The Martyrs of Lyons

Reading N°48 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Divine Providence has permitted the preservation of one of the most exquisite accounts of martyrdom of which the Church can boast. It is recorded in a document of unquestioned authenticity, the letter written in AD 177 by the Churches of Lyons and Vienne to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia.^[1] Even Renan, in presence of this memorable document, was unable to restrain his deep feeling. He says:

It is one of the most extraordinary pieces that any literature possesses. Never has a more impressive picture been drawn of the lofty enthusiasm and devotion to which human nature can attain. It is the ideal of martyrdom, with the least possible boasting on the part of the martyrs.^[2]

The city of Lyons was at that time the administrative metropolis of the three provinces of the Gauls. The representatives of sixty-four peoples resided there, as in a federal city. The worship of Rome and Augustus, in the charge of a high priest representing the three Gallic provinces, was there conducted with the greatest solemnity. It has been said that, at the very time when in the Eternal City the Roman religion seemed to be retreating before the advance of philosophy, it was establishing a mighty center for itself in the great Gallic city.^[3] Furthermore, the stream of commerce which had long since developed between the ports of Asia Minor and the Gallic cities of the Rhone had, by the very force of things, become a field of fruitful apostolate. The Christian communities of Lyons and Vienne were increased by the addition of Syrian and Phrygian elements that brought, along with the Christian traditions of the East, a constant renewal of vitality.

St. Pothinus of Lyons

An aged and venerable bishop governed the Church of Lyons in the middle of the second century: Pothinus. His principal helper, his right hand as it were, was Irenaeus. Both were natives of Asia. Both of them, too, had been disciples of Papias and Polycarp, who in turn were disciples of St. John. The Church of Lyons was nourished with the purest doctrine by an active correspondence with the churches of Asia, and it radiated its light. Archeological monuments indicate, if not a strict filiation, at least some religious dependence between the churches of Autun, Langres, Chalons, Tournus, Dijon, and the Church of Lyons.^[4]

The Roman colony had its center at Fourvières; the famous altar where the worship of Rome and Augustus was celebrated was at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saône. The center of the Christian population was probably on the islands of the confluence, near Athanacum, now Ainai.

Between the two religions, Christian and pagan, a clash was inevitable. This appeared the more imminent since a floating population of laborers, clerks, people who were rich and poor, idle and busy by turns, according to the fluctuations of commerce, was ever ready to foment disturbances. In 177, this popular agitation, for some unknown reason, was suddenly turned against the Christians. The Christians were publicly insulted. In the streets, on the country roads, in the public places, they were attacked, stones were thrown at them. It may be that the native Lyonese confused the Christians and their mysterious ceremonies with those gross Gnostics who had been brought to the great city of the Gauls by the commercial activity of Asia. Unhappily, the Roman authorities were unconcerned with repressing these enmities or dispelling these misunderstandings. In the absence of the imperial legate, the tribune and the duumvirs attempted merely to put an end to the agitation by arresting a number of those whom popular report designated as Christians.

Among those whom they imprisoned were the venerable Bishop Pothinus, the priest Zachary, the deacon Sanctus, the neophyte Maturus, Attalus of Pergamus, a young female slave, Blandina, and several other Christians. One of them was placed under arrest at the first sitting of the court. This was Vettius Epagathus, a young man of noble birth and great virtue. Affected by the tortures that were being inflicted upon the accused, he gave vent to his indignation and requested that he should be heard in defense of his brethren, while he ventured to assert that there was nothing at variance with religion or piety among them. But the judge only asked whether he also were a Christian. He confessed and was thereupon transferred to the ranks of the accused.

Amphitéâtre des Trois-Gaules, Lyon, France. The column
standing in the arena is a memorial to the Holy Martyrs
killed for the Faith during the persecution.

Meanwhile, the imperial legate returned to Lyons. The trial continued. At first, the slaves of the accused were brought forward and put to the torture. When urged by the soldiers, says our document, "they falsely accused us of Thyestean feasts and Oedipodean incests, and things which it is not right for us either to speak of or to think of."^[5] These abominable lies added to the popular rage. But every effort was made to obtain a confession of these crimes from the accused themselves. In the amphitheater, before an infuriated multitude thirsting for the sight of blood, the Christians were scourged, placed in hot iron chairs, thrown to wild beasts that dragged them around the arena, in short, subjected to every torture that the maddened crowd demanded. The deacon Sanctus, from whom they tried to force a revelation of the secrets of the Church, would say nothing more than, "I am a Christian." Not another word could be extracted from him. The executioners then exercised their fury upon the slave Blandina. She was short and feeble. Her fellow-Christians, especially her mistress (also among the accused), were apprehensive lest she should weaken. But she was heroic. For a whole day, she endured the most atrocious tortures, repeatedly saying: "I am a Christian woman, and nothing wicked happens among us."

The greatest anguish of the accused was not the thought of torture; it was the fear that some of their brethren might prove weak and deny Christ. Ten of them actually did so. But every day, the arrests continued. Loyal Christians filled the places left vacant by the apostates. Our document tells us that those who resisted showed no arrogance or contempt toward these weak brethren. They condemned no one, but merely wept and prayed. They humbled themselves beneath the hand of God, to whom they owed their constancy; if anyone called them martyrs, they would not accept this title, saying that those only are martyrs who have confessed Christ to the very end.

The attitude of Pothinus, the venerable head of the Church of Lyons, was sublime. The legate asked him who was the God of the Christians. The Bishop replied: "If you are worthy, you will know." He was beaten unmercifully; the populace threw at him whatever they could lay hands on. Half-dead, he was thrown into a dungeon, where he expired two days later.

In fine, those who were found to be Roman citizens were sentenced to be beheaded; the others were destined for the beasts.

A fifteen-year-old boy named Ponticus, and the slave Blandina, were kept for the last. It was hoped that, after they had witnessed all the sufferings of their brethren, they would weaken. But both of them showed admirable strength. The most refined torture was inflicted upon the boy. The tender words of Blandina aided him, with the grace of God, to remain constant to the end.

Blandina now alone remained.

After scourging, after the beasts, after the gridiron, she was at last put in a net and thrown to a bull. She was tossed about a long time by the beast, having no more feeling for what happened to her through her hope and hold on what had been entrusted to her and her converse with Christ. And so she, too, was sacrificed, and the heathen themselves confessed that never before among them had a woman suffered so much and so long.^[6]

The martyrdom of St. Blandina

Forty-eight martyrs died thus in the metropolis of the Gauls.^[7]

The letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne, from which we have taken the details of this martyrdom, closes with these words:

Divine grace did not fail the martyrs; the Holy Ghost dwelt in their midst.

The Acts of St. Felicitas, of St. Justin, in fact, nearly all the Acts of this period, close with a triumphant doxology: "Glory to God unto all ages!" Of the two powers that clashed in the great Gallic city as in the capital of the Empire, it was the Christian power that triumphed. More and more, the Empire was visibly nearing its fall.

Marcus Aurelius observed this. The philosopher in him vainly resisted through sheer duty, saying:

Let the god that is in thee be lord of a living creature that is manly and of full age [...] as one who awaits the signal of recall from life in all readiness.^[8]

If this meditative prince, transformed into a man of action during part of his reign, could have penetrated the future, he would have spoken with still greater bitterness the words he addressed to the tribune who came to his tent for the last time to ask for instructions:

Go to the rising sun; I am setting.

