On Vespasian’s Reign, from Hugh of Fleury
After that turbulent crowd of tyrants had been scattered, Vespasian obtained the empire and reigned for nine years, eleven months, and twenty-two days.
He had been sent by the emperor to besiege Jerusalem because that country had rebelled against the Romans. After many Jewish towns had already been captured, he heard of the death of Nero and Nero’s successors. At the exhortation of the soldiers in his army, he was made emperor.
Leaving his son Titus to complete the siege, Vespasian went to Rome. Thus he would be absent neither from the Romans nor from the Jews, among whom his son Titus represented him.
Vespasian ruled as the seventh emperor, as Eusebius writes in the Chronicle, in the year of the Lord 71. It was the 4,034th year from the creation of the world, but according to another, more common opinion, the 5,270th.
As Suetonius says, when Vespasian was once among Nero’s companions, he repeatedly departed while Nero sang or fell asleep while present. He incurred the gravest offense and, being forbidden not only Nero’s company but even his public greeting, withdrew to his own country.
The province of Judea was then offered to him with an army because it had thrown off the empire’s yoke of subjection.
After assuming the censorship, lest he omit any occasion for discipline, he sharply rebuked with a most severe expression and voice a young man fragrant with perfume who thanked him for obtaining a prefecture. He revoked the man’s letters of appointment.
After attaining the empire, he purified the highest orders, which had been depleted by various killings and corrupted by the negligence of former rulers. He replenished them after reviewing the senate and equestrian order, removing the most unworthy and enrolling the most honorable.
Civil and merciful until the end of his life, he never concealed the humbleness of his birth and frequently even displayed it. He sought no ornaments. He bore the freedom of his friends and the obstinacy of philosophers with the greatest mildness.
He was so little mindful of offenses and injuries, and so little their avenger, that he was far from being driven by suspicion or fear to anyone’s ruin. When friends warned him to beware of someone commonly believed to possess an imperial horoscope, he made that very man consul and promised that the man would remember the favor once it had been conferred. He also married the daughter of his enemy Vitellius most splendidly, gave her a dowry, and furnished her household.
The only trait rightly blamed in him is greed for money. Vespasian was not content to restore taxes omitted under Galba. He added new and burdensome ones, increased the tribute of provinces, and doubled it for some.
He also openly practiced dealings that would have been shameful even for a private person. He did not hesitate to sell honors to candidates, and acquittals to defendants, innocent as well as guilty.
He is believed deliberately to have promoted the most rapacious procurators to greater offices so that, after they had become wealthier, he might soon condemn them. People commonly said that he used them as sponges, because he would wet them when dry and squeeze them when wet.
Some report that he was exceedingly greedy by nature. Others, on the contrary, suppose that the greatest want of the treasury and fisc compelled him to spoils and plunder. This seems more probable because he used even things badly obtained in the best way.
He was most liberal toward every class of people. He made up the senatorial property qualification and maintained impoverished former consuls with five hundred thousand sesterces. He restored to a better condition very many cities throughout the world that had been afflicted by earthquake or fire.
He especially fostered intellects and arts. He was the first to establish from the fisc annual salaries of one hundred thousand sesterces for Latin and Greek rhetoricians. He rewarded eminent poets and artists with great payments.
§ I: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Extermination and Dispersion of the Jews
This was accomplished by Vespasian’s son Titus in the second year of his reign. It had been foretold by the prophet Daniel 535 years before Jerusalem’s overthrow, as is apparent in Daniel 9, in the seventy weeks of years. At the end of that vision it says: “A people with a leader who is to come”—namely Titus—“will destroy the city and the sanctuary, and its end shall be devastation.”
Daniel first gave the cause of this destruction, saying: “Christ will be killed by the Jews after sixty-two and seven weeks,” from among the seventy weeks he had mentioned. According to the exposition of all the doctors, these were weeks of years, not days.
Our Lord and Savior also foretold this forty years before the devastation itself. Seeing the city from the Mount of Olives on Palm Sunday, he wept over it, saying among other things: “The days will come upon you, and your enemies will surround you with a rampart, hem you in on every side, cast you to the ground, and not leave in you one stone upon another.”
Assigning the cause of so great a calamity, he added, “Because you did not know the time of your visitation,” Luke 19—that is, because Jerusalem did not receive Christ as its Savior and believe in him.
As Jerome says in Distinction 93, Diaconi, God’s moderation and loving-kindness seek only our return and desire to save us by his long goodness while he waits. But, the same writer says, if we are not converted, if we are hard, and if we persevere in evils to the end, God does not have mercy on those who sin continually.
Therefore, after the Jews had been awaited for forty years following the Passion and remained in the obstinacy of their unbelief—indeed, everywhere persecuting Christ’s worshipers—they were finally exterminated from the land.
Josephus fully narrates the order of the siege, its calamities, killings, and overthrow in his book The Jewish War. In that same work he relates that many prodigies occurred not long before the city’s overthrow.
A brilliant star resembling a sword was seen hanging over the entire city. This comet appeared to burn with destructive flames throughout the whole year.
At the feast of Unleavened Bread, at the ninth hour of the night, so great a radiance surrounded the altar and temple that everyone thought the clearest day had come. At the same festival, a heifer led to sacrifice gave birth to a lamb.
Some days later, after sunset, chariots and four-horse teams were seen to be carried through the air over the whole region. Cohorts of armed men appeared mingled with the clouds and surrounding the cities with unexpected battle lines.
On another feast, called Pentecost, the priests entered the Temple at night to complete the mysteries in the customary manner. They perceived certain movements and noises and suddenly heard voices saying, “Let us depart from these dwelling places.”
