Origen of Alexandria

“The persecution of Septimius Severus was about to add a new page to this bloody history where divine strength bursts forth through the weakness of man. Laetus was then governor of Egypt. To execute the imperial edict in all its rigor, he was not content with severity against the faithful of Alexandria; but he sent emissaries to various points of Egypt and the Thebaid, with orders to arrest the leaders among the Christians and bring them to the capital. There, no torture was spared for these generous confessors of the faith, and capital punishment usually crowned their sufferings. At the sight of such courage, the young Origen felt inflamed with the desire to imitate it. Listening only to the ardor of his zeal, he exposed himself to all sorts of perils to find an opportunity to profess his belief openly. He nearly went to offer himself to the persecutors; but the tears and supplications of his mother managed to stop him. In the meantime, the head of the family had been reported to the governor and thrown in to chains. Then the c le chef de la famille Father of Origen, rhetorician of Alexandria, and martyr under Septimius Severus. hild could no longer contain himself: he insistently asked to be allowed to share his father's fate. The pious mother represented to him in vain that God did not require such a sacrifice from him; that he should preserve himself for her and for his brothers younger than himself; finally, seeing herself at the end of her prayers, she was forced to hide his clothes to prevent him from going out. The young man resigned himself; but, wishing at least to do everything in his power, he wrote a letter to his father to exhort him to martyrdom. Fearing that the thought of leaving seven orphans behind without resources might shake the constancy of Leonides, he said among other things: ‘Take care, my father, and do not, because of us, change your resolution!’ A sublime trait of generosity and delicacy! This is indeed the man who, later, will write such beautiful pages on the merits and glories of martyrdom. One understands the enthusiasm with which he will celebrate the triumph of grace over nature in the mother of the Maccabees exhorting her sons to die for the faith of their fathers: ‘In this woman,’ he will say, ‘the dew of piety and the breath of holiness did not allow the flame of maternal love to stifle the love of God.’

“It has been said very often: there is no better school for man than that of adversity. Origen knew early on these trials of life, which serve so powerfully to excite the intelligence and strengthen the will. By a refinement of barbarity, imperial despotism was not content with striking the Martyrs; it pursued them even into their families by the confiscation of their goods. Thus, when Leonides had his head severed as a reward for his fidelity to Christ and the Gospel, his widow and children found themselves reduced to the utmost indigence. The young Origen found himself alone with his mother and his six brothers still in their infancy, without shelter or resources. But God came to the aid of the Martyr's family: a very wealthy lady of Alexandria took them into her house, and this generous hospitality saved them from need. Here comes an episode that we cannot pass over in silence, because it sheds new light on the character and dispositions of Origen. Now, I like to collect these first traits of his youth as so many glimmers that escape from the past to illuminate the future.

“The wealthy matron who had taken Origen into her house belonged, no doubt, to the Catholic religion, since she showed so much sympathy to the family of a martyr; but, as happens too often, she did not join to the inspirations of a charitable heart the lights of a well-enlightened faith. Thus, while giving asylum to the widow and children of Leonides, she did not fail to keep with her a certain Paul, a native of Antioch, whom she treated as her adopted son, and who was one of the most ardent supporters of heresy in the capital of Egypt. This man had a ready and captivating speech: it was enough to attract daily around him a quantity of heretics and even a certain number of listeners professing the orthodox faith. In this delicate circumstance, Origen, then seventeen years old, showed how much he had profited from his father's lessons and the teaching of the Didascaleum. Obliged to meet with Paul by the necessities of his position, he did not refuse any of the relations of civil life; but nothing could determine the young man to commune with the heretic in prayer, nor to take part in the meetings that the latter held. The canons of the Church were his line of conduct; and, as he says somewhere, he had a horror of the doctrines of the sectarians.”

“Eusebius is right to point out in the youth of Origen this trait that remained characteristic for his whole life. Heresy will never cease to inspire in him those vigorous hatreds that are directed at error and not at persons. Pagan philosophy may find him indulgent, perhaps even too much so, because he will see an extenuating circumstance in the absence of the lights of revelation; but the revolt of a Christian against the authority of Christ and the Church, the depositary of the divine word, will always appear to him as one of the most culpable acts.

“After having profited, for a few weeks, from the hospitality that had been offered to him at the death of his father, the son of Leonides believed himself in a state to be able to provide for himself. It is understood, moreover, that his stay in a house that had become one of the centers of heresy could not have been very pleasant for him. Thanks to the instruction he had received from his father, and to the care with which he had applied himself to the study of human letters, he found, in his work, the means to do without outside assistance. He began, therefore, continues Eusebius, to teach grammar, which provided him abundantly with what he needed to maintain himself according to the needs of his age.” Under the name of grammar, one understood at that time, besides the study of the elements of language, that of the masterpieces of antiquity, or literature. Alexandria was the principal seat of this kind of erudition.”

"It was not, however, among the grammarians of Alexandria that Origen was called to make his mark. Providence reserved for him a higher role. Amidst the disorder that the persecution of Septimius Severus cast upon the metropolis of Egypt, the Didascalaeum had been deprived of its head. Designated to the fury of the pagans by the fame of his name, Clement had taken the road to Palestine and Syria, where his eloquent speech would strengthen the Christians of Jerusalem and Antioch. The chair of the catecheses therefore remained vacant, and it became urgent to fill it; for, a marvelous thing, the persecution, far from slowing the movement that drew pagans toward the Gospel, only accelerated it. In the absence of the master, who had left for exile, people flocked from all sides to Origen who, in the midst of his dry grammar lessons, undoubtedly let escape some sparks of the sacred fire with which the Spirit of God inflamed his heart. Seeing the high esteem in which the young man was held despite his eighteen years, Demetrius, Bi shop of Alexandria, did not he Démétrius, évêque d'Alexandrie Bishop of Alexandria who appointed Origen to the Didascaleum before entering into conflict with him. sitate to entrust him with the direction of the school of the catechumens. It is from there that his first steps in the career of sacred eloquence date, along with his public life (193).

"The time was hardly favorable for studies. In succeeding Laetus in the government of Egypt, Aquila had only continued the system of persecution adopted by his predecessor. In such a situation, it was less a matter of training scholars than of preparing confessors of the faith. The son of the martyr Leonides very quickly understood the full extent of his task. Not content with instructing the catechumens in Catholic doctrine, he inspired in them the courage to profess it at the peril of their lives. Thanks to the ardor that the master knew how to communicate to his disciples, the Didascalaeum became a true school of Martyrs. Among Origen's listeners, who drew from his lessons the strength to overcome torments, Eusebius cites Plutarch, Heraclides, Heron, the two Sereus, Basilides, and a young girl named Heraïs. But the zealous catechist did not limit himself to training these generous athletes for combat; he took advantage of the leisure his teaching left him to join action to words. He visited the Martyrs in their prisons and accompanied them before the tribunal of the persecutors. Once the sentence was rendered, he followed them to the place of execution, approaching them without fear and giving them the kiss of peace, at the risk of being stoned by the crowd of onlookers. But he always escaped as if by miracle. One day the pagans, irritated by the large number of conversions he was effecting in their ranks, surrounded the house where he lived with soldiers. Despite these precautions, Origen managed to escape, one does not know by what means. From that day on, he found himself forced to wander from one place to another, changing his dwelling at every moment, to deceive the vigilance of his enemies. 'Soon,' says Eusebius, 'the city of Alexandria was no longer enough to hide him. Discovered in his retreat, he was arrested and led to the steps of the temple of Serapis. There, the infidels shaved his head as if he were a priest of the idols, and, putting palm branches in his hand, they enjoined him to distribute them to the sacrificers. Origen took them, and, raising his voice, he said to the priests who were climbing the steps of the temple: 'Come, receive these patens, not as those of a temple consecrated to idols, but as those of Jesus Christ.' It is hard to conceive that such audacity did not cost him his life; but it is not rare for an act of striking courage to impose respect on an irritated multitude. Perhaps also his lessons in grammar and literature had already earned him, even among the pagans themselves, some secret sympathy which, in the absence of other unknown motives, would explain why they did not go to the last extremities against him.