From all sides, barbarous races were pressing on the Roman frontiers. In their rear, the great nation of the Goths was beginning to move forward. Upon all these races, who were soon to give the death-blow to the Roman colossus, the rising sun of the Gospel was casting its rays. Perchance the philosopher-prince had some foreboding of the future of the world when, in his last hour, with a gesture that was more despairing than stoical, he turned his head from his son Commodus and covered his face so as to see no one, and to die alone.

Footnotes

[1] With the exception of Ernest Havet, whose extraordinary bias is well known, all historians who have written of the early centuries of the Church, both ancient historians and modern - e. g., Tillemont, Renan, Harnack, Aube, Gaston Boissier, Duchesne - regard this letter as undoubtedly genuine.

[2] Renan, Marc-Aurèle, p. 340.

[3] Boissier, Inscriptions antiques de Lyon, p. 407; Bernard, Le Temple d'Auguste et fa nationalité gauloise, p. 30.

[4] Tillemont, Mémoires, III, 35 ff.; cf. Bulliot, Essai historique .sur l'abbaye de Saint-Martin d'Autun, pp. 47-50.

[5] Eusebius, H. E., V, i, 14.

[6] Ibidem, no. 56.

[7] Their names will be found in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (ed. De Rossi-Duchesne), p. 73, and in Leclercq, Les Martyrs, I, 106 f. About half of the martyrs have Greek names, and about half, Latin. From this fact we may infer a similar numerical proportion among the Christians of Lyons.

[8] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, III, 5.

***

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St. Justin Martyr

Reading N°47 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Justin was born in the early years of the second century at Sichem, the modern Nablus, in Palestine. His father, Priscus, and his grandfather, Bacchius, were pagans and native Greeks. Justin was brought up in paganism. He was precocious and at a very early age attended various schools of philosophy. Being consumed with a desire for truth, he sought it of the Porch, then at the Academy, and in the school of Pythagoras. Plato's doctrine, which he next encountered, held him longer, but without fully satisfying his mind and heart. An old man, whom he chanced to meet while he was walking alone by the sea, showed him, beyond the light which comes from the study of philosophy, a light which could be found in the reading of the Prophets.

Justin began to read the Bible. By feeding his mind with the Sacred Scriptures, he came to understand better how human wisdom had appeared to him so insipid when he asked it for the reason of life. These things he himself tells us in books filled with his personal experience. He also relates how the sight of Christians, persecuted for their faith and braving all dangers so as to remain faithful to their religion, demolished all the prejudices which his pagan education had given him about the followers of Christ.^[1]

About A.D. 135, he became a Christian. But this did not make him abandon philosophy; he merely tried to instil the Christian spirit into it. Or rather, he strove to set forth Christian teaching about God, man, and the world as a new philosophy, which is, he said, "the only safe and profitable one."^[2] Still travelling about the world, he continued to wear the philosopher's cloak,^[3] defending his faith by spoken word and by pen against all comers - heretics, Jews, and pagans. He was convinced that "everyone who can speak the truth, yet speaks it not, will be judged by God."^[4]

One of his most vigorous campaigns was against the Cynical philosopher Crescens, "who said that the Christians are atheists and impious, doing so to win favor with the deluded mob and to please them."^[5] Justin not only attacked him wherever he was sowing his calumnies and provoked him to public disputations, but also offered, though unsuccessfully, to debate with him in the presence of the Emperor.^[6] In the course of his campaign, he convicted Crescens of not understanding the matter under discussion.^[7] The Cynic never forgave the Christian philosopher for the public humiliation he had suffered at his hands.

Justin did not delude himself. He writes:

I too, therefore, expect to be plotted against and fixed to the stake, by some of those I have named, or perhaps by Crescens, that lover of bravado and boasting.^[8]

He was in fact denounced to the Roman authorities by Crescens or at Crescens' instigation,^[9] along with six other Christians. After a short examination, he was beaten with rods and beheaded. We have the official report of his trial, from which we give the following extracts:

The Prefect (Rusticus): "What science are you studying?"
Justin: "I have studied all the sciences, one after the other. I have chosen the doctrine of the Christians.
Prefect: "What is that doctrine?"
Justin: "To believe in one only God, Creator of all things, and to confess Jesus Christ, the Son of God, future judge of mankind. But I, being a mere feeble man, cannot speak of His infinite divinity as it should be spoken of. This is the work of the prophets, who foretold Him for centuries through an inspiration from on high."
Prefect: "Where do the Christians meet?"
Justin: "Wherever they can; for the God whom the Christians adore is everywhere."
Prefect: "Are you a Christian, then?"
Justin: "I am."
Prefect: "People say you are an eloquent philosopher. If I have you flogged and have your head cut off, do you think you will then ascend to Heaven?"
Justin: "I do not think so; I know it. Of this I am so confident that I have no doubt about it."
Prefect: "Sacrifice to the gods."
Justin: "A man of sense does not abandon piety for error."

The Trial of Justin the Philosopher
Fra Angelico (1395-1455)

Justin's companions - Evelpistus, Hierax, Paeon, Liberianus, Chariton, and a Christian woman named Charita - replied in like manner.

Evelpistus was a slave. To him the judge spoke with contempt, saying: "What are you?" Evelpistus answered: "I am a slave of Caesar; but, being a Christian, I have received my freedom from Christ, and I have the same hope as these others." This was the first time that a slave dared publicly claim his dignity as a man before a Roman magistrate. The prefect issued the following sentence: "Let those who have been unwilling to sacrifice to the gods be scourged and beheaded." The sentence was executed at once.

This was in A.D. 163.^[10] The Acts tell us that the bodies of these martyrs were removed by the Christians and placed "in a fitting place," that they might be worthily honored by their brethren.

Footnotes

[1] Cf. Second Apology, Chapter 12.

[2] Dialogue, Chapter 8.

[3] Eusebius, H. E., IV, xi, 8; Justin, Dialogue, Chapter 1.

[4] Dialogue, Chapter 82.

[5] Second Apology, Chapter 3, No. 2.

[6] Ibidem, No. 5.

[7] Ibidem, No. 4.

[8] Ibidem, No. 1.

[9] Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, 19; Eusebius, H. E., IV, xvi, 8.

[10] Renan made futile efforts to free Marcus Aurelius, the emperor-philosopher, from blame in the execution of Justin, the first Christian philosopher. Scholars have not been convinced by Renan's attempt to push St. Justin's martyrdom back to the reign of Antonius Pius.

