A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

7. Of HELENOPOLIS. The name of Palladius occurs repeatedly in the ecclesiastical and literary history of the early part of the fifth century. The difficulty is in determining whether these notices refer to one individual or to more. We include in this one article a notice of the author of the biographies usually termed the Lausiac History, the author of the life of Chrysostom.and the bishop of Helenopolis, and subsequently of Aspona, noticing, as we proceed, what grounds there are for belief or disbelief as to their being one and the same person.

Palladius, who wrote the Lausiac History, states in the introduction, that he composed it in his fifty-third year; and as there is reason to fix the date of the composition in A. D. 419 or 420, his birth may be placed in or about 367. He adds also, that it was the thirty-third year of his monastic life, and the twentieth of his episcopate. It is this last date which furnishes the means of determining the others. The Latin versions of his history (100.41, Meurs., 43. Bibl. Pat.) make him reply to a question of Joannes of Lycopolis, an eminent Egyptian solitary, that he was a Galatian, and a companion or disciple (ex sodalitate) of Evagrius of Pontus. But the passage is wanting in the Greek text, and that not, as Tillemont thinks, from an error or omission of the printer, for the omission is found both in the text of Meursius (100.41 ) and that of the Bibliotheca Patrum (100.43) ; so that the statement is not free front doubt. In two other places he refers to his being a long time in Galatia (100.64, Meurs., 100.113, Bibl. Patr.). and being at Ancyra (100.98. Meurs., 100.114, Bibl. Patr.), but these passages do not prove that he was born there, for he was in that province in the latter part of his life. He embraced a solitary life, as already observed, at the age of twenty, which, if his birth was in A. D. 367, would be in A. D. 387. The places of his residence, at successive periods, can only be conjectured from incidental notices in the

Lausiac History. Tillemont places at the commencement of his ascetic career his abode with Elpidius of Cappadocia, in some caverns of Mount Lucas, near the banks of the Jordan (100.70, Meurs., 106, Bibl. Pair.), and his residence at Bethlehem, and other places in Palestine. He supposes that it was at this time that he saw several other saints who dwelt in that country, and among them, perhaps (for Palladius does not directly say that he knew him personally), St. Jerome, of whom his impressions, derived chiefly, if not wholly, from the representations of Posidonius, were by no means favourable (100.42, 50, Meurs., 78, 124, Bibl. Patr.). Palladius first visited Alexandria in the second consulship of the emperor Theodosius the Great, i. e. in A. D. 388 (100.3, Meurs., 1, Bibl. Patr.), and by the advice of Isidorus, a presbyter of that city, placed himself under the instruction of Dorotheus, a solitary, whose mode of life was so hard and austere that Palladius was obliged, by sickness, to leave him, without completing the three years which he had intended to stay (100.4, Meurs., 2, Bibl. Pair.) He remained for a short time in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, and then resided for a year among the solitaries in the mountains of the desert of Nitria, who amounted to five thousand (100.9, Meurs., 6, Bibl. Patr.), of whose place of abode and manner of life he gives a description (ibid.). From Nitria he proceeded further into the wilderness, to the district of the cells, where he arrived the year after the death of Macarius the Egyptian, which occurred in A. D. 390 or 391. [MACARIUS, No. 1.] Here he remained nine years, three of which he spent as the companion of Macarius the younger, the Alexandrian [MACARIUS, No. 2], and was for a time the companion and disciple of Evagrius of Pontus [EVAGRIUS, No. 4], who was charged with entertaining Origenistic opinions. [ORIGENES.] How long he remained with Evagrius is not known (100.21, 22, 29, Meurs., 100.19, 20, 29, Bibl. Patr.). But he did not confine himself to one spot: he visited cities, or villages, or deserts, for the purpose of conversing with men of eminent holiness, and his history bears incidental testimony to the extent of his travels. The Thebaid or Upper Egypt, as far as Tabenna [PACHOMIUS], and Syene, Lybia, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and even Rome and Campania, and as he vaguely and boastfully states, the whole Roman empire, were visited by him, and that almost entirely on foot (100.2, Meurs., Prooem. in Bibl. Patr. pp. 897, 898).

In consequence of severe illness, Palladius was sent by the other solitaries to Alexandria, and from that city, by the advice of his physicians, he went to Palestine, and from thence into Bithynia, where, as he somewhat mysteriously adds, either by human desire or the will of God, he was ordained bishop. He gives neither the date of his appointment nor the name of his bishopric, but intimates that it was the occasion of great trouble to him, so that, "while hidden for eleven months in a gloomy cell," he remembered a prophecy of the holy recluse, Joannes of Lycopolis, who, three years before Palladius was taken ill and sent to Alexandria, had foretold both his elevation to the episcopacy and his consequent troubles. As he was present with Evagrius of Pontus, about the time of his death (100.86, Bibl. Pair.), which probably occurred in A. D. 399 [EVAGRIUS, No. 4], he could not have left Egypt till that year, nor can we well place his ordination as bishop before A. D. 400.