Four years before the war, at the Feast of Tabernacles, a certain man named Jesus, son of Ananias, suddenly began to cry: “A voice from the East! A voice from the West! A voice from the four winds! A voice against Jerusalem and the Temple! A voice against bridegrooms and brides! A voice against the whole people!”
This man was seized, beaten, and scourged. Unable to say anything else, the more he was struck, the more strongly he cried the same words.
He was brought before the judge, afflicted with dire torments, and torn until his bones were exposed. He poured forth neither prayers nor tears, but at almost every blow uttered the same things with a certain howl, adding, “Woe, woe, woe to Jerusalem!” Thus Josephus.
When Vespasian and Titus were about to come with the Roman army to subdue rebellious Judea, Christians who were in Jerusalem were warned by an angel to depart from there and cross the Jordan to dwell in Agrippa’s cities.
Vespasian arrived with his army in the regions of Judea. A very great multitude of Jews from every nation under heaven, among whom they had been scattered through diverse former captivities, came to the chief feast of Unleavened Bread according to the command of their Law. Then the city of Jerusalem was besieged.
As Egisippus says in Book 5, in the first year of the empire conferred upon Vespasian, Judea was torn by harsh wars and domestic seditions. The city of Jerusalem labored within itself under a threefold battle. No rest and no truces were granted. They fought at every moment. Innumerable people were slaughtered. Blood flowed and filled everything, running like a river through the Temple’s inner recesses.
Thus innumerable people fell throughout the city from bloodshed, fire, ruin, and famine. No place was free of danger. There was no means of escape. Everywhere there was fear, the shouting of those dying, and the despair of those living, so that the wretched called those who remained miserable and those who had departed blessed.
“How deceived you are, city, by your peoples! You are conquered by your own arms, though you were accustomed to conquer without arms and strike the enemy without battle when angels fought for you and the waves of the sea, the chasms of the earth, and the crashes of heaven served as soldiers for you.
“Behold, you have what you sought. Today recognize Barabbas living for you and Jesus dead. Sedition reigns in you and peace is buried, so that you perish more cruelly by your own people than if you perished by strangers.”
In the Temple itself, therefore, in place of sweet-smelling ointments, fragrant incense, and various flowers, there was the grievous stench of unburied corpses. Rain dissolved them, flame burned them, and the sun heated them.
No one had leisure to bury the bodies of those killed either in the Temple or around the streets, because war among themselves occupied them and concern for striking rather than burying held them all. Nothing had perished more than mercy amid such calamities, though mercy alone is accustomed to alleviate miseries and console hardships.
Certain robbers, however, who raged against others but found the stench of the slain grievous, cast the remains of the dead from the wall into deep ravines.
And so Titus, Vespasian’s son, who had received the war from his father, looked upon the steep chasms filled with corpses and gore floating among the torn entrails. He groaned deeply, lifted his hand to heaven, and testified that this was by no means to be ascribed to him. He had wished to grant pardon if surrender took place, had waited for them to seek peace, and was prepared to preserve them unharmed if they too had laid down the war.
[Running head: Seventh Title.]
Manneus, son of Lazarus, asserted that 115,000 bodies had been carried out through the single gate entrusted to him, with 880 funerals added to these. This was a count only of those buried at public expense, apart from those whom their own families buried. Yet what burial was there except that the corpses were cast from the wall?
Some asserted that the number of those whose bodies could not be carried out because of their infinite multitude was beyond telling, in addition to the bodies taken outside the gate. For many had come even from the world’s farthest region to worship at the Temple on the feast day.
§ II: The Most Bitter Famine That Oppressed Them, and Their Avarice
Many of those who had fled to the Romans, when they purged their bowels after receiving food, voided certain golden coins which they had swallowed while preparing their escape. They did this so that, if apprehended, they would face neither loss nor danger, because ambushers searched everything, and for anyone other than robbers to possess gold was treated as a crime.
Thus the Jews, with wretched hope, gathered the gold amid the filth of the belly. A certain Assyrian discovered this, and from one man the belief spread to all that this race of men was headlong toward avarice and ready for cunning, that it would avoid nothing however atrocious and blush at nothing however shameful in its zeal for money.
From the Syrians the rumor spread to the Arabs, whose avarice was no less and whose ferocity was monstrous in proportion to their barbarous savagery. Believing that the Jews were full of gold, they seized everyone they saw approaching, contrary to divine and human law, contrary to the law of surrender, and contrary to Caesar’s promise that they were not permitted to kill them.
They cut open the men while they were still living, eviscerated the belly’s hidden places with bloody hands, searched the bowels, and sought gold among the flowing filth. In a single night almost two thousand men were cut apart in this crime.
Another grievous affliction befell those who had fled to the Romans. Because they had lost the accustomed practice of eating, when an abundance of food was given them, what had previously been useful became a burden.
Their teeth had no strength to chew food. The inner organs had become rigid. The passages of food were obstructed. The veins of the liver which draw in nourishment had dried up. Bile had disappeared, while appetite increased. The wretched rushed upon food but attempted weak bites like infants.
Many failed amid every kind of food merely from joy and died upon the foods they had longed for. It was a lamentable procession, since more rose from the food toward danger than toward health. They swelled from unaccustomed food as though from a kind of dropsy. If measureless greed for eating heaped sudden, strong food upon them beyond due measure, they burst.
It is no wonder that food is dangerous to one exhausted by peril, for if after a two-day fast one takes something too greedily, it immediately causes indigestion. Some of them escaped by a certain art, weighing out moderate portions of food until flesh unaccustomed to eating returned to its proper functions.
After the buildings adjacent to the Temple and also its porticoes had been destroyed, partly by the Romans and partly by the Jews themselves, the Temple’s face now lay bare, and men’s hunger was savage.