"Be that as it may, Origen's conduct during the persecution of Severus and his generosity toward the confessors of the faith made his name famous among the faithful of Alexandria and all of Egypt. Henceforth, general esteem was acquired for him, and his renown would grow with his influence. When calmer times allowed the Christians to breathe, he had no trouble reorganizing the teaching of the Didascalaeum, which could only have suffered from such a harsh ordeal.

Grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, on the one hand; natural and exact sciences, on the other: such is the circle of preparatory studies that Origen made his students go through before initiating them into philosophy, the crowning achievement of the liberal arts.

But it was above all toward philosophy that he directed the minds of his students already formed by the series of preparatory exercises that are still in use even in our days in the teaching of Universities. He had them study all the systems of philosophy professed in the different schools of Greece: his method was eclectic and absolutely excluded only the productions of atheism. Origen was already a classic: thus he has been reproached for having conversed too much with the pagans, and this too assiduous frequenting of the writers of paganism has been attributed to the errors into which he allowed himself to be led.

of language, in which faith is not at all interested. It must therefore be admitted that by beginning in Alexandria with the teaching of grammar, Origen interpreted in his lessons the masterpieces of pagan literature. Although applying himself to a very profound object, this profession of scholiast or commentator must not have been useless to him for the philological works he was to undertake later in another field, that of the Holy Scripture.

While teaching others, Origen continued to study: this is how he followed the lessons of Ammonius Saccas, whom he calls the master of philosophical sciences. All authors will also tell you that he sometimes mingled with the audience of Plotinus, disciple and successor of Ammonius, the forever famous founder of the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria; that Plotinus, seeing Origen enter, blushed and wanted to stand up. Origen begged him to continue. 'One cannot teach,' replied the philosopher, 'before people who know everything one can tell them.' And after having spoken for some time more, he stood up.

Now, it is demonstrated by chronology that this refers to another Origen than the Christian philosopher. Indeed, Plotinus did not come to Alexandria until 233; now, at that time, the Christian doctor had already left the city of Alexandria for some time, and he never returned.

From speculative philosophy, Origen passed to morals or the science of duty, then to dogma, the principle and basis of morals: it was therefore with theology that the circle of the Philosopher's exercises ended.

"One knows the tree by its fruits," says the Savior in the Gospel. In other words, one judges doctrines by their results; and what adds the most authority to the word of a master is the conformity of his acts with his speeches. That is why Origen's lessons made such a vivid impression on the minds of his disciples: he was the first to put into practice the moral precepts he gave to others. "I had known more than one philosopher before," said the pious panegyrist of Origen, Saint Gregory the Thaumaturge, who had been one of his most fervent disciples; "these men discoursed wonderfully on duty; one felt a great charm in hearing them; but, despite saint Grégoire le Thaumaturge Fervent disciple of Origen and author of his panegyric. all their beautiful maxims, they did not manage to persuade me. I had noticed, perhaps wrongly, that their philosophy stopped at words, and that their conduct hardly agreed with their teaching. This one, on the contrary, did not limit himself to teaching us in what temperance, justice, and strength consist: a sterile science, indeed, if good morals do not come to be added to it. He offered us, in his person, a living example of these virtues, and, by that, he led us to practice them ourselves." One would be wrong to see, in the language of Gregory, a vain flattery or an overly benevolent appreciation: all of Origen's contemporaries paid homage to his high virtue. This praise can only seem very discreet when one reads in Eusebius the picture of the austere life that the young catechist led in Alexandria:

"In order not to be a burden to anyone, Origen had sold his books of ancient literature; and, in return for these carefully worked manuscripts, the buyer gave him four obols a day. With these few resources, he led for several years the life of a true philosopher, refusing himself even the least of the pleasures that youth ordinarily seeks. After having spent the whole day in laborious exercises, he used the greater part of the night to study the divine Scriptures. His regimen was of the strictest. He fasted frequently, measured his rest by strict necessity; and, instead of sleeping in a bed, he slept on the bare ground. Above all, he believed he should conform to the words of the Savior who recommends, in the Gospel, not to have two tunics, not to wear shoes, and not to show too much anxiety for the morrow. With a zeal whose perseverance was beyond his age, he braved the rigors of winter, deprived himself of clothing, and strove to reach the summit of evangelical poverty, to the point of striking with admiration all those who approached him. At the sight of the fatigues he endured in the ministry of the holy word, many of his friends suffered from his destitution: they would have liked to share their goods with him, but he never wanted to consent to relax from such a severe regimen of life. For several years, it is said, he walked without shoes, his feet entirely bare. He did not drink wine at all, and he used so little of the food necessary for life that he almost ruined his stomach by this excess of abstinence. By thus giving the example of a truly philosophical life, he led many of his disciples to imitate him. Among the infidels themselves, a good number of scholars and philosophers came to hear him and place themselves under his direction."

"When the teaching of morals is supported by such a life, prejudices dissipate before the irrefutable proof of a sincere conviction, and the word borrows from acts an authority that it is difficult to defend against. This austerity of morals deserves admiration all the more because at the time of which Eusebius speaks, Origen was not a priest; it is only much later that we will see him engaged in the ranks of the priesthood. However, we could not approve of everything in the rigors that the Alexandrian catechist used toward himself. An overly youthful ardor, says Eusebius, made him lack discretion on a point where he should have remembered the maxim of Saint Paul: Be wise, but not more than is necessary; be so with moderation. Certainly, if there is one thing that is excusable, it is excesses in virtue; such examples rarely become contagious, and human nature inclines too much in the opposite direction for it to feel a great temptation to imitate them. That is why, when one finds in the life of a man some trait like the one I must mention, one must undoubtedly not justify these impulses of unreflective zeal; but there would be even less equity in not seeing an extenuating circumstance in the purity of intentions. Origen was young, and his function as a catechist obliged him to instruct women as well as men in the truths of the faith. Wishing therefore to remove from the infidels any occasion to slander his conduct, he took too literally these words of the Savior: 'There are eunuchs who have made themselves such for the kingdom of heaven'; and he came to the actual execution. The fact did not take long to reach the knowledge of Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, who, without approving this exaggerated fervor, could not help but admire the boldness of the young man and the sincerity of his faith; far from taking action against him, the prelate strongly exhorted him to take courage and to continue, with all the more ardor, the instruction of the catechumens. We will see later how the same bishop, inspired by other motives, will take this as a text to accuse Origen to the episcopate of the whole world. As for the author of this inconsiderate act, he will not hesitate, in the future, to condemn the error of his youth; and, to warn the faithful against such a gross interpretation of the Gospel, he will not fear to refute himself by giving, to the words of the Savior, a metaphorical meaning.

