the ‘homoousian’ faith, were
themselves more approved, became the means of salvation to others, and
confirmed the truth.
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