All the foregoing particulars relate to the author of the Lausiac History, from the pages of which the notices of them are gleaned. Now we learn from Photius (Biblioth. Cod. 57), that in the Synod "of the Oak," at which Joannes or John Chrysostom was condemned [CHRYSOSTOMUS], and which was held in A. D. 403, one of the charges against him related to the ordination of a Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, in Bithynia, a follower of the opinions of Origen. The province in which the diocese was situated, the Origenist opinions (probably imbibed from or cherished by Evagrius of Pontus), and the intimation of something open to objection in his ordination, compared with the ambiguous manner in which the author of the Lausiac History speaks of his elevation, are, we think, conclusive as to the identity of the historian with Palladius of Helenopolis. He is doubtless the Palladius charged by Epiphanius (Epistol. ad Joan. Jerosol. apud Hieronymi Opera, vol. i. col. 252, ed. Vallars.), and by Jerome himself (Prooem. in Dial. adv. Pelagianos) with Origenism. Tillemont vainly attempts to show that Palladius the Origenist was a different person from the bishop of Helenopolis. Assuming this identity, we may place his elevation to the episcopacy in A. D. 400, in which year he was present in a synod held by Chrysostom at Constantinople, and was sent into Proconsular Asia to procure evidence on a charge against the bishop of Ephesus. (Pallad. Dial. de Vita S. Joan. Chrys. p. 131.) The deposition of Chrysostom involved Palladius also in troubles, to which, as we have seen, he refers in his Lausiac History. Chrysostonm, in his exile, wrote to "Palladius the bishop" (Epistol. cxiii. Opera, vol. iii p. 655, ed. Benedictin., p. 790, ed. Bened. secund. Paris, 1838, &c.), exhorting him to continue in prayer, for which his seclusion gave him opportunity; and from this notice we could derive, if needful, a farther proof of the identity of the two Palladii, since the historian, as we have seen, speaks of his concealment for "eleven months in a gloomy cell."

Fearful of the violence of his enemies, Palladius of Helenopolis fled to Rome (Dialog. de Vita S. Chrysost. 100.3. p. 26, and Hist. Lausiac, 100.121, Bibl. Pair.) in A. D. 405; and it was probably at Rome that he received the letter of encouragement addressed to him and the other fugitive bishops, Cyriacus of Synnada, Alysius, or Eulysius of the Bithynian Apameia, and Demetrius of Pessinus. (Chrys. Epistol. cxlviii. Opera, vol. iii. p. 686, ed. Benedictin., p. 827, ed. Benedict. secund.) It was probably at this time that Palladius became acquainted with the monks of Rome and Campania. When some bishops and presbyters of Italy were delegated by the Western emperor Honorius, the pope, Innocentius I. [INNOCENTIUS], and the bishops of the Western Church generally, to protest to the Eastern emperor Arcadius against the banishment of Chrysostom, and to demand the assembling of a new council in his case, Palladius and his fellow-exiles returned into the East, apparently as members of the delegation. But their return was ill-timed and unfortunate: they were arrested on approaching Constantinople, and both delegates and exiles were confined at Athyra in Thrace; and then the four returning fugitives were banished to separate and distant places, Pailadius to the extremity of Upper Egypt, in the vicimty

of the Blemmyes. (Dial. de Vita Chrysost. 100.4,19, pp. 30, &c., 192, &c.) Tillemont supposes that after the death of Theophilus of Alexandria, the great enemy of Chrysostom (A. D. 412), Palladius obtained some relaxation of his punishment, though he was not allowed to return to Helenopolis, or to resume his episcopal functions. He places in the interval between 412 and 420, when the Lausiac History was written, a residence of four years at Antinöe or Antinoopolis, in the Thebaid (100.81, vilas., 96, Bibl. Patr.), and of three years in the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem (100.63, Menrs., 103, Bibl. Patr.), as well as the visits which Palladius paid to many parts of the East. After a time he was restored to his bishopric of Helenopolis, from which he was translated to that of Aspona or Aspuna in Galatia (Socrat. 7.36): but the dates both of his restoration and his translation cannot be fixed: they probably took place after the healing of the schism occasioned by Chrysostom's affair, in A. D. 417, and probably after the composition of the Lausiac History, in A. D. 419 or 420. Palladius was probably dead before A. D. 431, when, in the third General (first Ephesian) Council, the see of Aspona was held by another person. He appears to have held the bishopric of Aspona only a short time, as he is currently designated from Helenopolis.