They ambushed one another so that each might seize the other’s food. Wherever food was suspected, there was war. Even those most dear were killed. They searched the dead to see whether food lay hidden inside their clothing. With mouths open like rabid dogs catching breaths of air, they were driven here and there under want’s leadership.
When they found no other alleviation of hunger, they stripped the leather from shields so that it might serve them as food when it no longer served for protection. They gnawed the leather of their shoes. They felt no shame at receiving into the mouth and licking with the tongue what had been loosened from their feet.
Old straw which had once been thrown away was sought with no slight effort, and if any was found, they bought it at a great price.
§ III: The Woman Who Ate Her Son
There was also a wealthy woman named Mary from the region beyond the Jordan. When the terror of war arose, she had gone to Jerusalem so that she might be safer. The leaders of the factions eagerly invaded her possessions. If she procured any food for a price, it too was snatched from her hands.
Everything had now failed. Accustomed to delicacies, she could not soften the rougher pieces of chaff or the hard pieces of leather. Savage hunger therefore poured itself into her innermost marrow, inflamed her humors, and agitated her mind.
She had a little infant whose crying in the cradle awakened her. Seeing herself and her little child wasted away, she was overcome by such monstrous evils and lost natural affection. Turning to the child, she said:
“What shall I do with you, little one? Savage things surround you on every side: war, famine, fire, robbers, and ruins. To whom shall I entrust you when you are about to die—or the tiny remainder of your life? I had hoped that, if you grew up, you would feed me, your mother, or bury me when I died.
“But what shall I, wretched woman, do? I see no support for life for you or me. For whom shall I preserve you? In what tomb shall I conceal you, lest you become prey for dogs, birds, or beasts?
“O flesh sweet to me, delightful limbs, before famine consumes you, render to me, your mother, what you received. Return to that natural hidden place in which you took up your spirit; within it a tomb is prepared for you when you are dead.
“I shall therefore kiss you. Because there is no time for love, let the force of necessity have its way, so that I myself may devour my own limbs with real, not feigned, bites. We have done what affection required; let us do what hunger urges.
“Yet your cause is better and has a certain appearance of piety, because it is more tolerable that you should have given food to your mother with your entrails than that she could either kill or devour you.”
Saying this, she turned away her face and plunged in the sword. Cutting her son into pieces, she placed him upon the fire. She ate part and covered part lest anyone suddenly arrive.
The smell of roasted flesh, however, reached the faction leaders. Following the smell, they immediately entered the woman’s dwelling. They threatened her with death because she had dared to eat while they fasted and to make them exiles from whatever food she had found.
She said: “I have saved your portion for you. Do not be indignant. I have prepared food for you from my own flesh. Sit down more quickly; I shall set the table.”
Saying this, she uncovered the burned limbs and offered them to be eaten with this exhortation: “This is my meal; this portion is yours. Look more closely and see whether I have defrauded you. Behold one of the boy’s hands; behold his foot; behold half the rest of his body. And lest you think him someone else’s, he is my son.
“Never were you sweeter to me, my son. To you I owe it that your sweetness has held my soul in life until now and prolonged the day of death for your wretched mother. Those who came to kill have been made my guests. They too will have something they owe you when they have eaten my banquet.”
She said to those struck with horror: “Why do you shudder in spirit? Why do you not eat what a mother has made? Taste and see that my son is sweet. Do not become more tender than a mother or weaker than a woman. I indeed prepared such a banquet, but you too made a mother feast in this way. Affection restrained me, but necessity conquered.”
The wickedness of so great a crime immediately filled the entire city, and each person shuddered at the service of this parricidal banquet. The enormity of the deed also reached the Romans, for many, terrified by this horror, fled to the enemy.
When Caesar Titus learned of it, he cursed the contagion of that unhappy land. Raising his hands to heaven, he made this declaration:
“We came to war, indeed, but not with men; rather, we fight against the madness of beasts. Wild animals generally love their own offspring: they nourish them even in famine, feed them with the bodies of others, and abstain from the corpses of their own kind. This exceeds all bitterness—that a mother should devour the limbs she bore.
“I am clean of this contagion. Whatever power you are in heaven, I absolve myself before you. You know that with deepest affection I frequently offered peace. And, what I am not ashamed to say, as victor I begged, because I wished to spare them. But what was I to do when they fought back and raged against their own people? They themselves often exhorted us from the walls to fight them, lest they perish more grievously at their own people’s hands.”
Having said this, Titus ordered the rams to be moved against the Temple. At last, when the authors of the seditions fled as it burned, the Romans placed their standards inside its enclosure, sacrificed before the eastern gate, and proclaimed Emperor Titus with loud and mighty voices.
The priests, wasted by lack of water and the heat of the nearby fire, begged for their lives. Titus ordered them killed, answering that it was the mark of a degenerate spirit that they wished to outlive the Temple and the divinity.
When John, Simon, and the other leaders of the seditions asked indulgence, Titus answered: “Too late, most wicked men, is the time for mercy, when nothing remains that might be preserved. I offered peace, but you did not receive it. I wished to spare you, but you did not permit it. I suspended battles, and you rushed upon us.
“Now the people are extinguished and the Temple burns. Why do you still stand armed? Lay down your arms as though conquered. I shall grant you life, although you do not deserve it.”
Although provoked to anger, Titus did not abandon his resolution, in view of royal dignity, but received those who fled solely out of regard for compassion.
The Romans, already weary from much killing, did not refuse pardon of life. Because they desired to sell captives as slaves, they were more inclined to preserve their lives. There were very many for sale but few buyers, because the Romans disdained to hold Jews in servitude, and no Jews survived to redeem them.