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St. Felicitas

Reading N°46 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

One of the most touching incidents of the outburst of Roman superstition under Marcus Aurelius was the martyrdom of St. Felicitas and her seven children at Rome, in AD 162. We are told by the Acts of her martyrdom:

She had remained a widow, and had consecrated her chastity to God. Night and day she spent in prayer, and was an edification for pure souls. The pagan pontiffs, seeing that, owing to her, the fair repute of the Christian name had increased, spoke of her to Antoninus Augustus,^[1] saying: "This widow and her sons insult our gods, angering them so much that there will be no way to appease them." The Emperor sent Publius, the prefect of the city, instructing him to force Felicitas to sacrifice to the gods. To the prefect's first urging, the brave matron replied: "Your threats cannot make me change my resolve, nor can your promises seduce me. I have within me the Holy Ghost, who will not permit that I be overcome by the demon." Then said Publius: "Wretched woman, though you find it sweet to die, at least let your sons live." "I know," answered Felicitas, "that my sons will live if they consent to sacrifice to the idols; but, should they commit this crime, they will go to eternal death." On the next day the prefect summoned her with her seven sons before him. "Take pity on your children," he said. Thereupon the Christian woman turned to her sons and said: "Lift up your eyes to Heaven, my children. Jesus Christ awaits you there with His Saints."

The mother and children were brave to the very end. Sentence of death was decreed against them. The eldest of the sons was beaten to death with leaded whips; the second and the third fell beneath the blows of the cudgel; the fourth was thrown into the Tiber. The last three and the mother were beheaded.^[2]

Footnotes:

[1] That is, Marcus Aurelius. The name Antonius was given to all the rulers of the Antonine dynasty.

[2] Leclercq, Les Martyrs, I, 210-214.

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Marcus Aurelius

Reading N°45 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (161-180)

Marcus Aurelius was worthier in his private and public life than his three predecessors. He had a lofty mind, a heart that was kind even to weakness and tender even to illusion. Yet he did but aggravate the condition of the Christians in the Empire. The nineteen years of his reign were the most vexatious and cruel that the Church had passed through.^[1] This seeming anomaly can be explained if we consider three facts, stated by all historians. The first is the disintegration of the ancient world, a break-up that took place under the government of the new Emperor. Upstarts, adventurers, coming one knew not whence, became suddenly popular and at every moment threatened that hereditary succession to the throne which by natural or adoptive sonship^[2] seemed to be the most solid foundation of the imperial government. Moreover, the most powerful bond of the unity of the Empire, the old national religion, appeared to weaken and dissolve in contact with the Oriental religions which kept penetrating more and more. An imperiled power easily becomes a tyrannical power. Nothing is commoner in history than the violent and sudden activity of institutions that are about to perish. The Roman Empire was no exception to this general rule. The old society rose up by a sort of instinct of self-preservation against all the powers which it regarded as hostile.

And that was not all. Marcus Aurelius was not only an emperor, he was also a philosopher. Out of all the religious forces around him - the old Roman religion, so stern and strong; the need of purification which penetrated the religions of the East; Christianity, which he detested while secretly feeling the influence of its pure morality - he formed a new and lofty philosophy. This philosophy was made up entirely of elements taken from other sources, though he thought it quite original. He jealously defended it, as being his very own, against all other doctrines. The most formidable of these rivals he considered to be Christianity, to which its apologists were beginning to give the form of a philosophy.

The third fact is this: floods, famine, epidemics, disasters of all kinds had befallen Rome and Italy from the first months of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Four years later the plague ravaged the Empire from end to end. In such circumstances, the first impulse of the Roman people was to look for some persons to blame for these calamities, that they might immolate them to the gods. Such victims were found.

They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, "Away with the Christians to the lions!"^[3]

Marcus Aurelius himself was superstitious. And he was also weak. Not on him could reliance be placed to suppress these uprisings of the populace. He allowed those outbursts to take place and permitted them to reach their utmost consequences.

Footnotes

[1] Cf. Allard, op. cit., I, 329.

[2] The imperial power, which was handed on by heredity under the Caesars and the Flavians, was transmitted by adoption under the Antonines.

[3] Tertullian, To the Nations, I, 9; Apology, 40.

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The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp

Reading N°44 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Providence has, at least, permitted to come down to us the authentic Acts^[1] of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, disciple of St. John the Apostle. This venerable witness of the Apostolic times was the victim of one of those popular disturbances stirred up by the enemies of the Christian Church. It occurred in A.D. 155, under the proconsulate of Statius Quadratus, while Antoninus Pius was emperor. Polycarp had reached the age of eighty-six years. To the stadium, where the proconsul was then seated, the mob led him with indescribable tumult, in which could be heard especially this shout: "Death to the atheists!" But we will let the precious document speak for itself, somewhat abridging the account.

The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp
Mural, St. Polycarp (Izmir, Turkey)
Raymond Péré

The proconsul sought to persuade Polycarp to deny Christ, saying: "Have respect to thy old age," and other similar things, according to their custom, such as, "Swear by the fortune of Caesar; repent and say: Away with the atheists." But Polycarp, gazing with a stern countenance on all the multitude of the wicked heathen then in the stadium, and waving his hand towards them, while with groans he looked up to heaven, said: "Away with the atheists." Then the proconsul urging him, and saying: "Swear, and I will set thee at liberty; reproach Christ." Polycarp declared: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury. How then can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?" When the proconsul yet again pressed him, and said: "Swear by the fortune of Caesar," he answered: "Since thou pretendest not to know who and what I am, hear me declare with boldness, I am a Christian." The proconsul then said to him: "I have wild beasts at hand." But he answered: "Call them, then. It is well for me to leave this world for a better." Then the proconsul said to him: "I will cause thee to be consumed by fire, seeing thou despisest the wild beasts." But Polycarp said: "Thou threatenest me with fire which burneth for an hour, but art ignorant of the fire of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly."

While Polycarp spoke these and many other like things, he was filled with confidence and joy, and his countenance was full of grace, so that not merely did it not fall as if troubled by the things said to him, but, on the contrary, the proconsul was astonished.

The crowds cried out that Polycarp should be burnt alive; and they immediately gathered together wood and fagots out of the shops and baths. The funeral pile was made ready. When they had bound him, placing his hands behind him, he looked up to heaven and said: "Lord, I praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and in all coming ages. Amen."

When he had pronounced this amen, those who were appointed for the purpose kindled the fire. And we then beheld a great miracle. The fire, shaping itself into the form of an arch, like the sail of a ship when filled with the wind, encompassed as by a circle the body of the martyr. Then those wicked men commanded an executioner to go near and pierce him through with a dagger. The centurion then placed the body in the midst of the fire and the fire consumed it.^[2]

Emperor Antonius Pius (138-161)

Nothing changed in the religious policy of the Empire under Antoninus Pius. He succeeded Hadrian in A.D. 138 and held power until 161. The surname given him by the Roman people and preserved by history is based on the veneration he showed for his adoptive father Hadrian, on the veneration he professed for the old memories of Rome, and on the moderation he exercised in the government of the Empire. Antoninus Pius guided the civilization and power of Rome to its apogee. But unfortunately he shared the baleful prejudice of his predecessors, looking upon the Christian religion as an enemy of Roman civilization. He merely prescribed, and not always with success, that order and regularity be adhered to in prosecuting the disciples of Christ.

Footnotes

[1] "These Acta defy the hostile efforts of criticism. They were written less than a year after the event." (Leclerq, Les Martyrs, I, 66.)

[2] Funk, Patres apostolici, I, 314-345. On the authenticity of this account, see ibidem, pp. ci-cv.

