A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 06 - Voltaire

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Macedonius ascended the episcopal throne, took speedy possession of all the churches, and persecuted with great cruelty the Novatians and Catholics. It was in revenge against the latter of these that he denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, just as he recognized the divinity of the Word, which was denied by the Arians out of mere defiance to their protector Constantius, who had deposed him.

      The same historian adds that on the death of Athanasius, the Arians, supported by Valens, apprehended, bound in chains, and put to death those who remained attached to Peter, whom Athanasius had pointed out as his successor. Alexandria resembled a city taken by assault. The Arians soon possessed themselves of the churches, and the bishop, installed by them, obtained the power of banishing from Egypt all who remained attached to the Nicean creed.

      We read in Socrates that, after the death of Sisinnius, the church of Constantinople became again divided on the choice of a successor, and Theodosius the Younger placed in the patriarchal see the violent and fiery Nestorius. In his first sermon he addresses the following language to the emperor: "Give me the land purged of heretics, and I will give you the kingdom of Heaven; second me in the extermination of heretics, and I engage to furnish you with effectual assistance against the Persians." He afterwards expelled the Arians from the capital, armed the people against them, pulled down their churches, and obtained from the emperor rigorous and persecuting edicts to effect their extirpation. He employed his powerful influence subsequently in procuring the arrest, imprisonment, and even whipping of the principal persons among the people who had interrupted him in the middle of a discourse, in which he was delivering his distinguishing system of doctrine, which was soon condemned at the Council of Ephesus.

      Photius relates that when the priest reached the altar, it was customary in the church of Constantinople for the people to chant: "Holy God, powerful God, immortal God"; and the name given to this part of the service was "the trisagion." The priest, Peter had added: "Who hast been crucified for us, have mercy upon us." The Catholics considered this addition as containing the error of the Eutychian Theopathists, who maintained that the divinity had suffered; they, however, chanted the trisagion with the addition, to avoid irritating the emperor Anastasius, who had just deposed another Macedonius, and placed in his stead Timotheus, by whose order this addition was ordered to be chanted. But on a particular day the monks entered the church, and, instead of the addition in question, chanted a verse from one of the Psalms: the people instantly exclaimed: "The orthodox have arrived very seasonably!" All the partisans of the Council of Chalcedon chanted, in union with the monks, the verse from the Psalm; the Eutychians were offended; the service was interrupted; a battle commenced in the church; the people rushed out, obtained arms as speedily as possible, spread carnage and conflagration through the city, and were pacified only by the destruction of ten thousand lives.

      The imperial power at length established through all Egypt the authority of this Council of Chalcedon; but the massacre of more than a hundred thousand Egyptians, on different occasions, for having refused to acknowledge the council, had planted in the hearts of the whole population an implacable hatred against the emperors. A part of those who were hostile to the council withdrew to Upper Egypt, others quitted altogether the dominions of the empire and passed over to Africa and among the Arabs, where all religions were tolerated.

      We have already observed that under the reign of the empress Irene the worship of images was re-established and confirmed by the second Council of Nice. Leo the Armenian, Michael the Stammerer, and Theophilus, neglected nothing to effect its abolition; and this opposition caused further disturbance in the empire of Constantinople, till the reign of the empress Theodora, who gave the force of law to the second Council of Nice, extinguished the party of Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and exerted the utmost extent of her authority against the Manichæans. She despatched orders throughout the empire to seek for them everywhere, and put all those to death who would not recant. More than a hundred thousand perished by different modes of execution. Four thousand, who escaped from this severe scrutiny and extensive punishment, took refuge among the Saracens, united their own strength with theirs, ravaged the territories of the empire, and erected fortresses in which the Manichæans, who had remained concealed through terror of capital punishment, found an asylum, and constituted a hostile force, formidable from their numbers, and from their burning hatred both of the emperors and Catholics. They frequently inflicted on the territories of the empire dread and devastation, and cut to pieces its disciplined armies.

      We abridge the details of these dreadful massacres; those of Ireland, those of the valleys of Piedmont, those which we shall speak of in the article on "Inquisition," and lastly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, displayed in the West the same spirit of intolerance, against which nothing more pertinent and sensible has been written than what we find in the works of Salvian.

      The following is the language employed respecting the followers of one of the principal heresies by this excellent priest of Marseilles, who was surnamed the master of bishops, who deplored with bitterness the violence and vices of his age, and who was called the Jeremiah of the fifth century. "The Arians," says he, "are heretics; but they do not know it; they are heretics among us, but they are not so among themselves; for they consider themselves so perfectly and completely Catholic, that they treat us as heretics. We are convinced that they entertain an opinion injurious to the divine generation, inasmuch as they say that the Son is less than the Father. They, on the other hand, think that we hold an opinion injurious to the Father, because we regard the Father and the Son equal. The truth is with us, but they consider it as favoring them. We give to God the honor which is due to Him, but they, according to their peculiar way of thinking, maintain that they do the same. They do not acquit themselves of their duty; but in the very point where they fail in doing so, they make the greatest duty of religion consist. They are impious, but even in being so they consider themselves as following, and as practising, genuine piety. They are then mistaken, but from a principle of love to God; and, although they have not the true faith, they regard that which they have actually embraced as the perfect love of God.

      "The sovereign judge of the universe alone knows how they will be punished for their errors in the day of judgment. In the meantime he patiently bears with them, because he sees that if they are in error, they err from pure motives of piety."

      HERMES

Hermes, or Ermes, Mercury Trismegistus, or Thaut, or Taut, or Thot

      We neglect reading the ancient book of Mercury Trismegistus, and we are not wrong in so doing. To philosophers it has appeared a sublime piece of jargon, and it is perhaps for this reason that they believed it the work of a great Platonist.

      Nevertheless, in this theological chaos, how many things there are to astonish and subdue the human mind! God, whose triple essence is wisdom, power and bounty; God, forming the world by His thought, His word; God creating subaltern gods; God commanding these gods to direct the celestial orbs, and to preside over the world; the sun; the Son of God; man His image in thought; light, His principal work a divine essence – all these grand and lively images dazzle a subdued imagination.

      It remains to be known whether this work, as much celebrated as little read, was the work of a Greek or of an Egyptian. St. Augustine hesitates not in believing that it is the work of an Egyptian, who pretended to be descended from the ancient Mercury, from the ancient Thaut, the first legislator of Egypt. It is true that St. Augustine knew no more of the Egyptian than of the Greek; but in his time it was necessary that we should not doubt that Hermes, from whom we received theology, was an Egyptian sage, probably anterior to the time of Alexander, and one of the priests whom Plato consulted.

      It has always appeared to me that the theology of Plato in nothing resembled that of other Greeks, with the exception of Timæus, who had travelled in Egypt, as well as Pythagoras.

      The Hermes Trismegistus that we possess is written in barbarous Greek, and in a foreign idiom. This is a proof that it is a translation in which the words have been followed more than the sense.

      Joseph Scaliger, who assisted the lord of Candale, bishop of Aire, to translate the Hermes, or Mercury Trismegistus, doubts not that the original was Egyptian. Add to these reasons that it is not very probable that a Greek would have addressed himself so often to Thaut. It is not natural for us to address ourselves to strangers with so much warm-heartedness; at least, we see no example of it in antiquity.

      The

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