=The Heretics.=—­From the second century there were among the Christians heretics who professed opinions contrary to those of the majority of the church.  Often the bishops of a country assembled to pronounce the new teaching as false, to compel the author to abjure, and, if he refused, to separate him from the communion of Christians.  But frequently the author of the heresy had partisans convinced of the truth of his teaching who would not submit and continued to profess the condemned opinions.  This was the cause of hatred and violent strife between them and the faithful who were attached to the creed of the church (the orthodox).  As long as the Christians were weak and persecuted by the state, they fought among themselves only with words and with books; but when all society was Christian, the contests against the heretics turned into persecutions, and sometimes into civil wars.

Almost all of the heresies of this time arose among the Greeks of Asia or Egypt, peoples who were subtle, sophistical, and disputatious.  The heresies were usually attempts to explain the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation.  The most significant of these heresies was that of Arius; he taught that Christ was created by God the Father and was not equal to him.  The Council of Nicaea condemned this view, but his doctrine, called Arianism, spread throughout the East.  From that time for two centuries Catholics and Arians fought to see who should have the supremacy in the church; the stronger party anathematized, exiled, imprisoned, and sometimes killed the chiefs of the opposition.  For a long time the Arians had the advantage; several emperors took sides with them; then, too, as the barbarians entered the empire, they were converted to Arianism and received Arian bishops.  More than two centuries had passed before the Catholics had overcome this heresy.

=Paganism.=—­The ancient religion of the Gentiles did not disappear at a single stroke.  The Orient was quickly converted; but in the Occident there were few Christians outside the cities, and even there many continued to worship idols.  The first Christian emperors did not wish to break with the ancient imperial religion; they simultaneously protected the bishops of the Christians and the priests of the gods; they presided over councils and yet remained pontifex maximus.  One of them, Julian (surnamed the Apostate), openly returned to the ancient religion.  The emperor Gratian in 384[178] was the first to refuse the insignia of the pontifex maximus.  But as intolerance was general in this century, as soon as the Roman religion ceased to be official, men began to persecute it.  The sacred fire of Rome that had burned for eleven centuries was extinguished, the Vestals were removed, the Olympian games were celebrated for the last time in 394.  Then the monks of Egypt issued from their deserts to destroy the altars of the false gods and to establish relics in the temples of Anubis and Serapis.  Marcellus, a bishop of Syria, at the head of a band of soldiers and gladiators sacked the temple of Jupiter at Aparnaea and set himself to scour the country for the destruction of the sanctuaries; he was killed by the peasants and raised by the church to the honor of a saint.