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Popes of the Late Second Century: Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherius and Victor

Reading N°43 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Under Trajan (A.D. 98 - 117) and Hadrian (117 - 138), the Christians had mainly to die. Their fearlessness in the presence of torture and death was their great apologetic. Some of them did publish written apologies, but their purpose was to offer a defense against calumny and injustice. From Antoninus Pius (138 - 161) to Septimius Severus (193 - 211) their courage does not fail at the sight of torments; but their apologetics assume a greater scope. Not merely do they refute their enemies' charges, but they labor to win over those enemies; they also endeavor to defend the purity of their faith against heretical alterations and, in the heat of the strife, they start the first theological synthesis of their beliefs.

From the coming of Antoninus Pius to the middle of the reign of Commodus (177 - 192), the legal status of Christians remained what the rescripts of Trajan and Hadrian had made it. The Church was nearly all the time suffering persecution in some place or other, now because of formal accusations in accordance with the imperial rescripts, now in consequence of popular commotion half-heartedly repressed or even encouraged or aroused by the magistrates themselves. From the middle of Commodus' reign to the middle of that of Severus, the Christians enjoyed about fifteen years of peace, a sort of transition between the regime of persecution by rescript, in force throughout the whole second century, and that of persecution by edict, which prevailed at intervals during the third century.^[1] St. Polycarp, St. Felicitas and her sons, St. Justin, St. Cecilia, the martyrs of Lyons, and the martyrs of Scillium were the most illustrious victims of the persecution of this period.

Ss. Hyginus (139-149), Pius I (149-157) and Anicetus (157-168)

We know but little of the pontiffs who governed the Church at this time. Under Diocletian (284 - 305), all the registers of the Roman Church were destroyed - an irreparable loss for the history of the Roman pontiffs. The Liber Pontificalis, written in the sixth century and based on oral traditions and doubtless on certain written documents that had escaped the search of the persecutors, says of St. Hyginus, the successor of St. Telesphorus, that no trace is found of his genealogy.^[2] It is supposed that he was a philosopher and native of Athens. Tradition credits him with "the organization of the clergy."^[3] It has been supposed that this remark concerns the institution of minor orders.^[4] His successor, St. Pius I, is set down as the brother of Hermas, of whom we shall have to speak later. The statement that to him is due the practice of celebrating Easter on Sunday^[5] is certainly a mistake, because Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Sixtus are mentioned by St. Irenaeus as having observed this custom.^[6] About St. Anicetus, successor of St. Pius I, we know almost nothing, except that he was born at Emesa, a city of Syria, and that he made rules about the life of the clergy, whom he forbade to take excessive care of their hair.^[7]

St. Soterus (168-177)

St. Soter, who succeeded him, is supposed to have been a native of Campania. It is said that he showed great zeal in observing liturgical regulations, and forbade women to touch the sacred linens.^[8] Eusebius quotes a valuable letter of Dionysius of Corinth, which shows that this Pope, continuing the generous traditions of his predecessors, was in the habit of giving liberal succor to poor churches. The testimony of the bishop of Corinth is noteworthy as an homage of that time to the mother Church, which, as in the days of St. Ignatius, always merited the glorious title of "the one that presides at the charities." Dionysius wrote as follows to the Romans:

This has been your custom from the beginning, to do good in manifold ways to all Christians, and to send contributions to the many churches in every city, in some places relieving the poverty of the needy, and ministering to the Christians in the mines, by the contribution which you have sent from the beginning, preserving the ancestral custom of the Romans, true Romans as you are. Your blessed bishop Soter has not only carried on this habit, but has even increased it.^[9]

The end of the letter shows with what veneration the documents coming from the Apostolic See were always received at Corinth:

Today we observe the holy day of the Lord, and read out your letter, which we shall continue to read from time to time for our admonition, as we do with that which was formerly sent to us through Clement.^[10]

St. Eleutherius, who was chosen to succeed St. Soter, is said in the Liber Pontificalis to have negotiated with an Anglo-Saxon king, or rather the head of a clan,^[11] about the conversion of Britain. The historical genuineness of this event, however, is questionable.^[12] More authentic is his correspondence with the Churches of Lyons and Vienne on the occasion of the martyrdom of St. Pothinus and his companions.

It was during the pontificate of Eleutherius that Irenaeus began his great work, in which he recognizes the Roman Church as the "chief guardian of the Apostolic tradition." With Pope St. Victor, who succeeded St. Eleutherius and who governed the Church until the close of the second century, papal history is illumined with more numerous documents. In his pontificate the great baptismal controversy took place and the first discussions began in the Trinitarian controversy.

Ss. Eleutherius (177-185) and Victor I (185-199)

Tradition calls both of these popes martyrs. In the early centuries, this title was bestowed, not only on those who gave up their life for the faith, but also on those who faced the risks of a perilous situation.^[13] But it is highly probable that Roman pontiffs were put to death in a time when the sword of persecution threatened everyone who did not practice the religion of the emperors. The silence of written documents is no reason for refusing these venerated pontiffs of the Roman Church the glorious title which the Catholic Church gives them in her liturgy.

Footnotes

[1] Allard, Hist. des pers., I, iii.

[2] Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, 131.

[3] "Clerum composuit." (Duchesne, loc. cit.)

[4] Ibid., note.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Eusebius, H. E., V, xxiv, 14.

[7] "There can be no question here of the tonsue, which even in the sixth century was still one of the episcopal insignia." (Duchesne, op. cit., I, 134.)

[8] Duchesne, op. cit., I, 135.

[9] Eusebius, H. E., IV, xxiii, 10.

[10] Ibidem, no. 11.

[11] Great Britain was then a Roman province, and could not have had a king.

[12] Duchesne, op. cit., I, cii ff.

[13] St. Cyprian gives Pope Cornelius the name of martyr for the single reason that he had "willingly occupied the Apostolic See at Rome at the very time when the tyrant was issuing the most terrible threats." (Letter of St. Cyprian to Antonianus; apud Ep. S. Cornelii, x, 9).

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Pope St. Telesphorus

Reading N°42 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

St. Telesphorus (125-138)

Telesphorus was a Greek, says the Liber Pontificalis, and, before becoming pope, he lived a hermit's life. Must we understand by this that he followed the eremitical manner of living, and that the people and clergy of Rome went to the desert to look for him? Or are we to suppose that he simply belonged to a group of priests living an ascetical life more perfect than that of the rest of the clergy? This much at least is certain, that the pope who took up the government of the Church about A.D. 125 was prepared, by his previous life, to become the defender of morality among the Christians.

The Liber Pontificalis credits him with the institution of the Lenten fast.^[1] By these words we must understand the regulation of the Lenten penance, for we know, from St. Irenaeus' explicit testimony, that the Lenten observances go back earlier than this period.^[2] Moreover, even after St. Telesphorus, there was great diversity in the length of the fast as in the amount of mortifications practiced in imitation of the Savior's fast, and uniformity in these observances did not obtain universally until the beginning of the fourth century by the fifth canon of the Council of Nicaea.

