Auxentius

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Auxentius (fl. c. 355 died 374), by tradition a Scythian of Cappadocia was an Arian theologian of some eminence who held the see of Milan. Ambrose praised him for his skills in rhetoric, though he considered him "worse than a Jew" [1]. He is not to be confused with Saint Auxentius of Mopsuestia (d. 360) an early Christian martyr and an Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic saint, or with Saint Auxentius (d. 473), a hermit cleared of heresy at the Council of Chalcedon and an Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic saint.

Auxentius was the foster-son of Ulfilas, the "apostle to the Goths", who translated the Gothic Bible and converted the Goths to Arian Christianity. Auxentius was a deacon in Alexandria and a follower of Dionysius, the Arian bishop of Milan.

When Constantius II deposed the orthodox bishops who resisted, Auxentius, favored by the empress Justina, was installed in the see of Dionysius and came to be regarded as the great opponent of the Nicene doctrine in the West. So prominent did he become, that he was specially mentioned by name in the condemnatory decree of the synod (369) which Damasus, bishop of Rome, urged by Athanasius, convened in defence of the Nicene doctrine.

In Milan, seat of the Westen Imperial court, Nicene and Arian controversy flared high. In 386, Auxentius challenged Ambrose to a public disputation, in which the judges were to be the court favourites of the Arian empress; he also demanded for the Arians the use of the Basilica Portiana. Ambrose's refusal to surrender this church brought about a siege of the edifice, in which Ambrose and a multitude of his faithful Milanese had shut themselves up. The empress eventually abandoned her favourite and made peace with Ambrose.

When the orthodox emperor Valentinian I ascended the throne, Auxentius was left undisturbed in his diocese, but his theological doctrines were publicly attacked by Hilary of Poitiers.

The chief source of information about him is the Liber contra Auxentium in the Benedictine edition of the works of Hilary.

The Letter of Auxentius (ca 400) was preserved in the margins of a manuscript of De fide of Ambrose. Along with the Creed of Ulfilas it is one of the chief witnesses to the credence of the Arian Christians and the politics of the Church at the time when Nicene Christianity continued to be debated at the highest levels of the Catholic Church.