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Updated: May 19, 2025
The deposition of Aetius was another bone of contention. Hence the coalition broke up of itself as soon as men were free to act. Acacius and his friends drew nearer to Meletius, while Eudoxius and Euzoius talked of annulling the condemnation of the Anomoean bishops at Constantinople. The Semiarians were busy too.
No doubt personal influences must count for a good deal with a man like Valens, whose private attachments were so steady. Eudoxius was, after all, a man of experience and learning, whose mild prudence was the very help which Valens needed. The Empress Dominica was also a zealous Arian, so that the courtiers were Arians too.
Next morning the Semiarians had the church to themselves, for the Homoeans, and even Leonas, refused to come. 'They might go and chatter in the church if they pleased. So they deposed Acacius, Eudoxius, George of Alexandria, and six others.
Semiarian horror was not diminished when an extract was read from an obscene sermon preached by Eudoxius at Antioch. At last Eleusius broke in upon Acacius 'Any hole-and-corner doings of yours at Sirmium are no concern of ours. Your creed is not the Lucianic, and that is quite enough to condemn it. This was decisive.
It seems rather that the paganismus of the West was partly represented by Arianism. In Cappadocia the heresy found its first great literary champion in the sophist Asterius. Gregory and George were brought to Alexandria from Cappadocia, and afterwards Auxentius to Milan and Eudoxius to Constantinople. Philagrius also, the prefect who drove out Athanasius in 339, was another of their countrymen.
Now, however, 'unlike' became the watchword of Aetius and Eunomius, and their followers delighted to shock all sober feeling by the harshest and profanest declarations of it. The scandalous jests of Eudoxius must have given deep offence to thousands; but the great novelty of the Anomoean doctrine was its audacious self-sufficiency.
The Emperor, who had not yet been baptized, received the Sacrament at the hands of Eudoxius, the Arian Bishop of Constantinople, a worthy successor of Eusebius, who, in the middle of the ceremony, made Valens take an oath that he would remain faithful to the Arians and pursue the Catholics with every rigor.
Unfortunately however for Eudoxius, Valens was entangled in a war with the Goths for three campaigns, and afterwards detained for another year in the Hellespontine district, so that he could not revisit the East till the summer of 371. Meanwhile there was not much to be done. Meletius also and others had been allowed to return at the same time, and Valens was too busy to disturb them.
But Euzoius was an avowed Arian; Eudoxius differed little from him, and only the remaining scruples of Constantius delayed the victory of the Anomoeans. Flavius Claudius Julianus was the son of Constantine's half-brother, Julius Constantius, by his second wife, Basilina, a lady of the great Anician family.
Demophilus of Constantinople headed the party, and his blunders did it almost as much harm as the profane jests of Eudoxius. At Antioch Euzoius, the last of the early Arians, was replaced by Dorotheus. Milan under Ambrose was aggressively Nicene, and the Arian tyrants were very weak at Alexandria.
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