The Liber Pontificalis also attributes to St. Telesphorus the institution of the Christmas midnight Mass and the introduction of the Gloria in excelsis into that Mass. Pliny's celebrated letter to Trajan^[3] informs us that the Christians used to meet together before daybreak to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice. The clergy of the East have kept this practice of saying Mass at early dawn. In the West, once peace came to the Church, the hour of terce^[4] was the regular time for the Holy Sacrifice. The Liber Pontificalis alludes to this practice and supposes that it existed at Rome in the time of St. Telesphorus. St. Irenaeus says that this Pope ended his life by a "glorious martyrdom,"^[5] but we have no details regarding his last moments. The Western Church honors him on January 5, the Eastern on February 22.

Footnotes

[1] Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, 129.

[2] Eusebius, H. E., V, xxiv, II. On the beginnings of the Lenten fast, cf. Duchesne, op. cit., p. 129.
[3] Pliny, Letters, X, 96.

[4] By the ancients, the time between 6 o'clock in the morning and 9 o'clock was called the hour of prime; from 9 o'clock to noon, the hour of terce; from noon to 3 o'clock, the hour of sext; from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock, the hour of none.

[5] Eusebius, H. E., V, vi, 4.

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Gnosticism

Reading N°41 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

A less ephemeral success than that enjoyed by the Ebionites and the Elcesaites crowned the attempts of those who sought to revive the Jewish spirit by its union with the Hellenic. This was the origin of Gnosticism, which is the evolution of Jewish thought, stimulated by Greek philosophic speculation.^[1] This applies especially to the first phase of the Gnostic heresy.

St. Irenaeus (AD 139-202) was the first Christian author to use the term
Gnostic in reference to the proponents of the new heresy.

If we consider the whole history of Gnosticism, we shall see that it is an effort of Greek thought to absorb Judaism and Christianity, as well as an effort of Jewish thought to assimilate Christian and Greek thought without itself being transformed. May we not also discover therein an effort of the Christian spirit - an effort legitimate in principle, but less so in its actual development - to give philosophic expression to the doctrines and practices of Christianity, or, if you wish, to transpose into the language of ancient philosophy the doctrinal and moral teaching of the sacred Books? Tertullian remarks that, in the strangeness of its formulas and symbols, Gnosticism did in reality broach the greatest problems that stir the human mind, namely: What are the possible relations between God and the world? How can the Pure Spirit, the infinite Being, know, produce, and govern the material and the finite? What is the origin of evil, and how, once it has been committed, can it be repaired?^[2]

The history of the Gnostic movement includes two distinct phases. During the second phase especially, toward the close of the second century and beyond, we meet that multiplication of systems, with strange names, mysterious and sometimes shameful ceremonies, and obscure theories, in which theurgy, so-called "illuminatism," and magic are more in evidence than philosophy. The first phase, appearing in Hadrian's time and continuing to the reign of Antoninus Pius, is, on the contrary, marked by the intellectual worth and relatively high moral attitude of the leaders of the movement.

The idea inspiring Gnosticism possesses a certain majesty. Jewish monotheism is plainly its starting point. There is primarily a desire to conceive a very pure and lofty idea of the Divinity. To make this idea as pure as possible, it is stripped of every notion applicable to human nature, until it is impossible to speak of it except by calling it the Great Silence (Sige). To make this idea as lofty as possible, they conceive God as an infinitely remote Being, infinitely separated from 'man and nature, and they call Him "Chaos" (Bythos). An eternal silence in the depths of an infinite chaos: this, they say, is the only concept worthy of the Divinity.

But matter is here, palpable and unrefined; evil is here, visible and distressing; the heart of man is here, aspiring to purification, to liberation from matter, to union with God. How is this appalling dualism to be solved? It is on this question that the schools divide.

In the time of Trajan, a certain Saturnilus of Antioch, spoken of by Hegesippus,^[3] taught that, between the supreme God, whom no one can know or name, and the visible world, there were intermediate spirits, created by God. After a dazzling image, fleet as lightning, which came to them from God, they created, or rather they tried to create, man. They succeeded in producing only an incomplete, crawling creature. This was primitive man. But God, recognizing therein some image of Himself, took pity on it; He sent it a spark of life which made this creature a man, and which is destined some day to return to the divine principle.

This is merely a rough outline of the great systems that Basilides, Carpocrates, and Valentinus elaborated in Hadrian's reign.

Basilides was born in Syria. He taught at Alexandria^[4] and he gave out his doctrine to be a traditional teaching going back to the Apostles, professing to derive his ideas from St. Peter through the intermediary of a certain Glaucias, and also appealing to the authority of St. Matthew.^[5] His theory was not much more than an amplification and more systematic statement of Saturnilus' doctrine: the idea of an inaccessible divinity, of an evil world, of intermediate spirits whom God employed to act upon the world, forms the basis of his religious philosophy. He adds the notion of a division of the spirits into good and bad angels, and he gives an important place to magical operations.^[6]

Carpocrates of Alexandria, a contemporary of Basilides, is openly a Platonist. According to him, the first principle of all things is the Monad, in which eventually every spirit will be absorbed in perfect bliss. All souls, before their earthly existence, have contemplated the eternal truths; but some keep a more vivid memory of them than do others. Great men are those in whom these memories are the more perfect. They possess the Knowledge (Gnosis), which is the supreme good. The line of great men includes Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and, most eminent of all, Jesus, in whom the eternal ideas, which he had perceived in the bosom of the Father, were so present and living. Virtue, says Carpocrates, is an ascent toward the Monad, or toward the Father, by a progressive liberation from human conventions and laws. It is evident to what excess such a doctrine might lead. Carpocrates' disciples made immorality a means of salvation.^[7]

Valentinus of Rome was a mighty spirit. He was metaphysician, psychologist, and poet. Of God, man, nature, the various forces that move beings and their deepest antinomies, he purposed giving a complete explanation capable of satisfying the philosopher by its closely reasoned logic and of being grasped by the populace by its lifelike figures.^[8] For him, Bythos and Sige (Chaos and Silence) are not two names of the Primal Being, but the divine Couple, the supreme Syzygie from whom everything emanates. Like his predecessors, Valentinus did not hide the fundamental antinomy between spirit and matter, God and the visible world. His whole effort consisted in showing how this infinite gap is filled with an infinite number of intermediary beings unequally perfect, how this radical opposition is corrected by a gradual yielding of the ascending and descending powers, and by the intervention of beings of pacification and harmony, placed in the world by the supreme couple who are at the summit of all things.

From Chaos and Silence are born Spirit and Truth. This is the primal Tetrad or Quaternion: Bythos, Sige, Nous, and Aletheia. Spirit, united to Truth, gave birth to the Word (Logos) and to Life (Zoe); and these communicated existence to man and to the Church. The blessed Ogdoad is thus constituted.

According to the distance to which beings go from the Primal Principle, they lose, by imperceptible diminution, something of the divine; yet they remain fecund and by generating form a series of superior beings or Aeons, which together constitute Fulness, or Pleroma. In this Pleroma, every Aeon aspires to complete comprehension of the Chaos; and this aspiration constitutes its life and joy.

It also produced the evil of the world. For the lower Aeons, those who descended as far as the limits of the Pleroma, have been jealous of the perfect Spirit, or Nous. In vain have the spirits of the Confines tried to restore harmony in the Pleroma; a lower Wisdom, a degraded Reason, was born in the midst of these conflicts. It is Achamoth. Being exiled from the Pleroma, Achamoth joined with Chaos; from these two was born the Demiurge, or Creator of the material world, and the whole of the material world has constituted the Kenoma (Void, Nothing). The decadence did not halt, but continued even to the supreme Evil, to Satan, Belzebuth, the Master of the lower world.