"The conclusion, which must emerge for us from the fact of Origen, is that Holy Scripture, without a living authority that explains and interprets it, can lead to the strangest misunderstandings."

Under the pontificate of Saint Zephyrinus, around the year 213, Origen made a journey to Rome, "impelled," Eusebius tells us, "by the desire to see the Roman Church, the most ancient of all." It is to this journey that we owe the first of the great apologist's writings: the Commentary on Saint John, directed against the adversaries of the Holy Trinity who were then making a great noise around the chair of Saint Peter. "The words of the great Alexandrian, no less than his ardent desire to see the Church of Rome, show that he recognized in her, along with all the Christian authors of the first three centuries, the Church 'which presides over the whole assembly of charity,' as Saint Ignatius of Antioch said; 'the Church with which all others must agree in faith because of its sovereign principality,' added Saint Irenaeus; 'the Church in which,' Tertullian resumed, 'Peter and Paul sealed all doctrine with their blood, and whose authority extends to us.' When, later on, his orthodoxy appeared suspect to some, it was, above all, to Pope Fabian that he wrote to justify himself, knowing we pape Fabien Pope to whom Pontius entrusted his goods for the poor. ll that Peter is the foundation upon which the Church of Christ rests, as he would state in the first book of his Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew. We can therefore add the testimony of the Alexandrian catechist to that of the principal writers of this primitive era, who all vied with one another in proclaiming the supremacy of the Holy See, in Gaul, in Africa, and in Asia Minor, within the churches of the East no less than in the regions of the Christian West.

The controversy raised in the 3rd century by heretics who fought against the Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity gave rise to a great number of writings and, among others, the book of the Philosophumena or Refutation of All Heresies, which was brought from the East in 1841 and which has been attributed to Origen, but wrongly. This work is at its core a doctrine against Pope Saint Callixtus. This is why dissidents have made every effort to find in Origen an adversary of the papacy. The manuscripts do indeed bear the name of an Origen in the inscription; but "it is not to the freest and most independent genius of Christian antiquity that one could attribute, with the slightest appearance of reason, a work so unoriginal, a compilation entirely formed of pieces belonging to various authors. Already in the 18th century, although he lacked the elements of appreciation in large part, the learned Bishop of Avranches, Huet, did not find the abundant and easy style of Origen in the first book of the Philosophumena, the only one known at the time.

"Let us recall the praise of astronomy that Gregory the Wonderworker attributes to the illustrious catechist, and let us compare it with the invectives of the anonymous writer against the highest representative of this science in pagan antiquity:

"'O frivolous labor that only inflates the soul! O vain faith that is not a faith! Let those who cultivate the same wisdom consider Ptolemy a wise man.' This disdain for the natural or exact sciences is everything one could imagine most contrary to the tendencies of Origen and the spirit of his teaching. Moreover, there are, in the document of which I speak, some personal details that cannot be applied to the head of the Didascaleum. The author expressly ranks himself among those he calls 'high priests, successors of the Apostles, doctors and guardians of the Church, charged with watching over the deposit of faith.' Now, without counting that, after his return from Rome, Origen remained for twelve more years in the rank of the laity, such language would have been more than strange in the mouth of a simple priest: less than any other, Origen would have permitted it; his great modesty would have recoiled before such a usurpation of titles. Finally, there is one last consideration that would suffice in itself to dismiss the name of the Alexandrian doctor, despite the inscription borne by the manuscripts. According to his own testimony, the author of the Philosophumena lived in Rome under the pontificates of Zephyrinus and Callixtus; he played an active role throughout this entire space of time, and successively opposed to one and the other Pope a long and stubborn resistance. Now, I ask, do these details allow one to think for a single instant of Origen, who, having come to Rome under Pope Zephyrinus to see the church of that city, remained there for a short time, and returned immediately afterward to Alexandria, as his historian Eusebius informs us? Thus, the opinion that I am combating is generally abandoned; and, quite singularly, of all the names of authors among whom criticism had been divided, the one that the manuscripts bear at the head is the only one that no longer finds supporters.

Let us add that, despite certain exaggerations due to the impulses of polemics, and except for the vices of a terminology still indecisive and fluctuating, Origen's doctrine on the Trinity is in conformity with orthodoxy.

Upon returning to Alexandria, Origen resumed his duties as a catechist, which he was to fulfill for another sixteen years in that city. "Overwhelmed with work, he felt the need to divide his listeners into two classes, reserving for himself the instruction of the more advanced, and leaving to Heraclas the task of training the catechumens. From early morning, people came to him to listen to his lessons, and this gathering of Christians or infidels would not cease until the end of the day. Alongside this oral teaching, which seemed to absorb all his moments, Origen thought of undertaking his work on the Holy Scripture; now, such a task would have been enough in itself to fill a man's life.

"Here occurs an event that was to exert a great influence on the career of the famous writer. Toward the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd, Christianity had made considerable progress among the wealthy families of Alexandria. Unfortunately, souls, disillusioned with pagan superstitions, sometimes took the wrong path, and, instead of heading straight toward the true Church, they would first lose themselves in the paths of heresy. Such had been the fate of Ambrose who, by his knowledge no less th Ambroise Friend, protector, and patron of Origen, converted from Valentinianism. an by his wealth, stood out among the most distinguished personages of the city of Alexandria. The sect of the Valentinians had drawn him into its fold by the false air of grandeur it knew how to lend to its theories. It took nothing less than assiduous contact with Origen to dispel the illusions of the Gnostic by bringing him back to the true sources of doctrine. From that moment on, Ambrose became the faithful friend and protector of the one who had converted him. Not content with stimulating the ardor of his master with his words, he provided him with the resources necessary to bring to a successful conclusion an enterprise as vast as the complete revision of the text of the holy books. Thanks to the generous solicitude of this new Maecenas, Origen had, from then on, at his disposal seven secretaries who took turns writing under his dictation, as many copyists who made fair copies of what the stenographers had collected; and, in addition, some young girls trained in the art of calligraphy transcribed everything in beautiful characters. Ambrose provided amply for the expenses occasioned by this organization, without which one could not explain the immense works of Origen. History could not bestow enough praise on the noble Christian who, by his munificence, rendered such great services to ecclesiastical literature. The Alexandrian doctor, for his part, showed himself grateful to his friend: he immortalized him by dedicating most of his works to him.

The science and virtue of Ambrose earned him the honor of being raised to the diaconate. The fury of the pagans provided him several times with the opportunity to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. Having been arrested during the persecution of Maximin, he was treated with ignominy and stripped of his goods. He was taken to Germany, where the emperor was waging war: but Providence saved his life as well as that of Protatetus, who had been arrested with him. Upon returning to Alexandria, he engaged Origen to refute Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, who had attacked the Christian religion. Saint Ambrose died around the year 251. The Church honors him on March 17th with the title of confessor. But it is time to return to Origen.

After the Commentary on Saint John, there comes, in logical if not chronological order, the Book of Principles or *Periarchon*. This work contains the philosophical system of Origen: it is there that he teaches the eternity of the world in the sense that God, to exercise His activity, creates worlds from nothing from all eternity; the primitive equality of all spirits, the pre-existence of souls or their creation in mass, the salvation of the demon; that he supports the theory of successive trials, that he strives to reconcile the philosophy of Plato with Christian dogmas: but one must note this well: in questions not defined by the Church, he never takes an affirmative tone and leaves his opinions to the judgment of the readers; he declares, in many places in his writings, "that one must admit as true only that which in no way departs from the ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition."

