Primary source · Greek
The Letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia
Arius · c. AD 318–320
What this text is
The heresiarch's own voice at the controversy's start — naming his condemners ('except Philogonius, Hellanicus and Macarius, heretical and unlearned men') and his allies, 'all the bishops of the East.' Contemporary evidence of the first rank.
Public-domain translations
Working translation (from the Greek, ap. Theodoret HE I.5)
...all the bishops of the East have been condemned because they say that God is, without beginning, before the Son — except Philogonius, Hellanicus and Macarius, heretical and unlearned men, of whom one calls the Son an effusion, another a projection, another co-unbegotten. Eusebius, your brother in Caesarea, Theodotus, Paulinus... have been condemned with them.
Manuscript witnesses
Theodoret, Church History I.5 (Byzantine tradition)
11th c. copies of the 5th-c. historyThe letter survives embedded in Theodoret (and Epiphanius); no Arian archive outlived the condemnations.
Patrologia Graeca, vol. 82 (Migne)
1859Standard pre-critical text of Theodoret's History.
Provenance
Written from Alexandria (or exile) at the outbreak of the controversy; preserved by Theodoret
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Athanasius Werke III.1: Urkunden zur Geschichte des arianischen StreitesHans-Georg Opitz, 1934The critical dossier of the controversy's documents (this letter = Urkunde 1).
- Arius: Heresy and TraditionRowan Williams, rev. ed. 2001The standard modern study, with translation of the documents.