EUSEBIUS OF NICOMEDIA. - He was first bishop of Berytus (Beyrouth), from which around 318 he had himself transferred to the far more important see of Nicomedia, the imperial residence. A prince of intrigue, he insinuated himself at the court of Licinius and of his wife Constantia, sister of Constantine. He had been a companion of Arius at the school of Lucian of Antioch and remained his friend always. When Alexander of Alexandria condemned the heretic, E. gave him hospitality and took up his defense, provoking the protests of Alexander (Socrates, Hist. eccl., I, 6).
At the Council of Nicaea he presented a formula of so rigid an Arianism that it was at once rejected as blasphemous. In the end he accommodated himself to subscribing the consubstantial creed. But three months later Constantine exiled him to Gaul. When in 328, at the urging of his sister Constantia, he recalled him, he unwittingly gave to the anti-Nicene reaction a leader so able and active that subsequently the followers of Arius will ordinarily be designated in the sources by the name of Eusebians. E. set himself two goals: to bring down the champions of the Nicene Council and to rehabilitate Arius. And indeed he obtained in 330 the deposition of Eustathius of Antioch and in 332 the reconciliation of Arius with Constantine, though not with Athanasius of Alexandria, whose condemnation he provoked at the Council of Tyre (335). The following year the same fate befell Marcellus of Ancyra. There remained only the reinstatement of Arius; E., being unable to obtain his admission into the Church of Alexandria, worked to have him accepted in that of Constantinople; but the heretic died on the eve of his triumph. E. nevertheless continued on his way. In May 337 he baptized at Nicomedia the dying Constantine. Having entered into the favor also of the successor Constantius, in 338 he obtained, against the prescriptions of the Nicene Council (can. 15), to be substituted in the see of Constantinople for the bishop Paul, whom he had had deposed. From there he was able to direct with even greater success the struggle against the Nicene Council. He introduced into the Alexandrian see a Gregory of Cappadocia, who forced Athanasius to flee to Rome. Pope Julius protested (340). The Council in Encaeniis (Antioch, 341), maneuvered by E., churlishly rejected the protest by denying the competence of the Pope. Shortly afterward, at the end of 341 and the beginning of 342, E. died. Arianism owes it to him that it was not extinguished at once, but became a danger for the Church that lasted so long.
Bibliography7 works
Ireneo Daniele