"We are therefore authorized to conclude from this that it never occurred to Origen to want to contest any point whatsoever of the doctrine taught by the Church. He may have been mistaken on the question of whether such or such a detail fell within the precise object of this teaching; but these are errors of fact, purely material faults, which are not enough to constitute a heresy in the full sense of the word. Thus, one can affirm that, in the midst of his greatest temerities, Origen never deserved the qualification of heretic: for, by admitting as true only that which is in conformity with the tradition of the Church, he disavowed, in advance, everything he might have imagined contrary to the faith."

Mgr Freppel summarizes, in these terms, his appreciation of the *Periarchon*:

"By maintaining that creation is a logical consequence of the attributes of God, that the divine power, goodness, and activity require the production of an indefinite series of worlds, the ingenious thinker had prepared us for his subsequent hypotheses. From then on, it was a matter of determining what the condition of reasonable creatures had been in the worlds prior to ours. Created, at the origin, in a state of perfect equality, the intelligences owed it only to their free will to have become, some, angels; others, demons; these, sidereal spirits; those, human souls. The Platonic idea of the pre-existence of souls flowed from this cosmology as an inevitable corollary. Origen did not believe it possible to explain otherwise the inequalities of birth, condition, and aptitudes that one notices among men. Starting from there, he admits a fall of souls into bodies, a fall as a result of which our world took its origin, and which is the result of faults committed in a previous life. It is thus that the notion of original sin is altered in his mind, by mingling with conceptions drawn from a foreign source. Certainly, the dogmas of the Incarnation and the Redemption retain all their high significance in the synthesis of the Alexandrian catechist; he does not fail, however, to inflict a grave injury upon them by supposing that the soul of Jesus Christ had earned, through the acts of an antecedent life, its union with the Word of God: a singular opinion, but entirely in conformity with the hypothesis of the pre-existence of souls. Where he describes the conditions of the trial that man undergoes here below, Origen has neglected nothing to maintain the reality of free will and the necessity of grace; it is true to say, however, that his theory of liberty leads him to disregard the absolute gratuitousness of grace and the priority of divine action over human cooperation. This struggle between contrary elements was to be prolonged in his doctrine concerning the final ends of man. While theology obliges him to admit the resurrection of the flesh, his philosophical ideas push him to insinuate the final annihilation of all bodily nature. He affirms at intervals the eternity of rewards and punishments; but how could this affirmation have kept all its firmness in a system that begins with the pre-existence of souls? To admit a trial prior to this one was to open an exit to subsequent trials. The future life thereby loses all character of stability to be reduced to a perpetual alternative of relapses and conversions. It is true that, by a formal contradiction, the author of the *Periarchon* supposes a final restoration, a complete re-establishment of all reasonable creatures in their primitive state; but, unless he renounces all his ideas on the role of free will in the worlds to come, it is impossi restauration finale The theory of the final restoration of all creatures in God. ble for him to exclude the eventuality of a new fall. In summary, one cannot say that Origen fully succeeded in his attempt to build a philosophy of religion on the bases of the Catholic symbol. The *Periarchon* will remain as an incontestable testimony to the genius of its author; it is a powerful effort to arrive at the intelligence of revealed truths and to push back the limits of theological science. But neither the boldness nor the depth of the views could make us forget the errors spread throughout the work. These errors, we have said, find their excuse in the difficulties of a path barely cleared; in the absence of rigorous decisions on certain points of doctrine during the first three centuries; and, finally, in the intention revealed by these exercises of the mind, a work of pure speculation where there enters in no way the design of wanting to give certain and definitive solutions. One is happy, when, after having brought a just severity to the appreciation of a doctrine, one can render a deserved homage to the good faith of the writer and put his aberrations on the account of a reason that is always fallible, without being forced to make the share of a guilty will. Such is the case with regard to the famous Alexandrian: his moral character did not suffer from the defects of his system, and, despite the errors that mar his *Periarchon*, we are permitted to blame the work without being obliged to condemn the author."

“At the time we arrived, he had already begun his famous multi-column edition of the holy books, an undertaking he continued for twenty years, and of which we shall speak later. One is truly surprised to see how many diverse occupations he carried out simultaneously; for his studies were constantly interrupted by the duties of practical life. His ever-growing fame compelled him to extend the circle of his activity far beyond the church of Alexandria. Thus, after his return from Rome, he had been called to Arabia by the governor of that province, who was eager to be instructed in doctrine by such a distinguished master. Although the rapid success of his mission allowed him to shorten his absence, it nevertheless resulted in an interruption of several weeks in his usual work. A few years later, we find him in Antioch, where he had been brought by Mammaea, mother of Alexander Severus, with the goal of better understanding the Christian religion toward which this princess felt drawn. Origen remained in that city for some time; and, according to the testimony of Eusebius, his journey produced happy effects. If one must attribute the benevolent disposition of Alexander Severus toward Christianity to the influence of Mammaea, there is no doubt that the lessons of the Alexandrian catechist powerfully contributed to creating such a favorable situation for the Church. In the interval between the two journeys to Arabia and Syria, his study plans had been crossed by an event of a different kind. Irritated against the inhabitants of Alexandria, Caracalla had ordered the massacre of their leaders. Origen, no longer believing himself safe in Alexandria or the rest of Egypt, went to Palestine and settled in Caesarea. An incident connected to this stay was the first occasion of his disputes with Demetrius, his bishop.

“Although Origen had been directing the school of Alexandria for several years, he had nonetheless remained in the rank of the laity. This fact is surprising when one reflects on the austerity of his morals and the ministry he exercised with such fruit. Must we admit that, by then, his talent, his successes, and his great reputation had excited some jealousy among the priests of Alexandria, perhaps even in the mind of the bishop? The relentlessness with which he was later persecuted only too well authorizes this conjecture. Be that as it may, upon his arrival in Palestine, he was received with the greatest distinction by the bishops of the region. Although he had not yet been ordained a priest, they asked him to explain the Holy Scripture to the people in the middle of the church. Demetrius complained about it, thinking that his colleagues wanted to give him an indirect lesson thereby. But Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea, replied to him to justify their conduct.

“Demetrius was not satisfied. He recalled Origen by letter and even sent deacons from Alexandria to hasten his return. Docile to the injunctions of his bishop, the head of the Didascaleum returned to Alexandria to resume his studies and ordinary occupations; but it is evident that this unfortunate episode had given birth to a first seed of misunderstanding between them; and, as we shall see later, the friends Origen counted in Palestine were one day to push this loosening of the bonds of friendship to a complete rupture.

“However, far from being discouraged by these signs of nascent hostility, Origen redoubled his ardor in the exercise of his functions. Parallel to his work on the holy books, he began that series of dogmatic writings of which the *Periarchon* forms the summary and the crowning achievement. There is no doubt that one must also look in these various productions for the substance of the oral lessons he gave at the Didascaleum. We have seen what the spirit and character of his teaching were. To show the agreement of science with faith, of the Christian religion with what is true and legitimate in Greek philosophy, that was the constant goal of Origen's efforts, and the direction in which he guided the studies of his disciples. In this, he was only following the example of Clement, his master. Thus, he in turn gave the name *Stromata* to the ten books where, as Saint Jerome says, 'he compared the sentiments of Christians and those of philosophers, confirming all the dogmas of our religion with excerpts from Plato and Aristotle, Numenius and Celsus.' This work was therefore analogous to that of Clement, which only makes its loss more sensitive; for it would have been interesting to observe how the two Alexandrians approached each other and where they differed.

