Having considered the original controversy surrounding the Trinitarian doctrine of
consubstantiality, Stephen goes on in Proteus to
think in more personal terms of "poor dear Arius," a 4th
century Christian bishop who met a very bad end, first being
judged a "heresiarch" whose books should be burned, and then
dying a painful and degrading death.
Only in part did Arius' ill fortune consist in having his teachings condemned by the
First Council of Nicaea in 325. This clarification of church
doctrine came about at the instigation of the Emperor
Constantine, who had legitimized Christianity in the 310s and
called the Council in order to consolidate its widely
divergent teachings. After the Council acted, the Emperor gave
order that Arius should be exiled, that all of his books
should be burned, and that anyone who hid a copy should be put
to death, "so that not only will the wickedness of his
teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to
remind anyone of him" ("Edict by Emperor Constantine against
the Arians"). None of Arius' writings are known to exist
today, and knowledge of what he said and wrote comes mostly
from characterizations in works by writers who were hostile to
his views. For the next several centuries Arian churches,
which were widespread throughout the territories of the Roman
Empire and spread into many Germanic lands, were converted to
the true faith either at the point of the sword or by
negotiation.
After some years, however, the Emperor allowed Arius to
return from exile, and in 336 he ordered the Bishop of
Constantinople to receive him and give him Holy Communion.
Gifford notes that "That ministration would have been public
evidence that Arius was no longer excommunicant, but Arius
died before it took place." Socrates Scholasticus, an
opponent, writes that the day before he was to visit the
church, after leaving the imperial palace and walking proudly
through the city streets with supporters, "a terror arising
from the remorse of conscience seized Arius, and with the
terror a violent relaxation of the bowels." Directed to a
public toilet, "Soon after a faintness came over him, and
together with the evacuations his bowels protruded, followed
by a copious hemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller
intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were
brought off in the effusion of blood, so that he almost
immediately died" ("The Death of Arius"). Whatever exactly may
have happened on that toilet and inside his body, Arius'
excruciating death provided lasting evidence to his opponents
of divine displeasure. Gifford directs interested readers to
the Adversus Haereses of Epiphanius (a man who was
about 20 years old at the time of the death) for "a splendidly
one-sided account."
Stephen thinks, "Illstarred heresiarch. In a Greek
watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded
mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of
a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted
hinderparts." He clearly is using the word
"euthanasia" (Greek for a good death) sardonically, and
likewise the word "throne": instead of sitting glorified in a
bishop's chair with "mitre" (the bishop's tall, two-pointed
hat), "crozier" (the bishop's long, sheephook staff), and
"omophorion" (the bishop's long stole
of embroidered white silk), Arius comes down through history
disastrously "stalled" on the seat of a public toilet,
divorced from his "see," the church in Alexandria from which
he was deposed as pastor in 321. (A "widowed see" is a
recognized expression for a diocese temporarily without a
bishop.)
Presumably the historical Arius, stripped of all his titles
and responsibilities, did not actually die with a bishop's
vestments and appurtenances in that watercloset. But Stephen
imagines him that way. (Is his omophorion "upstiffed" because
it has been employed in a vain effort to keep his vitals from
exiting his body?) In Circe, Stephen looks back on
the horrific scene he has conjured up in Proteus:
"But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last
end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet."
