Acacius of Beroea

Acacius of Beroea (Aleppo), also called Aqaq, was bishop of Beroea in Syria from 378 into the 430s, a great church leader of the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, who lived according to the sources from 322 to 433, 436 or 437, at a very great age (114 or 116 years are told). He is commemorated on 15 September. His life has bright parts but also grave errors, which the sources tell without evasion.

The monk and bishop

He was born in Syria. The first reports of his life are given by Theodoret of Cyrrhus in the "History of the Friends of God". He was a monk in a monastery at Gindaros near Antioch, a disciple of the ascetic Asterius, who was in turn a disciple of the great hermit Julian the Persian of the desert of Parthia. Theodoret praised him much and said that he shone by the height of his monastic life and by virtues and that he was thought worthy of the episcopal rank. He was ordained bishop of Beroea in 378 by Eusebius of Samosata, for his active defence of the Church against Arianism. He shepherded for fifty-⁠eight years without abandoning the way of life of the ascetics, and combined the virtues of the hermit with those of communal life.

When the Arian emperor Valens (from 364) began the persecution of the Orthodox, Meletius of Antioch was driven out. Flavian, Diodore of Tarsus and Aphrahat asked Acacius to take Asterius with him and go to the old man Julian, to ask him to leave the wilderness and come to the help of thousands of Orthodox who were perishing. Acacius and Asterius managed to persuade Julian, who left a solitary life of forty years and preached with them against Arianism, also working miracles, and then returned to his cave. Theodoret knew Acacius well and told the story as he heard it from him.

Church service

While a priest, Acacius, together with the priest Paul, wrote a letter to Epiphanius of Salamis, as a result of which the latter composed his "Panarion" (374-376); the letter is placed at the beginning of the work. In 377-378 he was sent to Rome to refute Apollinaris of Laodicea before Pope Damasus I. He took part in the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 and, after the death of Meletius of Antioch, took part in the ordination of Flavian to the see of Antioch, by whom he was afterwards sent to the pope to heal the schism between the Churches of the West and Antioch. He went to Rome with Isidore, then to Egypt, and brought back letters of reconciliation to those who had held with Flavian. The schism ended in 392.

His errors

Later Acacius took part in the persecution of Saint John Chrysostom. According to Palladius of Helenopolis, in 403 he came to Constantinople, where he was not received fittingly by John, and he grew angry, thinking John had despised him, and said before some of John's clergy: "I will cook him a stew." According to Patriarch Photius, in July 403 he was an accuser of Chrysostom at the Synod of the Oak, where John was deposed, and the twentieth charge of the synod was that John had insulted Acacius and refused to speak with him. After John's return, Acacius, Severian of Gabala, Antiochus of Ptolemais and Cyrinus went to Emperor Arcadius asking for his final banishment; in March 404 a synod decided to banish John. After Flavian's death he ordained as his successor Porphyry, a man considered unworthy of the episcopate and a Meletian.

In the quarrel between Cyril and Nestorius, he wrote a letter to Cyril trying to justify Nestorius, saying that the dispute was only at the level of words. Being of great age, he was not present at the Council of Ephesus in 431, but gave his authority to Paul of Emesa against Cyril and wrote to the Eastern bishops, accusing Cyril of Apollinarianism. In 432 he took part in the synod at Beroea, where he supported John of Antioch and did all he could to reconcile Cyril with the Eastern bishops; the reconciliation came in 433, through the signing of the Formula of Union. He died between 433 and 437, and three or four of his letters survive in Greek, among them one to Cyril and two to Alexander, bishop of Hierapolis, one to Symeon the Stylite.