“We have arrived at the year 228. Numerous sects were agitating the Churches of Achaia. To reduce the heretics to silence, it was thought that one could do no better than to address a man reputed to be the most learned theologian of the East. Origen therefore left for Athens, perhaps at the request of Ambrose, his friend, who was staying in that city. Upon leaving Alexandria, he carried with him a testimonial letter from Bishop Demetrius. On the way, he wanted to see his friends in Palestine again, and for this purpose, he stopped for some time in Caesarea. There, the act was accomplished that would become a source of persecution for himself and cause so many troubles in the Church of the East. Unable to accept the idea that a doctor whose virtue equaled his science should remain indefinitely among the laity, Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea, and Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, conferred the priesthood upon him by the laying on of hands. We shall see shortly what to think of this act and what its consequences were for the newly ordained priest. Without losing sight of the main object of his journey, Origen took leave of his friends to head toward Greece. He remained there for more than a year, conversing with philosophers, refuting heretics, and neglecting nothing to make his stay as fruitful as possible. As he had been working for a long time on his great edition of the holy books, he was very glad to find in Nicopolis, near Actium, a Greek version, which he later transported into his *Hexapla*. It is also during this stay in Athens that one should place the adventure he speaks of in a letter addressed to his friends in Alexandria. A heresiarch, with whom he had debated in public, had taken the liberty of altering the minutes of the conference and attributing to his adversary everything he saw fit. A copy of this pamphlet reached the Christians of Palestine, who hastened to depute one of their own to Origen to ask him for an authentic copy, which he took care to send them. As for the sectarian, questioned about such a culpable license, he was content to reply: 'I wanted to adorn the discussion more and expurgate it.' 'Judge, from that,' concluded Origen, 'what it had become thanks to this expurgation.'

“It was following these battles sustained for the cause of the faith that Origen had returned to the city of Alexandria. But the situation was very tense. Upon leaving him, he had left Demetrius in a more or less benevolent disposition; he found him deeply embittered. The ordination of one of his diocesans by foreign bishops seemed to the patriarch an encroachment on his rights; and, to tell the truth, appearances were on his side.

“The ordinand had been born in Alexandria, where he held public functions; he was in Caesarea only in passing, and nothing indicates that he had the intention of establishing his residence there, since we see him return two years later to his native diocese to resume the direction of the Didascaleum. But is it likely that, already in the 3rd century, jurisdictions were delimited with such rigorous precision? Did the testimonial letters that Origen had received from his bishop not create a sufficient title for him to receive the laying on of hands in a foreign diocese? We think that the custom of the time justified his conduct and that of his friends. It is, in fact, on the testimony of this ecclesiastical letter, as Saint Jerome calls it, that Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, relies in his response to Demetrius to show that he had acted in accordance with the law; and in a synodal letter cited by Justinian, the bishops of Egypt, including the patriarch of Alexandria, acknowledge that the ordination had been 'true and canonical.' Even today, and under the empire of legislation that has become more severe, every bishop has the right to ordain a subject who has been his intimate and table companion for three years, even if the latter is not his diocesan. This concession is based on the moral bond that is formed as a result of such long cohabitation, and on the ease with which the bishop can appreciate for himself the merit of the ordinand. And certainly, Origen had lived too much in the activity of the bishops of Caesarea and Jerusalem, he had worked with too much success in their dioceses, for Theoctistus and Alexander not to be in a position to judge whether such a man was worthy to exercise the functions of the priesthood.

“But the bishop of Alexandria did not yield to the reasons of his colleagues; and, to color his opposition with a specious pretext, he began to divulge a fact known to a small number of people, which dated back more than twenty years. We have seen that, in a moment of youthful exaltation, Origen had taken literally this word of the Savior: 'There are eunuchs who have made themselves such for the kingdom of heaven.' If one had to stick to the testimony of Eusebius, Demetrius, who had at first admired the boldness of the young man, would have come later to a public theme only to satisfy his grudge; but everything leads one to believe that he had yet another intention, that of showing that, by this voluntary mutilation, Origen had rendered himself unworthy of receiving orders. Such would, in fact, according to modern law, be the consequence of a similar act; and there is no doubt that, with the goal of ensuring the respect due to the priestly character, the Church had established from the first centuries a part of the canonical impediments known under the name of irregularities. But, let us even suppose, which seems quite probable to me, that at that time already such a fault rendered a man unable to receive orders, it is clear that then as today the way remained open to rehabilitation. The obstacle is among those that can be lifted by a legitimate dispensation; and if, as we think, the bishop of Caesarea had the right to lay hands on Origen, nothing prevented him from putting an end to this irregularity, either before the ordination or after, in the case where he had been ignorant of the fact before. Demetrius therefore exceeded all measure by denouncing Origen's action 'by letters addressed to the bishops of the entire world,' according to the expression of Eusebius; and Saint Jerome is not wrong to qualify this conduct as madness: *Tanta in eum debacchatus est insania, ut per totum mundum super nomine ejus scriberet*.

“To summarize this first phase of the debate, we must admit that the bishops of Palestine had acted with precipitation, and not without some desire to give a lesson, which was moreover well-deserved, to their colleague in Alexandria. As for the latter, it must be recognized that passion had made him forget the duties of justice and charity. You understand from then on in what situation Origen was going to find himself after his return to Egypt. However, such was the ascendancy of this extraordinary man that his presence sufficed to calm the irritation of the bishop, at least for some time. Supported by the admiration that his talent and the holiness of his life earned him, he was able to resume his usual occupations and continue his work on the Holy Scripture, while devoting himself to the instruction of catechumens. One could even conclude from the fact of his deposition that Demetrius had ended up admitting him among the priests of the church of Alexandria. But it is rare for men to have enough control over themselves to forget henceforth what had seemed to them an attack on their dignity. Let us recall, moreover, that the speculations of the audacious writer always remained there as a pretext to revive the quarrel and agitate minds. We do not know what happened in the interval, and how the storm, calmed for an instant, broke out again against him with more fury than ever. What is certain is that Origen, tired of a constantly reappearing opposition, resolved to leave forever, leaving to Heraclas, his disciple, the direction of the Didascaleum. He therefore left Alexandria in 231, never to return. He was then forty-six years old and had spent twenty-eight at the head of the catechetical school.