On the eighth day of the month Gorpaci, therefore, the city was burned. It is asserted that one million were killed throughout the entire siege. Ninety-seven thousand captives were taken.
As Hugh of Fleury says, the Romans, finally weary from much killing, sought people to whom they could sell the captive slaves. Because there were many for sale and few buyers were found, some did not fail to buy thirty slaves for one coin.
Then, according to Eusebius in the Chronicle, the kingdom of the Jews came to an end.
From the second year of Darius, under whom the Temple at Jerusalem was rebuilt, to Vespasian’s second year, in which Jerusalem was most recently overthrown, they reckon 590 years. But if anyone considers carefully and attends to the number of Daniel’s seventy weeks, fewer are found.
Jerome says upon Zechariah, as found in Distinction 76, chapter Ieiunium, that in the fifth month according to the Hebrews, who begin the months of the year with April—the month called August among us—the Temple at Jerusalem was burned and destroyed by Titus and Vespasian. The city of Bethel, to which many thousands of Jews had fled, was captured. Long before, in the same month, the city and Temple of Jerusalem had been captured and burned by Nabuchodonosor.
Gratian also says in Cause 23, Question 5, section Hinc notandum, that God sometimes punishes sins through those who do not know, and sometimes through those who know, as he punished the Jewish people through Nabuchodonosor.
Such persons are said to serve God insofar as they punish. But insofar as they proudly suppose in impious vanity that they are not ministers of God’s wrath and attribute victory to their own strength, they do not receive from God the reward of their service except a temporal one, and they do not escape the punishment of their pride.
Gratian illustrates this with the Romans. When God determined through them to punish the sin of death perpetrated by the Jews—under the leaders Titus and Vespasian—they began to ascribe the city’s destruction and the Jewish people’s wretched captivity to their own strength.
Therefore the prophet prays against them, saying: “Raise your hands against their pride unto the end. How greatly your enemies have boasted in your holy place. They set up their signs”—that is, monuments of their victory—“in the midst of the Temple’s court.”
God punishes through those who know, however, as when through the Jewish people under their leader Joshua he exterminated the seven peoples of the Canaanites. The Jews knew that God had appointed them to exterminate those peoples, the Lord commanding them to do so because of their crimes, and they attributed their victories to God.
Likewise, even in the time of grace, through Karolum, king of the Franks, and his men, God liberated the Church and Ytaliam from the hands of the Longobardorum, Distinction 63, Adrianus.
Thus, after the city was destroyed, Titus returned victorious to Rome and was received by all in a great triumph. He is also said to have caused the Ark of the Covenant, the lampstand, and certain columns of the Temple to be carried away.
§ IV: Josephus Flavius
In these times Josephus Flavius flourished, a writer and historian and a commander in the Jewish war. When he was about to be killed by the Romans after being captured in that war, he foretold to Vespasian the emperor’s death and Vespasian’s elevation by the senate to the empire, as Eusebius relates in the Chronicle.
Jerome likewise writes of him in the book On Illustrious Men: Josephus, son of Matathie and a Jerusalemite, was captured by Vespasian and was also a priest. Coming to Rome, he offered the emperor, father and son—Vespasian and Titus—seven books of the Jewish captivity. These were delivered to the public library, and because of the glory of his genius he merited a statue at Rome.
He also wrote twenty other books of Antiquities, from the beginning of the world to the fourteenth year of Emperor Domitian. In the eighteenth book he gives the greatest testimony concerning Christ and his miracles, as was said above.
[Running head: Seventh Title.]
Vespasian, Hugh of Fleury says, died in the seventieth year of his life, mingling jokes with the serious matters in which he delighted. Exhausted by a flux of the belly, he rose and said, “It is fitting for an emperor to depart the earth standing.” Thus he expired, and his son Titus succeeded him.
Apollinaris suffered under Vespasian, as was said above.
§ V: Titus
Titus reigned for two years and was most eloquent in both languages, as Eusebius says in the Chronicle. According to Hugh of Fleury, he was a man marvelous in every kind of virtue, equally adorned with imperial manners, and one who refused nothing to anyone. He was so eloquent that he pleaded cases in Latin verse and composed tragedies in Greek.
Suetonius speaks of him as follows. Titus was the love and delight of the human race. In boyhood his bodily stature and gifts of mind shone forth, and more and more through the successive stages of age: an outstanding appearance, possessing no less authority than grace; exceptional strength; a singular memory; and aptitude for almost all the arts of both war and peace.
He was highly skilled in arms and horsemanship, ready in speaking Greek and Latin and in composing poems. He was not ignorant even of music, but sang and played the harp pleasantly and skillfully. In military service he possessed the greatest diligence and no less modesty.
At first cruelty, luxury, rapacity, and lust were suspected in him. People openly regarded and proclaimed him another Nero. But this reputation turned to his advantage and was transformed into the greatest praise, when no vice was found in him but, on the contrary, the highest virtues.
He held banquets that were pleasant rather than extravagant. He chose friends whom later rulers also approved as necessary both to themselves and to the commonwealth, and especially employed.
He took nothing from any citizen. He abstained from what belonged to others and did not even receive the customary contributions that were permitted. Nevertheless, in generosity he was inferior to no one before him.
In responding most kindly to everyone’s desires, he most resolutely maintained that he would send no one away without hope. Indeed, when members of his household warned that he seemed to promise more than he could perform, he said, “No one ought to leave a prince’s conversation sad.”
At supper, remembering that he had performed nothing for anyone during the whole day, he uttered that memorable and deservedly praised saying: “Friends, I have lost this day.”
Above all he treated the whole people with great kindness on every occasion. He denied petitioners nothing and even voluntarily exhorted them to ask for whatever they wished.
