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| Of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, and what happened at the demolition of the idols in that city.
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Chapter XXII.—Of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, and what
happened at the demolition of the idols in that city.
The illustrious Athanasius was succeeded by the admirable Petrus,
Petrus by Timotheus, and Timotheus by Theophilus, a man of sound wisdom
and of a lofty courage.894
| 894 “The perpetual enemy of peace and virtue.” Gibbon.
High office deteriorated his character. cf. Newman. Hist. Sketches
iii. | By him
Alexandria was set free from the error of idolatry; for, not content
with razing the idols’ temples to the ground, he exposed the
tricks of the priests to the victims of their wiles. For they had
constructed statues of bronze and wood hollow within, and fastened the backs
of them to the temple walls, leaving in these walls certain invisible
openings. Then coming up from their secret chambers they got inside the
statues, and through them gave any order they liked and the hearers,
tricked and cheated, obeyed.895
| 895 In
the museum at Naples is shewn part of the statue of Diana, found near
the Forum at Pompeii. In the back of the head is a hole by means of a
tube in connexion with which,—the image standing against a
wall,—the priests were supposed to deliver the oracles of the
Huntress-Maid.
It is curious to note
that just at this period when the pagan idols were destroyed, faint
traces of image worship begin to appear in the Church. In another two
centuries and a half it was becoming common, and in this particular
point, Christianity relapsed into paganism. Littledale Plain
Reasons, p. 47. | These tricks the
wise Theophilus exposed to the people.
Moreover he went up into the
temple of Serapis, which has been described by some as excelling in
size and beauty all the temples in the world.896
| 896 “A great number of plates of different metals, artificially
joined together, composed the majestic figure of the deity who touched
on either side of the walls of the sanctuary. Serapis was distinguished
from Jupiter by the basket or bushel which was placed on his head, and
by the emblematic monster which he held in his right hand; the head and
body of a serpent branching into three tails, which were again
terminated by the triple heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf.”
Gibbon, on the authority of Macrobius Sat. i. 20. |
There he saw a huge image of which the bulk struck beholders with
terror, increased by a lying report which got abroad that if any one
approached it, there would be a great earthquake, and that all the
people would be destroyed. The bishop looked on all these tales as the
mere drivelling of tipsy old women, and in utter derision of the
lifeless monster’s enormous size, he told a man who had an axe to
give Serapis a good blow with it.897
| 897 Gibbon quotes the story of Augustus in Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxiii.
24. “Is it true,” said the emperor to a veteran at whose
home he supped, “that the man who gave the first blow to the
golden statue of Anaitis was instantly deprived of his eyes and of his
life?” “I want that man,” replied the clear sighted
veteran, “and you now sup on one of the legs of the
goddess.” cf. the account in Bede of the destruction by the
priest Coify of the great image of the Saxon God at the Goodmanham in
Yorkshire. | No sooner
had the man struck, than all the folk cried out, for they were afraid
of the threatened catastrophe. Serapis however, who had received the
blow, felt no pain, inasmuch as he was made of wood, and uttered never
a word, since he was a lifeless block. His head was cut off, and
forthwith out ran multitudes of mice, for the Egyptian god was a
dwelling place for mice. Serapis was broken into small pieces of which
some were committed to the flames, but his head was carried through all
the town in sight of his worshippers, who mocked the weakness of him to
whom they had bowed the knee.
Thus all over the world the
shrines of the idols were destroyed.898
| 898 “Some twenty years before the Roman armies withdrew from
Britain the triumph of Christianity was completed. Then a question
occurs whether archæology casts any light on the discomfiture of
Roman paganism in Britain. In proof of the affirmative a curious fact
has been adduced, that the statues of pagan divinities discovered in
Britain are always or mostly broken. At Binchester, for instance, the
Roman Vinovium, not far from Durham, there was found among the remains
of an important Roman building a stone statue of the goddess Flora,
with its legs broken, lying face downward across a drain as a support
to the masonry above. It would certainly not be wise to press
archæological facts too far; but the broken gods in Britain
curiously tally with the edicts of Theodosius and the shattered Serapis
at Alexandria.” Hole Early Missions, p. 24. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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