MACEDONIO and MACEDONIANI. — Bishop of Constantinople from 342 to 360, from whom, beginning around 380, ecclesiastical historians derived the designation “Macedonians,” then current for indicating the Pneumatomachi.
The information concerning the life and doctrine of M. is quite uncertain, because the sources of the fourth century are scarce (Jerome, Chronicon, under the years 342 and 360 A.D. [ed. R. Helm (CB, 24, Eusebius 7), Leipzig 1913, pp. 235–47]; Athanasius, Historia orianorum, 7: PG 25, 701), whereas those of the later historians are indeed more abundant, but often certainly inaccurate or even erroneous; hence the historian must proceed cautiously (Philostorgius, Hist. eccl., IV, 9; V, 1; VIII, 17; ed. J. Bidez [CB 21], Leipzig 1913; Socrates, Hist. eccl., II, 6, 12, 13, 15, 16, 27, 38, 42, 45: PG 67; Sozomen, Hist. eccl., III, 3, 4, 7, 9, 24; IV, 2,
3, 20, 21, 24, 26, 27; VI, 10, 11: PG 67; Theodoret, Hist. eccl., II, 6; V, 8; ed. L. Parmentier [CB 19], Leipzig 1911).
Taking into account only the principal data, the following may apparently be affirmed with certainty concerning the life of M. For a long time a deacon of Constantinople, around 332–35 he was a presbyter under the orthodox bishop Paul, of whom he was repeatedly the accuser while the struggle between Arians and orthodox Christians for possession of that episcopal see was raging. After Paul had been exiled by the emperor Constantius and Eusebius of Nicomedia had been appointed in his place, at the latter’s death (ca. 339) M. was elected bishop of Constantinople by the Arian party and, following Paul’s death as well (342), occupied the see without a competitor.
He also took care to appoint to vacant episcopal sees persons of his own convictions, among them Marathonius to the see of Nicomedia and Eleusius to that of Cyzicus. He subsequently fell into disfavor with the emperor Constantius, probably for reasons of general ecclesiastical policy, the Emperor favoring the Homoian or Acacian party, whereas M. certainly belonged to the semi-Arian or Homoiousian group. Together with others of the same party, such as Eleusius of Cyzicus and Eustathius of Sebaste, M. was deposed by the Acacians at a Council held in Constantinople in 360. He must have died shortly thereafter. No writings of his are known.
M.’s Homoiousianism is attested by his close relations with persons who were certainly Homoiousians, such as Basil of Ancyra, Basil of Seleucia, and Eustathius of Sebaste, as well as by the explicit statements of historians such as Philostorgius (Hist. eccl., IV, 9), Sabinus of Heraclea (v. Socrates, Hist. eccl., IV, 22), and Epiphanius (Panarion, haer. 73, 23 ff.: PG 42, 445 ff.).
Was M. the founder of the Pneumatomachian heresy in what distinguishes it from ordinary Arianism? It is certain that, from around 380, this was the common conviction among the orthodox, and that from then on the designation “Macedonians,” which at that time was commonly applied to the Pneumatomachi, was interpreted in this sense. Thus Jerome, in his Chronicon (from ca. 380 to the year 342 A.D.), noted: “M., a professional embroiderer, is made bishop by the Arians in place of Paul. From him the present Macedonian heresy derives its origin.” Didymus the Blind, in his De Trinitate (II, 10: PG 39, 633, from 381–92), frequently speaks of the “Macedonians” and says that “the heresy” is M., ordained bishop by the Arians. The appellation “Macedonians” in the specific sense of Pneumatomachi is attested at about the same time, among other sources, by the anathemas of Pope Damasus (4 anath.: PL 13, 359; Theodoret, Hist. eccl., V, 11), and by the Theodosian Code, which in 383–84 condemned among the heretics the “Macedonians” no less than the “Eunomians” and the “Arians” (Cod. XVI, 5, 11 ff.). Thus the tradition that M. was the originator of the heresy of Pneumatomachianism had formed both in the East and in the West; and Socrates and Sozomen related various details of it, while Theodoret (Hist. eccl., II, 6) specified that it was after his deposition that M. became “the leader of his own particular heresy.”
Before 380, however, special relations between Pneumatomachianism and M. himself are not attested, either by Athanasius, who describes the first emergence of the heresy in Egypt as early as 359–60 (Ep. ad Serap., I, 1: PG 26, 529 ff.), or by the Cappadocian Fathers, who had combated it in Asia Minor even before 380, or by Epiphanius, who as early as 375–77 devoted a special notice in his Panarion “against the Pneumatomachi” (Haer., 74: PG 42, 473 ff.). Indeed, Socrates reports that Sabinus of Heraclea, “a Macedonian bishop,” wrote a history of the councils up to 378 in which “he does not even mention M.’s heresy” (Hist. eccl., II, 15). Thus there is no mention of M. in the oldest accounts concerning Pneumatomachianism. Nor is there sufficient proof that the specifically Pneumatomachian question was explicitly discussed in the region of Constantinople and in Asia Minor while M. was still alive. Socrates presents a group of Homoiousian bishops adhering to M. and called “Macedonians”—among them Eleusius of Cyzicus, Eustathius of Sebaste, Sophronius of Pompeiopolis, and Marcian of Lampsacus—who held councils from the time of Julian the Apostate (361–63) and again at Lampsacus in 366, without it appearing from the historian, who here explicitly cites Sabinus the “Macedonian” as his informant, that they were then concerned with anything other than the question of the Son, or that they made any special mention of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, he explicitly says that only shortly after the Council of Lampsacus “M.’s doctrine became more openly manifest” (Hist. eccl., II, 10; IV, 4).
All this makes it difficult to trace the specifically Pneumatomachian position back to M. himself and thus to justify the title of heresiarch bestowed on him by later history.
It is, on the other hand, beyond dispute that in Constantinople explicit Pneumatomachianism first flourished precisely among those Homoiousians who had belonged to M.’s circle and who, according to Sozomen (Hist. eccl., IV, 27; VIII, 1), although forming a distinct party, failed—principally because of the opposition of the Arians—to obtain an officially recognized bishop or to have churches of their own.
Around 373 Eustathius of Sebaste appears as the party leader, whom Basil calls “the leader of the heresy of the Pneumatomachi” (Ep. 263, 13; PG 32, 977). He was a friend of M. and was deposed with him in 360. That Eleusius of Cyzicus who appears as leader of the Pneumatomachi at the time of the Council of 381 was also a protégé of M. The designation “Macedonians” applied to the Pneumatomachi therefore probably did not initially mean that M. himself was being made the actual heresiarch of Pneumatomachianism, but probably only indicated that this new heresy, in what specifically distinguished it from the common Arians, had flourished in Constantinople among the adherents of the party that had originally formed around M.