Although his brother did not cease plotting against him, Titus could not bring himself to kill or depose him, or even to hold him in lesser honor. From the first day of his rule he continued to declare him his partner and successor. Sometimes in private, with tears and entreaties, he begged that his brother would at last return his affection.
In the midst of these things death overtook him, to the greater loss of humankind than of himself. When his death became public and all mourned openly, the senate came to the senate house before it was summoned by edict. While the doors were still closed and then after they had been opened, it gave the dead man such thanks and heaped upon him such praises as it never gave him even when he was living and present.
As Eusebius says, he built an amphitheater at Rome and killed five thousand beasts at its dedication. By decree of the senate he was enrolled among the gods.
In his time Mount Hebius broke open at its summit and threw out so great a fire that it burned neighboring regions and cities with their inhabitants. At Rome too several buildings were burned by fire.
According to the Savior’s irrefutable teaching, “He who does not believe has already been judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” Since Vespasian and Titus did not believe in Christ, they were therefore judged by the Church’s judgment to eternal death. They cannot have an excuse for their sin of unbelief, because Christ’s faith had already been proclaimed throughout the world and especially at Rome.
Note also what Gratian says in Cause 28, Question 1, section Ex his itaque. True moral virtues are denied to exist among unbelievers, not because true acquired virtues did not exist in them, but because those virtues lacked the effect of eternal salvation. They were not virtues infused through grace, which alone causes the virtues leading to the heavenly homeland, and these are properly true virtues.
§ VI: Domitian
Domitian, Titus’s younger brother, succeeded him in the year of the Lord 83. As Hugh of Fleury says, he at first appeared merciful. He also administered justice most equitably and constructed many buildings at Rome. Among them he built a marvelous temple there which was anciently called the Pontheon but is now known to have been consecrated in honor of Saint Mary the Mother of God and all the martyrs.
At the beginning of his principate, he customarily took private hours for himself every day and did nothing other than catch flies and pierce them with a very sharp stylus. Hence, when someone asked whether anyone was inside with Caesar, it was not absurdly answered, “Not even a fly.”
For some time he showed himself variable in administering the empire, with an equal mixture of vices and virtues, until he turned even his virtues into vices. Beyond the nature of his disposition, want made him rapacious and fear made him cruel.
He introduced many changes into common practice. He forbade males to be castrated. He administered justice diligently and industriously. He abolished defamatory writings publicly circulated in which prominent men and women were accused, not without disgracing their authors. He removed from the senate a man of quaestorian rank because the man was devoted to gesturing and dancing.
At the beginning he so greatly abhorred every killing that he hastened to decree that oxen should be sacrificed [read: that oxen should not be sacrificed]. For some time he scarcely offered any suspicion of greed or avarice. Indeed, as a proof of generosity, he treated everyone around him with the greatest largesse.
Nothing moved him earlier or more sharply than that anyone should act sordidly. He did not accept inheritances left to him by those who had children. He restrained fiscal calumnies by imposing a great penalty upon the accusers. A saying of his was repeated: “A prince who does not chastise informers incites them.”
But, Suetonius says, he remained constant neither in clemency nor in restraint. He unjustly killed several senators and certain former consuls as though they were devising revolution.
For the slightest cause he also killed a pupil of the pantomime Parisius, still a boy and at that time very ill, because in skill and appearance he seemed not unlike his master. He killed Salivus Cocceranus because he had celebrated the birthday of his paternal uncle, Emperor Otho.
He killed Metius Pomposianus because he was commonly reported to possess an imperial horoscope, carried about a map of the world on parchment and speeches of kings from Titus Livy, and had given his slaves the names Mago and Hannibal.
He expelled all philosophers from Rome and Ytalia. Some time after victory in the civil war he tortured many elderly men of the opposing faction who were still in hiding, seeking knowledge of their accomplices by every kind of interrogation. He inserted fire through their private parts and also cut off the hands of some.
His cruelty was not only great but cunning. He questioned the astrologer Ascletarion about the end awaiting him. When Ascletarion declared that he would soon be torn apart by dogs, Domitian ordered him killed without delay, but commanded that he be buried with the greatest care to disprove the rashness of his art. While this was being done, a sudden storm cast the corpse from the funeral pyre, and dogs tore it apart.
Helinandus says of this in Book 40: it is not astonishing that an astrologer could predict before death what would happen to him after death. As Pope Gregory says, demons are accustomed to predict many true things so that they may ensnare a soul through some falsehood.
Augustine likewise says: “Whenever astrologers give marvelously true answers, it is rightly believed that this occurs through the hidden prompting of spirits—not good spirits, but evil ones, whose concern it is to sow these false and harmful opinions about astral destinies firmly in human minds.” For this reason they are called horoscope-makers: astrologers of this kind, not because they have perceived something by an art, which does not exist.
If it is asked, the same writer adds, how demons could have known this beforehand, I answer that perhaps the demons had already secretly inspired Domitian to have Ascletarion killed and buried; as inhabitants of the air they had already perceived the storm that would soon come; and they knew that dogs would come to that place. Either they caused the dogs to come, or the demons themselves, transformed into dogs, did this to him.
The same Domitian considered nothing shameful if only he might plunder in every way. The goods of the living and the dead were seized everywhere, by any accuser and on any charge. It was enough to allege any deed or word whatever against the emperor’s majesty.
Even inheritances belonging to complete strangers were confiscated if a single person appeared who said that he had heard the dead man, while living, name Caesar as his heir.
Eusebius says of him: this Domitian also sent very many senators into exile. He was the first to order that he be called God and Lord. In his fifth year Quintilian, a forceful man from Spain, maintained a public school at Rome. He is also said to have been Pliny’s teacher, and his sayings were placed above.
