CHAPTER XXVI

SISINNIUS IS CHOSEN TO SUCCEED ATTICUS

AFTER the decease of Atticus, there arose a strong contest about the election of a successor, some proposing one person, and some another. One party was urgent in favour of a presbyter named Philip; another wished to promote Proclus who was also a presbyter; but the general desire of the people was that the bishopric should be conferred on Sisinnius. This person held no ecclesiastical office within the city, but had been appointed to a presbyterate in a church at Elæa, a village in the suburbs of Constantinople, where from an ancient custom the whole population annually assembled for the celebration of our Saviour’s ascension. His eminent piety, and above all his untiring efforts to promote the comforts of the poor, even beyond his power, endeared him so much to the laity, that they procured his ordination on the last day of February, under the following consulate, which was the twelfth of Theodosius, and the second of Valentinian. The presbyter Philip was so chagrined at the preference of another to himself, that he even introduced into his “Christian History” some very censorious remarks on this ordination. But as I cannot by any means approve of the temerity with which he has reflected on not only the ordination itself, but those also who ordained him, and more especially the lay partisans of Sisinnius, I deem it quite inadmissible to give the least countenance to his invectives by inserting any portion of them here: some notice however must be taken of his works.