“The place of his retreat was clearly indicated. The bishop of Caesarea, who had ordained him a priest, in concert with Saint Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, welcomed the illustrious fugitive without hesitation, entrusting him with the care of teaching theology and explaining the Holy Scripture in the assembly of the faithful. This was the origin of the school of Caesarea, from which came so many eminent men, among whom it suffices to cite Saint Gregory the Wonderworker and his brother Athenodorus, Saint Pamphilus, and Eusebius. But the animosity of the bishop of Alexandria was to pursue Origen even into this asylum. Immediately after the departure of the master of the catecheses, Demetrius gathered a synod, composed of bishops and priests, where he withdrew his right to teach and exiled him from Alexandria. Not content with this first measure, he assembled a new synod some time later, where he pronounced against him a sentence of deposition, which was equivalent to forbidding him any priestly function; and if one is to believe Saint Jerome, he would have pushed the violence to the point of excommunicating him. The same doctor adds that, with the exception of the bishops of Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, and Achaia, the entire world consented to the condemnation of Origen. This summary bears obvious traces of exaggeration, like the whole passage from which it is drawn, and in which Saint Jerome, carried away by his verve, calls the adversaries of the great Alexandrian 'mad dogs who bark at him.' In his hyperbolic language, the vehement writer likes to take a part of the world for the whole, as, for example, when he says in one place that the entire universe, *tò pan*, groaned and was astonished to have become Arian. Certainly, the bishops of these four regions were not the only ones who had embraced the cause of Origen. Thus, we find among his most faithful adherents the metropolitan of Cappadocia, Saint Firmilian, who did not hesitate to use his ministry for the churches of Asia Minor. A certainly very serious fact would be the condemnation of Origen by Pope Pontian. Saint Jerome affirms, in fact, 'that Rome itself assembled its senate against him.' But what was the result of this assembly? Was there a sentence confirming that of Demetrius? This is what we absolutely do not know. A precious piece of information allows us to conclude that Rome, always attentive to monitoring the movement of doctrines in the universal Church, was concerned with the errors of Origen more than with his personal disputes with Demetrius. Here are the words of Saint Jerome: 'Origen himself, in a letter addressed to Fabian, bishop of Rome, testifies to his repentance for having written such things, and attributes the cause of his rashness to Ambrose, who had made public writings destined never to see the light of day.' Everything is clarified by this: the Roman pontiffs had been moved by the singular opinions of the Eastern theologian, and the latter had understood the necessity of justifying himself to the Church he calls 'the oldest of all.' It is very regrettable that we no longer possess this letter to Pope Fabian, which Eusebius and Rufinus also speak of, and which honored the modesty of the author, while at the same time paying homage to the supreme authority of the bishops of Rome. You will also notice that Origen's explanation is equivalent to a formal admission of the errors spread in his writings.

“Shortly after his arrival in Palestine, Origen returned to work with more ardor than ever. A soul less strongly tempered than his might perhaps have yielded to discouragement in the presence of such harsh trials; but the man with bowels of brass, as he was called in his time, did not let himself be broken by the persecutions to which he was exposed. He sought his consolations in study, in preaching, in the defense of Jesus Christ and the Church; and the twenty-three years that followed his exile from Alexandria became the most fruitful of his life. He spent them in turn in Caesarea of Palestine, in Caesarea of Cappadocia, in Athens, and in Tyre, not to mention the less prolonged stays he made in Jerusalem, Nicomedia, and Arabia, where he was called on two occasions to combat nascent heresies. It is during this period, and despite the hazards of such an agitated existence, that he completed the vast monument whose foundations he had laid in Alexandria, I mean his *Hexapla*, the greatest work of pat ience th Hexaples Polyglot edition of the Old Testament in six columns. at has ever been accomplished by a man. Alongside this purely grammatical and philological work, he resumed his commentaries on the various parts of the Old and New Testaments; and finally, his continual preaching in the churches compelled him to compose more than a thousand homilies delivered before the people. It is under this new aspect that the order of time and the connection of subjects lead us to study the theological and literary activity of Origen.

“As we have just said, Origen's works on Holy Scripture are either critical, exegetical, or penetrical, depending on whether their object is to specify the very letter of the sacred text, or to determine its true meaning, or else to draw instructions from it for the faithful. Several reasons had led the indefatigable scholar to undertake his famous edition of the holy books. For centuries, the Septuagint version had existed alongside the original text, which it filled for those who did not know Hebrew. Hellenistic Jews and Christians used it equally in the assemblies of worship and for teaching in schools: emanating from Jewish authors prior to Christianity, it was not to inspire any distrust in the descendants of Israel. Thus, Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus had made use of it no less than the writers of the New Testament. It was even considered inspired in the eyes of a great number of Jews; and this opinion, rightly rejected by Saint Jerome, had found an echo among some Christian authors. In short, the version of the seventy interpreters enjoyed equal authority on both sides, and the controversy gained clarity through the diffusion of a text accessible to everyone and whose origin could be suspect to no one. But when the Jews noticed that they were being beaten with their own weapons, and that a translation coming from their ancestors was being used against them, they began to contest its fidelity and to highlight the insignificant differences that one notices between it and the Hebrew original. Hence the anathemas with which they overwhelmed the Septuagint version, even to the point of ordering an annual day of fasting in expiation of such a crime. It was therefore a matter of confronting, line by line, this version with the Hebrew text, to show in what they agree and where they differ, so as to remove from the Jews any pretext for slandering the Christians. On the other hand, as Origen informs us, the Greek copies of the Old Testament presented quite numerous variants, either through the negligence of copyists or through the pretension that certain interpreters displayed of wanting to correct the text, by adding or subtracting at their whim. A work of critical revision became necessary in order to disentangle the primitive reading in the midst of these subsequent alterations. Finally, in the second half of the 4th century, three Greek versions of the Bible had been produced, the first of which had as its author the Jew Aquila, and the last two, Theodotion and Symmachus, both belonging to the sect of the Ebionites. Well-versed all three in the knowledge of the Hebrew language, such translators strayed too far from orthodoxy for one to be able to accuse them of having wanted to favor the cause of the Church through the admissions that the cause of truth wrung from them. From then on, what utility was there not in gathering, in one and the same work, the original text with the different translations, and in presenting to the reader, for each verse of Scripture, the most authorized readings? All contestation disappeared before the agreement of the interpreters; and in case of divergence, it became easy to decide for one or the other. A work of this kind could not fail to open a fertile mine for controversy as well as for teaching.

“But also what a work! To bring it to a successful conclusion, it required nothing less than transcribing the Bible seven or eight times, from the first word to the last, taking care to note the slightest differences that could exist between the text of the Septuagint and that of the other interpreters. Origen did not let himself be frightened by the prospect of a collection that can be estimated at more than fifty volumes. He first made a collection in four columns. In the first, he placed the version of Aquila, as being the one that approaches the Hebrew text most closely by its scrupulous exactitude; then came the translation of Symmachus, less faithful than the previous one, but more polished and clearer: the third column contained the version of the Septuagint, the central point to which everything else related; finally followed the text of Theodotion, which deviates the least from the seventy interpreters, in whose footsteps he almost always walks. This synoptic table in four columns took the name of Tetrapla. The four main Greek translations thus moved in parallel, offering the reader as many diverse readings as it was easy for him to check reciprocally. This first edition, however, lacked a precious advantage, that of being able to compare the versions with the original. To fill such a gap, Origen had the Tetrapla preceded by two new columns, where he put, on one side, the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters, and, on the other, the same text in Greek letters for those who understood Hebrew without knowing how to read it. This distribution of the work into six columns earned it the name of *Hexapla*. But the laborious writer did not stop there. In the course of his wanderings, he had found two Greek versions of the Old Testament: one in Jericho, in Palestine; the other in Nicopolis, near Actium. Hence two additional columns intended to collect this fifth and this sixth version, by which the *Hexapla* became *Octapla*. Finally, a seventh translation, whose origin we do not know, came to form a last column and convert the *Octapla* into *Enneapla*, although the ancients never attached this name to the total edition. The title of *Hexapla* has remained with it, either because the last three versions did not extend to all of Scripture, or because Origen only made use of them for a part of the holy books.