§ VII: Domitian’s Persecution
This man, so very wicked, stirred up the second persecution against Christians, or against the Church. Because of the unconquerable constancy of John the Evangelist in evangelizing, he caused him to be brought from Ephesus to Rome and placed in a vat of boiling oil before the Latin Gate. John emerged unharmed. Domitian banished him to the island of Patmos, as was said above.
In his time Dyonisius suffered martyrdom with his companions near Parisius, Eutropius at Santonas, and Timothy, the Apostle Paul’s disciple, as was said above.
Under this Domitian, Nereus and Achilleus also suffered. They had been baptized by Blessed Peter and were eunuchs and chamberlains of the virgin Domicilla, Domitian’s niece, who had been betrothed to Aurelian, the son of a former consul.
Nereus and Achilleus converted her to the faith, persuading her by their words to resolve upon virginity. They asserted that virginity is near to God, sister to angels, and innate in human beings, whereas a wife is subjected to a husband, struck with fists and kicks, sometimes brings forth deformed children, endures the greatest pains in them, and suffers grievous abuse from husbands. Domicilla acknowledged that she had seen her own father behave so toward his wife, her mother.
She therefore made a vow and received the sacred veil of virginity from Clement. Hearing this, her betrothed Aurelian obtained Domitian’s permission and banished Domicilla with Nereus and Achilleus to the island of Pontiana.
When gifts could not induce Nereus and Achilleus to recall her from her resolution of faith and virginity, but rather they confirmed her in it, Aurelian had them beheaded.
Aurelian went to Domicilla after she was recalled from exile, intending to violate her by force after songs and dances with his entertainers. After dancing continuously for two days, he finally breathed out his spirit.
Aurelian’s brother, named Lutius, likewise obtained permission to avenge his brother. He ordered those who had become Christians to be killed and fire set to the chamber where Domicilla was with other virgins. There they surrendered their souls to God, while their bodies remained unharmed by the fire.
At that time certain men were denounced before Domitian, as Egisippus says, for belonging to David’s race and to the posterity of the man called Judas, who is said to have been Christ’s brother according to the flesh, that is, the Savior’s cousin.
Domitian feared Christ’s coming just as Herod had feared when Christ was born. He had therefore ordered those of David’s royal stock to be killed. A certain man named Revocatus was sent for this purpose. He found certain grandsons of Judas and brought them to Domitian.
Asked by Domitian whether they belonged to David’s family, they confessed that they did. Asked the amount of their property, they stated a fixed sum, but explained that it consisted not in money but in the value of forty-one iugera of land. They cultivated it with their own hands, supported themselves from it, and paid their taxes. As evidence, they showed their hands, stiff and covered with calluses from rural labor.
Further questioned about what Christ’s kingdom was like, who Christ himself was, whence and when he would come, they answered: “His kingdom is not of this world, nor is rule over this earth assigned to him. His kingdom is heavenly, prepared through the mysteries of angels at the consummation of the age, when he will come to judge the living and the dead and render to each according to his works.”
Finding no crime in them and utterly despising their lowliness, Domitian allowed them to depart free. By public edicts he restrained the persecution he had ordered against Christians.
In the senate he did not hesitate to boast, with equal arrogance, that he had given the empire to his father and brother and that they had returned it to him.
When dictating a formal letter in his procurators’ names, he began: “Our God and Lord commands as follows.” He permitted no statues of himself to be placed on the Capitol unless they were of gold or silver and of a specified weight.
Terrible and hateful to all because of this, he was finally crushed by a conspiracy of his courtiers, freedmen, intimates, and likewise his wife. Condemned by the senate, he was killed in the palace.
It was also decreed that all whom he had condemned to exile should be recalled by decree of the senate and recover their possessions. His body lacked human burial. The people bore his killing with indifference, the soldiers with the greatest grief. The senate rejoiced greatly and caused his images and titles to be removed.
§ VIII: Nerva
The aged Nerva succeeded Domitian, Hugh of Fleury says, through the agency of the prefect Patronius and the eunuch Parthemius, Domitian’s killer. According to Eusebius in the Chronicle, he reigned one year and four months, until the year of the Lord 98.
[Running head: Seventh Title.]
By his first edict Nerva recalled all whom Domitian had banished. Thus John the Evangelist, banished to the island of Patmos, was recalled, as Miletus testifies. Returning to Ephesus, he was received with the people’s greatest exultation.
At his entrance John raised the dead Drusiana. At the philosopher Crato’s exhortation, he restored broken precious stones. He raised another dead man and commanded him to declare the rewards which John’s two disciples had lost because they repented of abandoning worldly things, and the torments of hell prepared for them. They were pierced in heart at his words. All these things were discussed above.
“The Church,” Eusebius says through Irenaeus, “which was founded by Paul was afterward built up by John.” In the year when John returned from exile to Ephesus, he found Timothy, archbishop of Ephesus, crowned with martyrdom.
Under Emperor Nerva, Eutices, Victorinus, and Marco [read: Maro] suffered.
Aurelian, Domicilla’s betrothed, heard that she loved the aforesaid saints for their faith and virtue more than Nereus and Achilleus, who had already been crowned with martyrdom. He obtained from Nerva permission to have them surrendered to him if they refused to sacrifice to idols.
When they manfully resisted sacrificing to demons, he removed them from the island and divided them among his several estates as though they were his slaves. They were to dig the earth every day and eat bran—that is, the refuse of wheat.
Because they were pleasing to everyone there, worked miracles, and converted many to the faith by preaching, Aurelian had them killed by diverse punishments on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of June, as is found in the martyrology.
