Hosius of Corduba

Hosius of Corduba (died 359), also called Hosius the Confessor, Osius, or Ossius, served as bishop of Corduba (modern Córdoba, Spain) and was a leading champion of homoousion Christianity during the Arian controversy that fractured the early Church. He likely presided over the First Council of Nicaea and did preside over the Council of Serdica. Following Lactantius, he was Emperor Constantine the Great’s foremost Christian adviser and helped shape public statements like Constantine’s Oration to the Saints, delivered to assembled bishops. He is honored as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Oriental churches, bearing the title confessor of the faith, with a feast day on 27 August.

Born in Corduba in the Roman province of Hispania, he was elected bishop of that see around 295 and narrowly escaped martyrdom during Maximian’s persecution. In 300 or 301, he attended the provincial Synod of Elvira, where his name appears second on the attendance list, and supported its strict canons on clerical marriage and the treatment of those who had renounced their faith during recent persecutions. The council showed Novatianist leanings, refusing readmission to baptized Christians who had denied their faith or performed pagan sacrifices under duress.

In 313, Hosius appeared at Constantine’s court, named in a directive the emperor sent to Caecilianus of Carthage that year. He is not listed among attendees of the Synod of Arles in 314, but he may have accompanied the emperor during his first war with Licinius in Pannonia. Around 320 or 321, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, convened a council at Alexandria where over one hundred bishops from Egypt and Libya anathematized Arius, his deacon. In autumn 324, Hosius carried Constantine’s letter to Bishop Alexander and Arius, urging reconciliation.

After the Alexandrian synod, Hosius led another synod in Antioch, likely during the election of Eustathius following Philogonius’s death in November 324. This synod suspended bishops supporting Arius and announced a general council to be held in Ancyra, but Constantine moved it to the First Council of Nicaea, which opened on 20 May 325. Hosius’s name appears first on the participant list, suggesting he presided. He backed Alexander against Arius, then returned to his Spanish diocese.

For nearly fifty years, Hosius ranked among the foremost bishops of his time, widely esteemed and influential. After Constantine’s death in 337, Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian and imperial ally, became patriarch of Constantinople.

Eusebius and his supporters pressured Constantius II to expel the staunch anti-Arian Athanasius of Alexandria from his see a second time. Eusebius urged the emperor to summon Hosius, an Athanasius supporter, to Milan, where the bishop refused to condemn Athanasius. Hosius so impressed the emperor that he was allowed to return home.

Hosius played a prominent role at the Council of Serdica, which began in summer or autumn 343, as he was the first to sign its acts. Continued pressure from Eusebius led Constantius to write demanding whether Hosius alone would persist in supporting Athanasius. In reply, Hosius sent a courageous letter of protest against imperial interference in Church affairs (353), preserved by Athanasius, which resulted in his exile in 355 to Sirmium, an imperial center in Pannonia (modern Serbia). From exile, he wrote Constantius his only surviving composition: “God gives you the empire; He entrusts ecclesiastical power to us.” The French historian Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont characterized this letter as displaying gravity, dignity, gentleness, wisdom, generosity, and all the qualities of a great soul and great bishop.

Under continual pressure from the Eusebian party, Hosius signed the homoean formula adopted by the Third Council of Sirmium in 357, which involved communion with the homoeans (Acacians) but not condemnation of Athanasius. He was then permitted to return to his Hispanic diocese, where he died in 359.

Later accounts, such as those by Faustinus and Athanasius, suggesting Hosius persecuted Nicene Christians or anathematized Arianism on his deathbed, are likely fictitious. His lapse can be explained by his frail health and old age, without assuming he consciously abandoned the faith he held for ninety years. A letter from Pope Liberius to him concerns the lapse of Vincentius of Capua at the Council of Arles.