Man finds himself between these two worlds. The Demiurge made him material, but Wisdom infused a spirit into him. On the confines of the Kenoma, but aspiring to the Pleroma, man is divided between two worlds. Who will save him? A higher being, Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Spirit gradually purifies and who eventually will lead the elite of mankind with him into the Pleroma.

In consequence of these troubles, there was produced a division in mankind. It thenceforth includes the Materials (Hylists) , the Animals (Psychists), and the Spirituals (Pneumatists). These last no longer have need of good works or virtues; they have Knowledge (Gnosis). Whoever knows the mysteries, possesses salvation; whoever knows the enigma of the world, is freed from all rule; whoever has knowledge, no longer needs faith or law.^[9]

Footnotes

[1] Cf. Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, I, 113.

[2] Tertullian, De praescr., VII; cf. Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta a Theodoto, 78.

[3] Eusebius, H. E., IV, xxii, 5.

[4] Basilides taught about the years 133-155. Cf. Harnack, Chronologie, p. 290.

[5] Or St. Matthias, according to the variant readings of the manuscripts.

[6] Such is the description given by St. Irenaeus (Haereses, I, xxiv, 3 ff.). The author of the Philosophumena (VII, xiv) gives a different interpretation; but all the evidence leads us to suppose that we have to do with an evolution of the doctrine of Basilides, such as it was in the third century. (See Dufourcq, Saint Irénée, pp. 62-64.)

[7] St. Irenaeus, Haereses, I, xxv; Dufourcq, op. cit., pp. 64-66.

[8] The spread of Valentinus' ideas at Rome began about AD 135. Cf. Harnack, Chronologie, 291.

[9] St. Irenaeus, Haereses, I, xi; Dufourcq, Saint Irénée, pp. 48-53.

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Aquila's Bible, the Ebionites and the Elcesaites

Reading N°40 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

The Jewish nation had just undergone a cruel chastisement under Emperor Hadrian, but the Jewish Synagogue was still free. Its faith was not proscribed in the Roman Empire, its places of prayer were left standing, its meetings were legal.^[1]

Reproduction of a 6th century map of Aelia Capitolina

Among the pagans who, under Hadrian, were engaged in the construction of Aelia Capitolina, was - so it was said - a Greek from the province of Pontus, a relative of the Emperor. His name was Aquila. The extent of his knowledge and the energy of his character persuaded the Emperor to appoint him to superintend the immense building project. Impressed at sight of the virtues and miracles that were in evidence among the Christians, he asked for and received Baptism.^[2] But, as his heart was not purified by humility, knowledge remained his supreme god. He was reproved on account of his passion for astrology. This angered him. He was excommunicated. No longer wishing to be a Christian, ashamed to become a pagan again, he became a Jew. He imagined a Judaism that would break all the bonds connecting the religion of Moses with the religion of Christ, and that would set up the Old Law in opposition to the New. For this reason, says St. Epiphanius, he wrote a new Greek version of the Bible, "suppressing such parts as bore testimony in favor of Christ."^[3] A learned rabbi, Akiba (Akiva), helped him in the undertaking.^[4]

Such was the origin of the famous Greek Bible of Aquila, an important work, ingenious, carefully done, showing a deep understanding of the Hebrew language, but slavishly literal and obviously colored in the Messianic passages, as was remarked by St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, Origen, and St. Jerome.^[5] The Jews favored it as against the Septuagint, and made use of it in spreading their doctrines in the Greek world. They employed it also to corrupt Christianity and to nourish, in the Church, that Judaizing spirit which, in the teachings of the Ebionites and the Elcesaites, tended to base the religion of Christ on a very gross interpretation of the Old Testament.

The Ebionites, whose origin we observed at the very beginning of Christianity, had, by fusion with the sect of the Essenes, taken on a new development about the year AD 100. We find their doctrine set forth in a series of sermons and adventure stories published under the name of St. Clement of Rome.^[6] According to Essenean Ebionitism, God has a form and members, because every being is finite and limited. Created beings are divided into good and bad. So, too, there are good and bad prophets. The latter are descended from Eve, the female, evil element of the world. From Adam are descended the good prophets, the greatest of whom is Jesus. He is the son of God, but he is not God, for God is the Unbegotten, the Innascible, and Jesus is the begotten and the son.^[7]

The Elcesaites, whose ideas and practices we learn from Origen, St. Epiphanius, and the Philosophumena, took their doctrine from the Book of Elchasai, which was held to be a revelation made in the third year of Trajan (AD 100) by a gigantic angel, called the Son of God, having at his side a wife of like size, the Holy Spirit. A curious baptism, with magical formulas and odd incantations, was the form of initiation into this sect. All the ritualistic laws of the Jews were kept. Christ, born of Mary, as other human beings are born, was merely a reincarnation, for he had already passed through several bodies and had borne several names. The Philosophumena adds that the Elcesaites had also certain secret beliefs and practices.

These strange sects would count for little in the religious movement of mankind. Before long, they disappeared. It is mostly their oddness that draws attention to them. Yet they have a symbolic significance. The Ebionite, like the Elcesaite, is the proud Jew, inconsolable for the loss of his nationality and for the failure of his gross Messianism, trying to obtain a compensation in a majestic but vain fancy in which he seeks to draw the nations after him.^[8]

Footnotes

[1] Champagny, Les Antonins, II, 75. There are preserved some Judeo-Roman tombs of this period, with the palm, the candlestick, the titles of "father" and "mother of the synagogue."

[2] St. Epiphanius, De mensuris et ponderibus, chap. 14.

[3] Ibid.

[4] St. Jerome, In Isaiam, 49.

[5] Cf. Batiffol, art. "Aquila," in the Dict. de la Bible. Aquila's translation is incorporated in Origen's Hexapla.

[6] The Recognitiones is a popular romance. The pseudo-Clementine writings will be found in the first two volumes of Migne's Patrologia Graeca.

[7] Tixeront, History of Dogmas, I, 165 ff.

[8] Ibidem, p. 168 ff.

