The Capitulation of Liberius and Hilary of Poitiers

Abstract

THE ARREST OF LIBERIUS, the bishop of Rome, by the praefectus urbi was an event conspicuous enough to be recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, despite his evident determination to say as little as possible about the internal affairs of the Christian church during the reign of Constantius (15.7.6-10). Ammianus notes that, when Leontius was instructed to arrest Liberius and send him to the imperial court, he was only able to remove him from the city with difficulty and at night, because the whole population was so passionately devoted to him (metu populi, qui eius amore flagrabat). The passage, which immediately follows the arrest of Peter Valvomeres (15.7.4-5), so memorably discussed by Erich Auerbach,' deserves a full analysis for its extremely one-sided and tendentious presentation of Athanasius of Alexandria, whose condemnation and deposition Liberius refused to endorse.2 The present article, however, confines itself to the problem of the date of this central event in the ecclesiastical politics of the 350s, for which Ammianus happens to provide the best evidence, and to the relevance of the correct date to the lost work of Hilary of Poitiers against Ursacius and Valens, which survives in fragments.3