In the same martyrology is read at Rome, on the Nones of September, the feast of Blessed Victorinus the martyr. Illustrious in holiness and miracles, he obtained the priesthood of the city of Amicernina [read: Amiternina, Amiternum] by election of the whole people.
Afterward, under Emperor Nerva, he was ordered to be suspended head downward at a place where foul and sulfurous waters spring forth. Having suffered this for three days for Christ’s name, he was gloriously crowned and passed to Christ. Many others were crowned with martyrdom while Nerva ruled.
Nerva Caesar, Hugh of Fleury says, greatly assisted the afflicted commonwealth by adopting as his son Trajan, a vigorous and exceedingly wise man. Nerva himself perished by illness in the Gardens of Sallust in the seventy-second year of his age. By decree of the senate he was enrolled among the gods.
§ IX: Trajan
In the hundredth year of the Lord’s Incarnation, the 4,063rd year of the world—or, according to another computation, the 5,029th—Trajan became the eleventh emperor. He reigned for nineteen years.
He received the insignia of imperial power at Agrippa, a city of Gaul, as Hugh of Fleury says. He immediately subjected Germany across the Rhine and conquered many peoples beyond the Danube. He also reduced to provinces the barbarous nations situated beyond the Euphrates and Tigris. Finally he occupied Seleucia and Babilonia and, after Alexander the Great, advanced as far as the borders of India.
He was liberal toward friends, possessed diligence in military affairs, gentleness in civil matters, and generosity in relieving cities. Indeed, after the Roman state had been cast down and weakened, he was believed to have been divinely given as a remedy for its evils.
Helinandus says this of him. Once, when Trajan was about to depart for war and had mounted his horse, a certain widow took hold of his foot and lamentably demanded that justice be done for her against those who had killed her most just and innocent son.
“You rule, Augustus,” she said, “and I suffer so atrocious an injury?”
“I shall make satisfaction to you when I return,” he said.
“What if you do not return?” she asked.
“My successor will make satisfaction to you.”
“How do I know that?” she said. “Even if he should do it, how will it benefit you if another does good? You are my debtor, and you will receive reward according to your works. It is fraud not to wish to render what is owed. Your successor will be bound on his own account to those who suffer and will suffer injury, but another’s justice will not free you. It will go well with your successor if he frees himself.”
Moved by these words, Trajan dismounted. He examined the widow’s case in her presence on the spot, and consoled her with fitting satisfaction. Thus Helinandus.
§ X: Plutarch
His tutor was the philosopher Plutarch, who had a slave who was a wicked and defiant man, but extremely well instructed in the liberal disciplines.
It happened that, for some cause unknown to me, Plutarch ordered the man’s tunic stripped off and commanded him to be beaten. He began to be scourged somewhat harshly with a strap. Nevertheless, he denied the fault, saying that he had done nothing wrong.
Finally, when he accomplished nothing by asking pardon, he began to shout and speak harsh and reproachful words amid the savage blows. He said that Plutarch did not behave as befitted a philosopher; that anger was shameful, especially for one who had often disputed about the evil of anger and written a most beautiful book on patience. The slave added that it was disgraceful for Plutarch to oppose his teaching by his conduct: having fallen from integrity of mind and poured himself out into anger, he was punishing an innocent man with many blows.
To this Plutarch said slowly and gently, with the greatest gravity: “Do I seem angry with you because you are being beaten? Is it my anger if you receive what is owed by me? From my face, my voice, my color, or at least my words, do you understand me to be so corrupted?
“My eyes, I think, are not fierce; my mouth is not troubled; I do not shout savagely; I do not grow hot with froth and redness. I say neither shameful things nor things to be regretted. I do not tremble at all or make gestures in anger. If you do not know, all these are customarily signs of anger.”
Turning to the man who was beating him, Plutarch said: “While he and I dispute, continue what you are doing. Without anger on my part, blunt this servile defiance; and if he at last repents, teach rather than quarrel.”
This Plutarch wrote to Trajan a most beautiful book on political organization. Its beginning is this:
“Plutarch sends greetings to Trajan. I knew that your modesty did not seek the principate, although super morum elegantia merens induisti [read: which nevertheless you always strove to deserve by elegance of character]. You are judged all the more worthy of it insofar as you appear further removed from the crime of ambition.
“I therefore congratulate your virtue and my fortune, provided that you rightly administer what you honorably merited. Otherwise I do not doubt that you will be subjected to dangers and I to the tongues of detractors, since Rome does not tolerate the sloth of emperors, and public talk customarily transfers the faults of pupils to their teachers.
“Thus Seneca is deservedly lashed by detractors’ tongues because of his Nero; the rashness of Quintilian’s young men is transferred to Quintilian; and Socrates is accused of having been too indulgent toward his pupil.
“You, however, will conduct whatever you wish most rightly if you do not depart from yourself. If you first compose yourself toward virtue, all matters of political organization will proceed rightly.”
The same Plutarch attempts to impress four things upon rulers: reverence for God; governance of self; discipline of officials and powers; and affection for and protection of subjects.
[Running head: Chapter One, Folio 217.]
§ XI: John the Evangelist and Ignatius
While Trajan ruled, John the Evangelist passed to the Lord at the age of ninety-nine. His passing was discussed above.
Blessed Ignatius was martyred at Rome by Trajan himself. He was a disciple of John the Evangelist and bishop of Antioch.
Ignatius sent an epistle to the Blessed Virgin, which reads in this manner:
“Ignatius, her own, to Mary the Christ-bearer. You ought to strengthen and console me, a neophyte and disciple of your John. I have learned marvelous things to tell about your Jesus and am astounded by what I have heard. From you, who were always familiarly joined to him and knew his secrets, I desire from my heart to be made more certain concerning what I have heard. Farewell; and may the neophytes who are with me be strengthened by you, through you, and in you.”