“I have said that the author's attention was concentrated mainly on the Septuagint version. It occupied the middle column in the complete edition, so that one could better grasp its relations of conformity or dissimilarity with the Hebrew text and the rest of the Greek versions. But, to facilitate this work of comparison for the reader, the imperious critic imagined certain signs that indicated at first glance the difference in the readings. Was it a phrase omitted by the Septuagint and included in the Hebrew original? He reproduced it by preceding it with an asterisk, and following it with two dots (*... :*). On the contrary, he marked with a chelisk or a small spit what the Septuagint had in excess (+). Other signs also served him to note the passages that the seventy interpreters had rendered according to the Hebrew text, but with less exactitude than the parallel translations. In this way, without touching the famous version, he showed what it might have that was incomplete or defective; and when one thinks that this meticulous revision embraced all the books of the Old Testament, there is no longer any reason to be astonished that Origen's contemporaries called him a man of steel.

“Such is this work so celebrated by Christian antiquity. One can say that it served as a basis for all the works undertaken subsequently on the same subject, so that its author rightly deserves to be called the father of biblical exegesis. You understand, however, what difficulty there was for the copyists to transcribe word for word a collection so voluminous. The *Hexapla* could not be spread in many copies: this is what explains why not a single fragment of it remains to us. The original had been deposited in the famous library of Caesarea, where it must have perished, along with all this precious treasure, when the Persians of Chosroes, and, later, the Arabs, came to devastate Palestine. But if time has spared no manuscript reproducing the *Hexapla*, as they had come from the hand of Origen, it is not absolutely the same for the different versions that were gathered there. Without speaking of the Septuagint, of which we possess the text in its entirety, we are far from having lost every last vestige of the translations of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus. By gathering what remains to us of these ancient interpreters, and with the help of the Fathers of the Church who had profited from Origen's work, some scholars, at the head of whom one must place Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, have managed to recompose the *Hexapla*, at least in part. But it is clear that this collection, certainly very useful, has nothing in common with the work of the Alexandrian Catechist but the identity of the plan and the use of the same materials.”

“It was not enough for Origen to have given a complete edition of the holy books, by joining to the original text the different versions known in his time; to this purely grammatical and philological work he wanted to add the integral explanation of the Old and New Testaments. To interpret Scripture from Genesis to the Apocalypse would already be a work capable of absorbing a man's life; but the intrepid scholar still found a way to exceed this program by pursuing his vast enterprise in a triple form. First, he resolved to explain each book verse by verse, without imposing any limit in advance on his developments: this is what he called his tomes or his commentaries properly so-called. Then, in a second work, he arranged a series of shorter notes, intended to clarify the most difficult places, following the custom of the scholiasts of Alexandria: thus these observations received the name of *Scholia*. Finally, his preaching in the churches compelled him to resume his studies of exegesis to give them a more practical character and better suited to popular teaching: hence the title of *Homilies* reserved for these dissertations on Holy Scripture.

“Origen was wonderfully gifted for the ministry of the word. A clear and easy diction, a most rich imagination, an accent of piety that goes straight to the heart, a gentle, contained warmth, which nevertheless bursts forth at intervals, everything combined to lend his discourses charm and interest. Thus, one has no trouble explaining the vivid impression he produced on his listeners.

“Once a priest, and since his departure from Alexandria, Origen never ceased to devote himself to the ministry of preaching until the end of his days. Wherever he stayed, whether in Caesarea, in Jerusalem, or elsewhere, the bishops asked him to explain Holy Scripture to the people; and he acquitted himself of his task with as much success as talent. In the third of his Homilies on Leviticus, delivered after the year 215, he speaks of his preaching as a ministry that already went back a long way. Indeed, at that moment, he had been exercising this function for more than twenty years. It is only at the age of sixty, says Eusebius, that he permitted stenographers to collect his discourses: without this act of modesty, to which prudence must not have remained a stranger, we would not have to regret the loss of the greater part of his homilies. For, although he composed some of them at his leisure, he improvised most often: which is not surprising, since he preached almost every day, according to the testimony of Saint Pamphilus. The 185 homilies that remain to us of him can therefore only give us a very incomplete idea of his oratorical career. Saint Jerome puts at more than a thousand the number of these familiar instructions that were still read in the 6th century; and this figure would grow by much, if one added all those that were never collected.”

Origen has been reproached for having abused the allegorical method in his interpretation of Holy Scripture: he even wanted many texts to contain no literal meaning; this opinion is evidently false.

To embrace the entire circle of theology, Origen only lacked turning his attention to the controversy of Christianity with pagan philosophy.

"If the Treatise against Celsus is in ferior to the Apolo Traité contre Celse Apologetic work defending Christianity against the attacks of Celsus. getic of Tertullian as a work of art and eloquence, one only does it justice by calling it the most scholarly defense of Christianity in the first three centuries. Without entirely neglecting the legal side of the debate, which had so preoccupied his predecessors, Origen nevertheless placed himself preferably on the terrain of ideas and doctrines. It is through this that this ancient monument of Christian literature always retains an air of youth and novelty. The entire part of primitive apologetics concerning the procedure followed with regard to Christians has aged; or at least it inspires only the interest that attaches to a great cause valiantly defended. The revolution operated in public law by the triumph of the Gospel has removed forever, we like to believe, any analogous situation. But what has not aged, what is always alive and current, is the controversy of revealed religion with rationalism, whatever name it takes and under whatever form it presents itself. The questions that are still stirred up today in this order of things are the very ones that Origen had treated with such great superiority of mind. In seeing him defend the historical character of Christianity, the demonstrative value of supernatural facts, one can believe oneself transported into the midst of our contemporary discussions. This is what ensures his work a rank apart, an outstanding merit; and it is also what makes it an argument whose strength cannot escape anyone. Nothing is more suitable to consolidate faith than this all-out war declared against Christianity from its origin. It was not by surprise, assuredly, that it conquered the world, but after long and stubborn controversies, after having passed through the sieve of historical and philosophical criticism, with all its dogmas and institutions. If the Gospel had been that oriental myth or that Galilean pastoral that modern adversaries dream of, believe well that the Celsuses and the Porphyrys would have been of a size to tear this legendary fabric, and that forever. What happened, on the contrary? Their attacks only served to better establish the reality of the evangelical facts; these dogmas that they turned into derision have subjugated intelligences; and these institutions that they signaled to the hatred of public powers have become those of the civilized world. When a society, barely born, knows how to brave such storms, it can face without fear, after eighteen centuries of duration, the same tempests that had assailed its cradle.

In composing his immortal apology, Origen did not believe himself at the end of his career as an orator and writer. But events were going to interrupt works that had made the happiness of his life."

The reign of Philip the Arab (214-219) had been an era of peace and prosperity for the Church. While it is not certain that this prince publicly professed the Christian religion, despite the testimony of Eusebius, the author of the Chronicle of Alexandria, and Saint John Chrysostom, one cannot doubt his sympathies for the cause of the Gospel. Origen, in particular, had been in contact with the imperial family, as attested by his letters to Philip and the Empress Severa, letters whose text has not reached us. The accession of Decius changed the face of things. We do not know in which city Origen was when the storm broke over the Church, whether it was in Caesarea Maritima or in Tyre. But, according to the plan of attack adopted by Decius, the persecution could not fail to reach the most famous man the Church of the East counted in its midst. Origen, then sixty-five years old, was therefore thrown into prison and loaded with chains. He was placed in an iron collar around his neck and his feet were shackled to the fourth hole, says Eusebius, which spread his legs excessively! This torture lasted several days, at the end of which the executioners made him endure a quantity of other tortures, even threatening him with the penalty of fire. However, adds his historian, the judge took great care to stop at the limit where certain death would have been the result of these barbaric treatments: he undoubtedly hoped that prolonged torments would eventually break Origen's courage, and that such a fall would lead to that of many others. But the heroic old man remained firm: he who, as a child, had exhorted his father Leonides to suffer death for Jesus Christ, was not a man to betray, under the blow of persecution, the cause he had served for more than forty years, by his word and by his writings. Providence spared him this supreme trial, to provide him with the opportunity to show that strength of character was allied in him with nobility of heart and elevation of spirit. Without the glorious episode that marked the end of his career, a feature would have been missing from this great physiognomy that was to present itself before history with the triple reflection of genius, holiness, and martyrdom.

