AEZIUS. - A heretic of the 4th century. He was born, according to some, at Antioch and, according to others, in its vicinity, of a very modest family. Educated by Arian teachers, he had to earn his living and study by working: he was a brazier, a servant, a goldsmith, and a physician. While working as a goldsmith to support himself, he gratuitously assisted the poor as a physician. Later he became acquainted with the Peripatetics, frequented their schools, and studied at Antioch with Paulinus and Leontius, at Anazarbus with Athanasius, and at Tarsus with Antonius. Neglecting sacred science, the ignorance of which Socrates harshly reproaches him (Hist. eccl., II, 35: PG 67, 300), he cultivated dialectics above all, in which he became extremely skilled. His supreme satisfaction was to provoke his adversaries and then silence them with tight and subtle arguments. St. Epiphanius states that he set forth his doctrine in 300 closely reasoned syllogisms and reports 47 of them.
Leontius, Bishop of Antioch, ordained him deacon with the task of teaching publicly. But Aezius’s most daring ideas, which he taught that “the Son is neither like the Father nor identical with the Father in respect of divinity” (Epiphanius, Haeres. 76, no. 2: PG 42, 517), from which it followed that He was of a different substance (ἐτέρας οὐσίας “eternians”) and, as created, drawn from nothing (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων “ex nihilo”), scandalized the people. Deprived of his office, he took refuge with the Arian George, the intruder Bishop of Alexandria, until in 358 Eudoxius, Leontius’s successor, recalled him to Antioch. But his excessively reckless doctrines displeased even the Arians, who at the Second Council of Sirmium condemned him and exiled him to Pepuza in Phrygia. In 359 Aezius took part in the Synod of Seleucia, where the Acacians openly opposed him. The following year he was deposed from his diaconal rank and banished first to Mopsuestia in Cilicia and then to Amblada in Pisidia. In 361, under Julian the Apostate, he was consecrated bishop without a see. He died in Constantinople between 366 and 370.
From Aezius were called Aezian those who adhered to rigid anomianism and the most radical Arianism. They were also known as Eunomians, from Eunomius, Aezius’s disciple and Bishop of Cyzicus.