The Council of Serdica, AD 343

Apology Against the Arians 36–50 (esp. 50)

[Athanasius reproduces the Serdican dossier — the synodal letter of the western bishops, the letter to the church of Alexandria, and the subscriptions — because it acquitted him. **At ch. 50 he counts about 340 names**: those who met, those who subscribed afterwards, and those who had written in his favour from Phrygia, Asia and Isauria. **The reckoning is cumulative, which is why it does not agree with his own figure elsewhere**, and the archive keeps both rather than choosing.]

*The Apology Against the Arians* — held in this library. English: M. Atkinson and A. Robertson, NPNF 2nd ser. 4 (1892), public domain. ⚠ Athanasius is the defendant printing his own acquittal: the documents are genuine, the selection is his.

History of the Arians (Letter to the Monks) 15

[Here the same author gives **about 170 bishops as those who met at Serdica** — roughly half his own cumulative total in the *Apology*. **The archive’s find is the discrepancy, and that both terms of it are on its own shelves**: one work counting everyone who ever endorsed the verdict, the other counting the men in the room. Neither figure matches the surviving western subscription list, which is shorter again.]

*The History of the Arians* — held in this library, written in hiding AD 357–358. English: NPNF 2nd ser. 4, public domain. ⚠ A polemical narrative for a sympathetic readership, not a register.

Canons 1 and 3 (Latin and Greek recensions)

**Canon 3:** “But if perchance sentence be given against a bishop in any matter and he supposes his case to be not unsound but good, in order that the question may be reopened, let us, if it seem good to your charity, honour the memory of Peter the Apostle, and let those who gave judgment write to Julius, the bishop of Rome, so that, if necessary, the case may be retried by the bishops of the neighbouring provinces and let him appoint arbiters.” **Canon 1, Hosius speaking:** “A prevalent evil, or rather most mischievous corruption must be done away with from its very foundations. Let no bishop be allowed to remove from a small city to a different one… since no bishop could ever yet be found who endeavoured to be translated from a larger city to a smaller one.” [⚠ The recensions differ, and the renderings with them: one line of transmission has the judges write to Julius who may order a retrial and *appoint judges*, another has the neighbouring provinces retry with *arbiters*. Whether this is a second appeal or a third has been argued since the seventeenth century. **The variant is recorded rather than smoothed.**]

Not held as a text record in this library. Latin and Greek in the conciliar collections (Prisca, Dionysius Exiguus, Isidore; Greek in John of Constantinople’s sixth-century collection); public-domain English: H. R. Percival, NPNF 2nd ser. 14 (1900).

Ecclesiastical History II.20

[Socrates has the council summoned by the joint authority of the two emperors, gives **about 300 bishops from the western parts**, and dates the synod by **the consulship of Rufinus and Eusebius** — which is AD 347, not the received 343. He also cites **Sabinus of Heraclea**, the Macedonian collector of synodal acts, whose figures he elsewhere distrusts. ⚠ **The disagreement is in the ancient sources, not in the modern reading of them**: a historian working from documents in the fifth century could not fix the year of a council a century old.]

Socrates, *Ecclesiastical History* — held in this library. English: A. C. Zenos, NPNF 2nd ser. 2 (1890), public domain.

The Philippopolis encyclical and creed; the Sardica paschal table

[The seceders state their ground — that one council may not revise another’s sentence — excommunicate Julius of Rome, Hosius and the western leaders, and publish a creed **which they issue in Serdica’s name.** ⚠ The western sources call that dating false; the archive records the charge as a party’s judgement. **The manuscript that carries the creed also carries the archive’s best dating evidence**: a paschal table of 14 Nisan dates running to 343.]

**Not held in this library.** Latin fragments in Hilary of Poitiers, *Collectanea antiariana Parisina* (CSEL 65, ed. A. Feder, 1916); the eastern creed also survives in a seventh- or eighth-century Latin manuscript with a paschal table appended. No public-domain English of the fragments is known to the archive.