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The Emperor Hadrian

Reading N°39 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by
 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138)

Hadrian, grandnephew and adopted son of Trajan, succeeded the latter in AD 117. He ruled the destinies of the Empire for twenty-one years. Hadrian was a cautious politician, more discreet than his predecessor, foregoing any ambition for conquests in Asia, confining himself to the task of being an attentive and diligent administrator, being his own minister of finance, of justice, of war, of the interior, and filling each of these offices with undeniable superiority. But he was also an artist, a traveler fond of every novelty, not fearful of offending the gods of his country by having himself initiated into all the mysteries of the Oriental religions. Viewing his character from these two angles, we would expect that Hadrian would be less a persecutor of Christianity than was Trajan. Would not the statesman resolutely sacrificing every ambitious undertaking for the sake of the Empire's tranquility, the philosopher skeptical of every religious creed, let the Christian religion develop freely at Rome and in the provinces? An important rescript, issued by Hadrian about 124,^[1] seemed to justify these anticipations. Licinius Granianus, a proconsul of Asia, complained that popular rage often induced magistrates to pass death sentences upon men whose only crime was the name they bore and the religious sect to which they belonged. If this did not imply a request for the revision of Trajan's rescript, it was at least a complaint about abuses in its application. The reply of the imperial philosopher was hesitant. He forbade "clamorous entreaties and outcries," with which the mobs hostile to the Christians used to besiege the magistrates. But he made no decision as to whether the name of Christian was punishable, or whether, to incur the rigor of the courts, a person must be guilty of some specific crime. He said:

If anyone accuses and proves that the aforesaid men do anything contrary to the laws, you will also determine their punishments in accordance with their offences.^[2]

In short, in words less firm than those of Trajan, the Emperor Hadrian took into account only the matter of external order. His decisions seemed more liberal than those of his predecessor; but they were no less fatal for the Christians. In fact, of the jurisprudence which, since Nero, considered the mere name of Christian as an offence against the national institutions, he abolished nothing; he found no fault with the popular frenzy which branded the disciples of Christ with the charge of atheism and immorality; he withdrew nothing of Trajan's regulation which directed magistrates to condemn every Christian who would refuse to sacrifice to the gods of the Empire. The popular charges became less clamorous, but they grew more numerous; though the magistrates appeared somewhat more exacting regarding the genuineness of the accusations, they continued pitilessly to condemn the accused who were denounced as Christians and proven to be so.

Thus Hadrian's reign was no less disastrous for the Christians than that of Trajan. The Acts of St. Faustinus and companions, of SS. Alexander, Hermes, and Quirinus, of St. Getulius, of SS. Sophia, Pistis, Elpis, and Agapius, of SS. Sabina and Seraphia, of SS. Herperus and Zoe (slaves), of St. Mary (a slave), and of St. Symphorosa and her sons all bear witness to the blood that was shed under the rule of this Emperor. To recover the historic truth at the basis of the acts of these martyrs, it is often necessary to sift the many legends with which popular imagination embellished them. Archaeological monuments of unquestionable authenticity, however, leave no room to question their substantial truthfulness and the genuineness of certain characteristic details.^[3]

Mary, a slave in the service of a decurion, was accused of being a Christian. The excited mob called for her death, crying out: "Let a terrible fire consume her alive." The judge said to her: "Since you are a slave, why do you not profess the religion of your master?" As remarked by the historian of the persecutions, this was a truly Roman question. Such is the idea which the Romans had of a slave's conscience. It was Seneca who wrote: "A slave never has the right to say: No."^[4]

Symphorosa was the widow of the martyr Getulius, who had been put to death at the beginning of Hadrian's reign for having evangelized the Sabine country. To her the Emperor said: "Sacrifice to the all-powerful gods, or I will sacrifice you along with your children." "Whence comes this happiness to me," she replied, "that I am worthy of being offered with my sons as a victim to God?" "Choose, either to sacrifice to our gods, or to die." In answer to this, she said: "I desire only to rest with my husband Getulius, whom you slew for the name of Christ." Hadrian, after having her variously tortured, ordered that she be thrown into the Anio, with a stone fastened to her neck. On the next day, the Emperor had her seven children put to death in various ways.^[5]

In one respect, Hadrian seems to have rendered the condition of the Christians better. He tracked them down and had them sentenced to death; but he let them talk. In his reign, the pleas on behalf of the Christian religion increased in number. These pleas, called apologies, were addressed sometimes to the emperor, sometimes to the senate, or to public opinion. Eusebius preserves this fragment from an apology presented to Emperor Hadrian by Quadratus, a disciple of the Apostles in Asia Minor:

The works of our Savior were always present, for they were true, those who were cured, those who rose from the dead, who not merely appeared as cured and risen, but were constantly present, not only while the Savior was living, but even for some time after He had gone, so that some of them survived even till our own time.^[6]

A few years later, shortly after AD 135, there appeared another apology, more celebrated among the Fathers, which seems to have served as a basis for the apologetic work of St. Justin. It is the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus, by Aristo of Pella. The author personifies in a Jew (Jason) the whole list of objections which the pagans made against the Christian religion; he appears to have planned a complete apologetic. Eusebius, Origen, Celsus, and St. Jerome speak of this important work, of which, unfortunately, neither the original Greek text nor any translation has come down to us.^[7]

Bar-Cocheba (Kokhba) silver Shekel, representing the porch of
the Temple and his "star"; reverse: a vase containing the four
species of Sukkot, with the text: "to the freedom of Jerusalem".

The device of placing in the mouth of a Jew all the calumnies passed about by the people against Christianity is comprehensible at that period. The Christians remembered that the fiercest of the persecutions against their faith had been let loose through the denunciations of the Jews. Moreover, the Jews had just made themselves hateful to the Empire; to point to them as the sworn enemies of the Christian name might be good tactics. In AD 132, a deed of desperate fanaticism stirred up Judea. A certain Bar-Coziba ("Son of Deceit"), who changed his inglorious name to Bar-Cocheba ("Son of the Star"), claimed to be the star foretold by Balaam, i. e., the Messias. The eighty-five jubilees of Elias, according to the calculations of the rabbis, were near their close. The most famous of these rabbis, the scholarly Akiba, since then venerated by the Jews as a second Moses, gave royal anointing to Bar-Cocheba and set him upon a horse, the while he himself held the stirrup. The whole Jewish race, save those who acknowledged Jesus as the Messias, bounded with hope. So grave did the danger to the Empire appear, that Hadrian summoned Julius Severus, the ablest of his generals, from the interior of Britain. The revolt was put down without pity. Palestine was subdued and devastated with unfeeling and inexorable rigor. Those who escaped death on the field of battle were sold in the slave markets of Terebinth and Gaza. A man, so it was said, was sold at the price of a horse. Those who were not bought were taken to Egypt as slaves.^[8] What was left of Jerusalem was destroyed; the Temple site was plowed up and sowed with salt, as a sign of malediction and sterility. In the place of the hoy city there arose Hadrian's completely pagan city, Aelia Capitolina; on the ground but recently occupied by the Temple was placed a statue of the Emperor beside one of Jupiter.^[9]

Footnotes

[1] Modern criticism is unanimous in recognizing the authenticity of this rescript, quoted in full by St. Justin at the end of his First Apology. (See Waddington, Fastes des provinces asiatiques, pp. 197 ff.; Allard, Hist. des pers., I, 242; Renan, L'Eglise chrétienne, p. 32, note.)

[2] St. Justin, First Apology, 68.

[3] For a critical consideration of these Acta, see Allard, op. cit., I, 202-234, 266-280.

[4] "Servus non habet negandi potestatem." Seneca, De beneficiis, III, 19. On the substantial authenticity of the Acts of St. Mary, see Le Blant, Les Actes des martyrs, p. 184.

[5] Ruinart, Acta sincera, pp. 18-20; Leclercq, Les Martyrs, I, 207-209.

[6] Eusebius, H. E. IV, iii, 2; Funk, Patres apostolici, p. 371. Funk (loc. cit.) fixes upon AD 125 or 129 as the date of the writing of this Apology. Evidently the words "until our day" do not refer to the date of the Apology, but to the period of the author's childhood, i.e., the years 80-100. (Cf. Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, I, 149.)

