Paul of Samosata - Life

Life

Paul was born at Samosata into a family of humble origin. He was elected bishop of Antioch in 260. He held the civil office of Procurator ducenarius.

His Monarchianist teachings aroused strong opposition in the church. He was also accused of corruption on a grand scale. Edward Gibbon describes him as follows:

The wealth of that prelate was a sufficient evidence of his guilt, since it was neither derived from the inheritance of his fathers, nor acquired by the arts of honest industry. But Paul considered the service of the church as a very lucrative profession. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction was venal and rapacious; he extorted frequent contributions from the most opulent of the faithful, and converted to his own use a considerable part of the public revenue. By his pride and luxury the Christian religion was rendered odious in the eyes of the Gentiles. His council chamber and his throne, the splendour with which he appeared in public, the suppliant crowd who solicited his attention, the multitude of letters and petitions to which he dictated his answers, and the perpetual hurry of business in which he was involved, were circumstances much better suited to the state of a civil magistrate than to the humility of a primitive bishop. When he harangued his people from the pulpit, Paul affected the figurative style and the theatrical gestures of an Asiatic sophist, while the cathedral resounded with the loudest and most extravagant acclamations in the praise of his divine eloquence. Against those who resisted his power, or refused to flatter his vanity, the prelate of Antioch was arrogant, rigid, and inexorable; but he relaxed the discipline, and lavished the treasures of the church on his dependent clergy, who were permitted to imitate their master in the gratification of every sensual appetite. For Paul indulged himself very freely in the pleasures of the table, and he had received into the episcopal palace two young and beautiful women, as the constant companions of his leisure moments.

In 269, seventy bishops, priests and deacons assembled at Antioch as a synod.

From Egypt to the Euxine Sea, the bishops were in arms and in motion. Several councils were held, confutations were published, ex-communications were pronounced, ambiguous explanations were by turns accepted and refused, treaties were concluded and violated.

The synod deposed Paul as bishop and elected Dominus as his successor. They also wrote an encyclical letter to Dionysius and Maximus, bishops of Rome and Alexandria respectively. This letter is the only indisputably contemporary document concerning him and was preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History.

However, because the synod had acted without consulting the clergy or the people, its authority was in question, enabling Paul to claim continued possession of his bishopric. Since he had friendly relations with Zenobia, the separatist queen of Palmyra ruling in Syria, he maintained his occupancy of the bishop's house in Antioch for another four years. Late in 272, however, when the emperor Aurelian defeated Zenobia, Paul lost her protection. Aurelian allowed the two parties, for and against Paul, to present their cases before his own tribunal. As a pagan with no interest in Christian doctrinal issues, wishing only to restore order, Aurelian relied on the judgment of the bishops of Italy, whom he considered the most impartial among the Christians. The unanimous verdict was for Paul to relinquish his position as bishop.

The fact that the pagan Aurelian ruled on a dispute among Christian bishops was an acknowledgement of the status of the Christian church and the position of early Christians as Roman citizens in a period when there was no persecution.