Hosius of Corduba

Let them each keep their own opinion if they chose, but in concord and quiet." He ended by begging both to give him peace by making peace among themselves and by putting an end to all such quarrels.

The letter was entrusted to Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, a confessor of the faith venerated throughout the Church for his wisdom and holiness.

He was to deliver it personally to the Patriarch of Alexandria.

Now Hosius was a bishop of the Western Church and had heard but vague rumors of the doings of Arius and his followers in the East.

His first interview with the Patriarch of Alexandria opened his eyes to the importance of the matter.

It was no question of a war of words or of a difference of opinion.

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The president for the eastern churches was Eusebius of Nicomedia.

The president for the western churches was Hosius of Cordova.

All Christendom was represented.

With the bishop of Alexandria came Athanasius.

So these are the anti-Aryans.

Initially, they're a minority at the council, but they have some intellectual firepower, Alexander of Alexandria, Macarius of Jerusalem, an important bishop, Hosius of Cordova from Spain, and then Alexander's right-hand man, a young man who's a deacon, so he doesn't have a voice, he doesn't have a vote, only bishops have voice and vote, but he brings his attendant, his brain as it were, this young deacon named Athanasius.

We'll come back to him.

So that's the anti-Arian side.

He died lately in the reign of Theodosius in extreme old age, i.e. before A.D. 392, in which the fourteenth of Theodosius, St. Jerome wrote this book preface.

He was born then probably about thirty years after the martyrdom of St. Cyprian, was a younger contemporary of Hosius, and through him joined on to the council of Eleberis, and the restoration of discipline in the Spanish church.

His memory was kept with great affection at Barcelona on May the ninth, on which he is commemorated in the Martrologium Romanum in words taken from St. Jerome.

It is of the good providence of God that of the same father works should have come down vindicating the doctrine of the church on penitence as a doctrine against the heresy of Novatian, practically against the neglect of careless sinners.