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This chapter analyzes the earliest extant polemical work of Athanasius against the ‘Eusebians’, the Epistula Encyclica of 339. This text identifies all the essential elements that recur throughout Athanasius’ construction of his opponents as an ‘Arian party’. The ‘Eusebians’ exploit ecclesiastical politics and secular power to promote their ‘heresy’ and persecute ‘orthodox’ bishops such as Athanasius himself, driving him into exile and imposing into his church their own ‘Arian’ nominee, Gregory of Alexandria.

This chapter traces the origins of Athanasius’ polemic against the ‘Eusebians’. The ‘Eusebian party’ first appears in the Encyclical Letter of Athanasius’ predecessor Alexander, and the analysis of this text requires a reassessment of the entire chronology of the ‘Arian Controversy’ from its beginnings to the Council of Nicaea. It then traces Athanasius’ presentation of the events leading up to his own exile at the Council of Tyre in 335 in the Apologia Contra Arianos, and contrasts this presentation to the evidence provided by Athanasius’ earlier writings, particularly his Festal Letters. In the later Apologia Contra Arianos narrative, Athanasius attributes his exile to a ‘Eusebian’ conspiracy, yet there is no mention of the ‘Eusebians’ in any of Athanasius’ writings before 335. In these writings, he is concerned solely with the Melitian schismatics who oppose him within Egypt. The ‘Eusebian party’ as a polemical construct and the true source of Athanasius’ suffering appears in his writings for the first time at the Council of Tyre itself, in the letters circulated to the eastern bishops at that Council by Athanasius’ Egyptian supporters.

This chapter examines the influence of Athanasius’ polemic upon the western Church in the period 339-46. This influence is particularly visible in two texts quoted by Athanasius in his Apologia Contra Arianos: the letter of Julius of Rome in 340/1, and the letters of the Western Council of Serdica in 343. All these letters endorse Athanasius’ construction of the ‘Eusebians’ and seek to impose this construct upon his eastern foes.

This chapter begins with an analysis of the phrase hoi peri Eusebion and the implications of Athanasius’ presentation of his opponents as a ‘church party’. It then assesses the various passages in which Athanasius actually names the men whom he regards as ‘Eusebians’, and demonstrates the degree to which these catalogues of names vary between Athanasius’ different works as the polemic develops over time. The chapter ends with a survey of the fragmentary evidence for the known careers and writings of the most prominent individuals whom Athanasius identifies as ‘Eusebians’, particularly Eusebius of Nicomedia himself and Asterius ‘the Sophist’.

This chapter examines Athanasius’ presentation of the ‘Eusebians’ in action, particularly in the Historia Arianorum and the other works of his third exile (356-62). Those actions include the writing of letters; the manipulation of ecclesiastical patronage (notably in the alleged purge of ‘orthodox’ bishops in the years after the Council of Nicaea); the dependence upon secular power through the support of local officials and the Emperor Constantius; and the violence and persecution that the ‘Arians’ are alleged to have caused in Alexandria and Egypt.

This chapter assesses Athanasius’ presentation of the ‘Eusebians’ as ‘Arian’. After a brief introduction to Athanasius’ highly polarized heresiological polemic, it traces Athanasius’ construction of the ‘Arianism’ which he imposes upon his opponents. A comparison between this ‘Athanasian Arianism’, the doctrines of Arius himself, and the known doctrines of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Asterius ‘the Sophist’ reveals that these two alleged ‘Eusebians’ differ theologically both from Arius’ and from Athanasius’ definition of ‘Arianism’. Indeed, Eusebius and Asterius appear to have been representative of a widespread theological position held by a significant number of eastern bishops in the first half of the 4th century, a theology expressed above all by the ‘Dedication Creed’ of the Council of Antioch in 341. The chapter then turns to the methodology through which Athanasius created his distorted polarized construct of the ‘Arian Controversy’, and concludes with a brief assessment of how this construct influences Athanasius’ interpretation of the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed.

This chapter asks how the canons of Antioch can help us understand better the Dedication Council of 341. It proposes that the Dedication Council should be seen as a collective term for a range of synods taking place over several years, similar to the later Permanent Synod in Constantinople, challenging modern assumptions about the structure of ecclesiastical councils in this period. This chapter addresses the major trends in scholarship relating to the creeds of the Dedication Council, often labelled ‘anti-Nicene’ or ‘Arian’, proposing that the canons of Antioch allow us to see the Dedication Council as a pro-Nicene movement, and that the dominant concern of its bishops in relation to Nicaea was conformity to its non-theological work. The chapter asserts that the Dedication Council was concerned primarily to defend the decisions of past ecclesiastical councils, and to protect the authority of the episcopal synod as the highest in the Church.