The most blessed Virgin answered him:
“The humble handmaid of Christ to Ignatius, her beloved fellow disciple. The things you have heard from John and learned concerning Jesus are true. Believe them, adhere to them, and firmly maintain the vow of Christianity. Conform your conduct and life to that vow. Stand and act manfully in faith. Do not be moved by the harshness of persecution, but let your spirit prevail and exult in God your Savior.”
So great was this Ignatius’s authority that even Blessed Dyonisius, Paul’s disciple, the greatest of philosophers and perfect in divine knowledge, introduced Ignatius’s words as an authority to confirm his own statements.
In the book On the Divine Names, when Dyonisius asserted that some said the name “love” was not suitable in divine matters, he wished to show that the name of love is also spoken in divine matters and said, “The divine Ignatius writes: ‘My love is crucified.’”
It is also read in the Tripartite History that Ignatius heard angels singing antiphons upon a certain mountain. From this he instituted that antiphons be sung with psalms in churches.
After Ignatius had prayed for the Church’s peace for a long time, fearing not his own danger but that of the weak, he met Emperor Trajan as Trajan returned from victory and threatened a most bitter death to Christians. Ignatius freely declared that he was a Christian.
Trajan bound him with iron and entrusted him to ten soldiers for custody, taking him to Rome to be devoured there by beasts. While Ignatius was led to Rome, he sent epistles to diverse churches, strengthening them to remain in the faith.
Among the others he wrote one to the Roman church in these words, as is read in the Ecclesiastical History:
“From Syria to Rome I fight with beasts on land and sea, day and night, bound and chained to ten leopards—the soldiers given to guard me—who become older [read: become more savage] from our kindnesses. Yet I am made more learned by their wickedness.
“O saving beasts prepared for me! When will they come? When will they be released? When will they be permitted to enjoy my flesh? I shall invite them to devour me. I shall entreat them not to fear touching my body, as they have done with some. Indeed, if they hesitate, I shall force them and cast myself upon them. Grant me pardon, I beg you. I know what benefits me.
“Let fires, crosses, beasts, the scattering of bones, the tearing apart of every limb and the whole body, and every punishment devised against me by divine art [read: by the devil’s art] flow together, provided that I may merit to attain the Lord Jesus Christ.”
When Ignatius reached Rome and was brought before Trajan, Trajan said: “Ignatius, why do you cause Antioch to rebel and convert my people to Christianity?”
Ignatius answered: “Would that I could convert you too, so that you might obtain the strongest sovereignty.”
Trajan said: “Sacrifice to our gods, and you will be chief of all the priests.”
Ignatius replied: “I shall neither sacrifice to your gods nor seek your dignity. You will be able to do with me whatever you wish, but you will in no way change me.”
Trajan said to his servants: “Beat his shoulders with leaded scourges, tear his sides with claws, and rub his wounds with hard stones.”
When they had done all these things to him and he remained immovable, Trajan said: “Bring live coals and make him walk upon them with bare feet.”
Ignatius replied: “Neither burning fire nor boiling water will be able to extinguish Christ’s love in me.”
Trajan said: “These are magical arts, that you endure so much without yielding.”
Ignatius answered him: “We Christians are not sorcerers. In our law we forbid sorcerers to live. But you are sorcerers, because you worship idols.”
Then Trajan said to his servants: “Tear his back with claws and pour salt into his wounds.”
Ignatius said: “The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come.”
Trajan said: “Now take him away, bind him with iron chains, secure him in stocks at the bottom of the prison, permit him neither food nor drink, and after three days deliver him to be devoured by beasts.”
On the third day, therefore, the emperor, the senate, and all the people assembled to see the bishop of Antioch fight with beasts.
Trajan said: “Because Ignatius is proud and defiant, bind him and release two lions against him, so that they leave no remains of him.”
Saint Ignatius said to the people standing by: “Men of Rome who behold this contest, I have not labored without reward, for I suffer these things not because of wickedness but because of devotion.”
Then he began to say, as is read in the Ecclesiastical History: “I am Christ’s wheat. May I be ground by the beasts’ teeth so that I may be made pure bread.”
Hearing this, the emperor said: “Great is the endurance of Christians. Which of the Greeks would endure so much for his god?”
Ignatius answered: “I have endured this not by my own power but by Christ’s help.”
Saint Ignatius then began to summon the lions so that they might run to devour him. The two savage lions ran upon him and merely suffocated him, but did not touch his flesh at all.
Seeing this with excessive wonder, Trajan departed and commanded that no one be prevented if anyone wished to take Ignatius’s body. The Christians therefore took his body and buried it honorably.
Trajan received certain letters in which Plinius Secundus greatly commended the Christians whom he had ordered killed. He grieved over what he had inflicted upon Ignatius and commanded that no Christian be sought out, but that anyone who killed one should be punished.
It is read that amid so many kinds of torments Blessed Ignatius never ceased invoking Jesus Christ’s name. When his torturers asked why he repeated it so often, he answered: “Because I have this name written upon my heart, and therefore I cannot cease invoking it.”
After his death, certain men who wished to investigate this more curiously tore his heart from his body and cut it through the middle. They found his entire heart inscribed with the name “Jesus Christ” in golden letters, and because of this many believed.
[Running head: Seventh Title.]
Concerning Ignatius, Bernard speaks as follows in his exposition of the psalm He Who Dwells: “Great is that Ignatius, a hearer of the disciple whom Jesus loved, and himself a martyr, by whose precious relics our poverty has been enriched. In several letters which he wrote to Mary, he greets her as the Christ-bearer.” This is indeed an eminent title of dignity and a commendation of immeasurable honor.