[7] On Aristo, see Batiffol, Anciennes littératures chrétiennes, la littérature grecque, pp. 89 f.; Bardenhewer, Patrology, pp. 48 f.

[8] St. Jerome, In Zachariam, II; Origen, Against Celsus, VII.

[9] Champagny, Les Antonins, II, 71-74.

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Popes of Persecution: Evaristus, Alexander I and Sixtus I

Reading N°38 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

St. Evaristus (99-105)

At the time of the Persecution under Trajan, the See of Rome was occupied by St. Alexander, the second successor of St. Clement. His first successor was St. Evaristus. We have no contemporary document concerning these two popes. The Liber Pontificalis, composed in the sixth century,^[1] says that St. Evaristus was born of a Jewish father at Bethlehem. It is said this Pope ordained fifteen bishops, seventeen priests, and two deacons, and, for purposes of administration, divided the city of Rome into titles or parishes. These expressions must not make us suppose that St. Clement's successor constructed or consecrated in Rome parish churches properly so called. The reference is probably to private houses, such as the house of the Senator Pudens, which St. Peter is said to have made the meeting-place of the first Christians, or the houses of some other Christians whose names are recorded in Scripture or tradition: Prisca, Aquila, Lucina, Eudoxia, Pammachius, Fasciola.^[2] By the fact that a house or a room was consecrated to liturgical worship, it was marked with a sign or title (titulus), similar to the signs or titles by which treasury officials marked property that was reserved to the service of the emperor. Such is the most likely explanation of this term, which passed into the language of the Church and is today reserved for churches having cardinals as titulars.^[3]

Façade of the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana,
which stands on the site of the house of Senator Pudens

According to the Liber Pontificalis, we also owe to Pope Evaristus the law that a bishop must be assisted in his preaching by seven deacons, whose duty it is to attest the authentic statement of his words against possible charges of heretics.^[4] It is supposed that the preaching here referred to was the recitation of the Preface and Canon. The Prefaces at that time varied with each Mass; into them were sometimes introduced, besides the recalling of the feast, exhortations suited to the circumstances.^[5] Evaristus is supposed to have occupied the See of St. Peter for eight years and to have died a martyr; but neither tradition nor history gives us any details of his death.^[6]

St. Alexander I (105-115)

His successor, Alexander, is said to have governed the Church for ten years, from 105 to 115. The Liber Pontificalis credits him with the insertion into the liturgy^[7] of the words "qui pridie quam pateretur" which precede the words commemorating the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and originating the practice of blessing water, in which salt has been mixed, for use in sprinkling houses.^[8] The official note giving him the title of martyr seems to depend upon a Passio Alexandri which is not contemporary with the events and does not merit more than relative confidence. According to this document, Alexander was beheaded and buried in a catacomb on the Via Salaria.^[9] This Pope may have witnessed the triumphal festivities given at Rome for twenty-three days in 106 or 107, to celebrate Trajan's victory over the Dacians. Pliny relates that 10,000 wild animals were killed in those festivities, and that 10,000 men fought in honor of him who was called "the most merciful emperor."^[10] Probably more than one Christian met his death on that occasion.

In the course of the following years, the head of the Church of Rome might have seen some great works carried out for the adornment of the Eternal City: the enlargement of the baths of Titus; a gigantic aqueduct to bring a new water supply (Aquae trajanae) to Rome; the 260,000 seats of the Circus increased by 5,000; and upon a new forum, ornamented with a triumphal arch and a splendid colonnade, the famous column of Trajan (140 feet high), surmounted by a statue of the Emperor in military uniform with a javelin in his hand. It did not enter Trajan's mind that he was working for Christian Rome, and that one day his statue would be replaced by that of St. Peter, the lowly Galilean fisherman, a greater conqueror than any emperor, since he conquered not bodies, but souls.

Trajan's Column (foreground)

St. Sixtus I (115-124)

The head of the Church chosen to succeed St. Alexander was a Roman called Sixtus. Doubtless, the people and the clergy of the city concurred in his election. If we take Eusebius' words literally, the first four popes after St. Peter were nominated by their predecessor, namely, Linus by St. Peter, Cletus by Linus, Clement by Cletus, and Evaristus by Clement.^[11] If this method of appointment really was in use, it seems not to have been long continued. A number of reliable documents establishes the fact that, in the third century, the election of the bishop of Rome, though his primacy was universally recognized, was subject to the same regulations as that of other bishops; the canons of the Council of Arles (in 314) and of the Council of Antioch (in 341) inform us that they are ratifying an ancient custom when they decree that "a bishop may not be appointed otherwise than by a synod, according to the decision of those bishops who, after the death of his predecessor, have the right of choosing a worthy successor."^[12] It is also certain that the priests and the people took part in these "synods."^[13]

The election of Sixtus I must have occurred at the end of Trajan's reign, because the Liber Pontificalis merely says that he governed the Church in the time of Emperor Hadrian.^[14]

Footnotes

[1] The first three centuries are the poorest in documents on the popes. The few lines which the Liber Pontificalis devotes to each of them are not free from criticism. The last persecution of Diocletian systematically destroyed the Christian books, the registers, and the acts of the martyrs; this loss was irreparable. Only fragments of these documents remain. Under such conditions, the field of conjectures and probabilities is necessarily more extensive than that of fully demonstrated truth. Yet these conjectures we gather with care, out of regard for whatever portion of truth they may contain, and if we set them down as such, we shall know that we are not false to historic truth.

[2] Martigny, art. "Titre," in the Dict. des antiq. chrét.

[3] This is the likely sense of the obscure phrase, "propet stylum veritatis" (Liber Pont. I, 126).

[4] Duchesne, Lib. Pont., I, 126.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jaffé, Regesta pontificum, I, 4 f.

[7] "In praedicatione sacerdotum." (Lib. Pont., I, 127.)

[8] Ibid. On this ceremony, see the Sacramentarium Gelasianum, bk. 3, chaps. 75 ff., in Muratori, Liturgia romana vetus.

[9] See Acta sanctorum, May, I, 371 ff. On the value of this document, see Tillemont, Mémoires, II, 590, and Duchesne, op. cit., I, xci. "It is probable," says Chamard, "that the editor of the Liber Pontificalis confused Pope Alexander with a famous martyr of that name, who was buried on the Via Nomentana. [...] However, it is no less probable that he had another document from which he obtained the more certain notion of the pope's martyrdom." (Chamard, Les Origines de l'Eglise romaine, chap. 7.) It has been noted that most of the popes of the first three centuries are called martyrs. Although this qualification cannot be explained by precise details, it is true in a rather broad sense. (See St. Cyprian, Epistola ad Cornelium; apud Epistolas S. Cornelii, 7; cf. Tillemont, Mémoires, IV, 364; De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, II, pref.; Chamard, loc. cit.)

[10] Pliny, Letters, VIII, 4; Dio Cassius, LXVIII, 15.

[11] Eusebius, H. E., III, xiii, xxxiv.

[12] Council of Antioch, canon 23. Hefele, History of the Councils of the Church, II, 73.

[13] Cf. Canones Hippolyti, canons 7-28, apud Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 525.

[14] Lib. Pont., I, 128.

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