Chapter XXII
.—
Silence
of Sabinus on the Misdeeds of the Arians; Flight of Peter to Rome;
Massacre of the Solitaries at the Instigation of the Arians.
Of
the outrages perpetrated
upon the installation of Lucius, and the treatment of those who were
ejected, both in the courts and outside of the courts, and how some
were subjected to a variety of tortures, and others sent into exile
even after this excruciating process, Sabinus takes not the slightest
notice. In fact, being half disposed
to Arianism himself, he purposely veils the
atrocities of his friends. Peter, however, has exposed them, in the
letters he addressed to all the churches, when he had escaped from
prison. For this [bishop] having managed to escape from prison, fled to
Damasus, bishop of Rome. The Arians though not very numerous, becoming
thus possessed of the Alexandrian churches soon after obtained an
imperial edict directing the governor of Egypt to expel not only from
Alexandria but even out of the country, the favorers of the
‘homoousian’ doctrine, and all such as were obnoxious to
Lucius. After this they assailed and disturbed and terribly harassed
the monastic institutions in the desert; armed men rushed in the most
ferocious manner upon those who were utterly defenceless, and who would
not lift an arm to repel their violence: so that numbers of unresisting
victims were in this manner slaughtered with a degree of wanton cruelty
beyond description.