Whether the death of Decius had put an end to Origen's captivity, or whether some other cause had restored his freedom, Eusebius shows him resuming his work some time later, encouraging through his letters those who needed to be strengthened, and maintaining until the end that prodigious activity he had never ceased to deploy throughout the course of his career. But the sufferings of a long martyrdom, added to the fatigues of such a laborious and agitated life, had fin Tyr Place of death and burial of Origen. ished exhausting the strength of the noble old man. The city of Tyre, in Phoenicia, where he had settled, was his last stage here below, and remained the guardian of his tomb. It was in the year 254. Origen had lived sixty-nine years.

“Genius, holiness, and martyrdom,” says M. Freppel in conclusion, “meet in the man whose life and writings we have just studied. And yet, such great things did not have all the result they seemed destined to obtain. In talent and breadth of knowledge, Origen surpasses most of the Fathers of the Church: in any case, he is inferior to none; and despite such brilliant services, the Church could not rank him among its doctors. There are few lives where zeal for souls is joined to a greater austerity of morals; and yet so many virtues could not receive the solemn consecration that the Church reserves for the elite of its sons. The head of the school of Alexandria crowned his labors with an admirable confession of faith; and his name has found no place among the heroes of martyrdom. What, then, prevented him from appearing, for all the centuries to follow, alongside Basil and Augustine, in that pleiad of holy doctors whose reputation is untarnished by any stain? The lack of certainty in his doctrine. Certainly, one has never erred with more candor. At no time in his life did the author of the *Periarchon* wish to place himself in opposition to the teaching of the Church, which remained for him constantly the infallible rule of belief. Unshakable on the principle, he could only be mistaken in the application, by taking for free opinions what in reality contradicted Catholic dogma. Origen believed he could safely build upon the foundation of revelation a philosophical system whose main data are borrowed from Plato. Yet he formulated this system only with great reserve, by way of hypothesis, and as a simple exercise of the mind, as Saint Athanasius said. It was nonetheless a perilous undertaking; for one must not play lightly with the dogmas of the faith. Clumsy disciples were to arise and take seriously these fantasies of an exuberant imagination. From this would emerge Origenism, that is to say, a set of ideas that begins with the hypothesis of the pre-existence of souls to end in the theory of successive trials. Assuredly, it would be unjust to impute to Origen all the errors that may have crossed the brains of some of his most exalted partisans; but one also understands that orthodoxy held in suspicion a writer whose adventurous spirit had favored such tendencies. This is what compromised the memory of the great Alexandrian before the tribunal of posterity; for there is no way to deny the errors into which he allowed himself to be led: they form a complete whole, from which nothing can be detached. Now, whatever regard the talent and services rendered may deserve, whatever admiration one may feel for such high virtues joined to such science, there is an interest before which all sympathies fade: the interest of truth. In order not to give an appearance of reason to justly blamable doctrines, the Church had to resolve to leave one of the greatest men of its history in the equivocal situation in which he had placed himself. By treating him with too much indulgence, it would not have watched sufficiently over the preservation of the first of the spiritual goods entrusted to its care. For, as one of the most honest minds of antiquity, Plutarch, already said, God could not give to men, and men could not receive from God, a greater gift than truth.

“But, if Origen’s reckless speculations did not allow him to occupy in the history of the Church the rank that his immortal labors for the cause of the Gospel would have assigned him, must we, following the example of many others, attach to the name of the famous apologist the qualification of heretic? Is it true that Pope Anastasius condemned the translation of the *Periarchon* made by Rufinus of Aquileia, softened though it was? That the Fifth General Council, held in 553, declared Origen a heretic? That the First Council of the Lateran, held under Martin I, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth all renewed the condemnation brought against Origen at the fifth? The matter is not in doubt. But the essential thing is to read well the meaning of the judgments rendered against Origen by the powers of the Church. On this point, Huet’s maxim will remain as the true word on the question: ‘If one understands by heretic a man who errs on a dogma of the faith, it is impossible not to apply this qualification to Origen; but if one wishes to designate by that term one who manifests the intention to persevere in his error, even when it has been reproved by the Church, who would dare say such a thing of Origen?’”

“It is in the first sense, and in no way in the second, that the councils condemned the author of the *Periarchon*. For it is evident that a man cannot become more of a heretic after his death than he was during his life. Now, during his lifetime, Origen had not thought for an instant of breaking communion with the Church. The bishops of Egypt had proscribed him, but many others had spoken in his favor; and besides, by writing a letter to Pope Fabian to disavow his errors, he showed enough how far his spirit was from that proud obstinacy which makes the heretic properly so called. Let us recall his declarations, so firm and explicit, on the necessity of conforming in every point to the teaching of the Church; thus, bishops whose orthodoxy is not suspect had called him to preach in their dioceses, and to combat heresy in all its forms. After having lived constantly in the communion of the Church, Origen had died in it, reconciled even with the church of Alexandria, as is attested by the mark of deference given to him by Saint Dionysius, patriarch of that city, in addressing his book on *Martyrdom* to him shortly before. It results from all this that the councils could not apply to him the qualification of heretic in the sense in which they inflicted it upon Arius, Nestorius, and all those refractories who had placed themselves in open revolt against the authority of the Church. Their decisions mean nothing else than that there are in the writings of Origen errors that contradict the dogmas of the faith, and which, consequently, constitute in themselves true heresies. In short, what they wanted to strike was Origenism, that is to say, this system which begins with the hypothesis of the pre-existence of souls and which ends with the theory of successive trials. Now, it will be granted to me, no doubt, that these are capital errors, the consequences of which tend to nothing less than to ruin the Christian faith. If they had kept the vague, indecisive, hypothetical form that they wore under the author’s pen, it is to be believed that no solemn condemnation would have come to reach them. This is what explains the indulgence with which the powers of the Church had treated these reveries for nearly one hundred and fifty years. But from the moment that the heretics made a weapon of them, and that clumsy disciples, outdoing the master’s recklessness, gathered them into a body of doctrine to oppose them to orthodoxy, the councils had to emerge from their reserve to strike the evil in the person of the one who was its source. And the proof that they struck true is that Origenism has no longer left a mark since then in the history of the Church.”

Origen, *Course of Sacred Eloquence* given at the Sorbonne during the years 1866 and 1867, by M. the Abbé Freppel, Dean of Sainte-Geneviève, professor at the Faculty of Theology of Paris (today Bishop of Angers). — M. Migne has provided the complete works of Origen, Greek and Latin text, in volumes XI to XVIII of his *Patrologia Graeca*: he has added to it the writings that concern Origen.