Saint Fochas suffered under Trajan, as Vincent relates in Book 11, Chapter 62 of the Historical Mirror. He showed not only, while suffering in the fire and amid every single torment, what sort of man he was; throughout his entire life he was so overcome by love that he is believed not to have incurred martyrdom but to have commanded it.
He passed through the time of infancy in such a way that something marvelous and of divine character appeared in him even then. When, with the years of puberty, he entered the first threshold of pious adolescence, he began to display the wisdom of an old man. He was gentle in approach and sober in mind, glorious in chastity, a lover of justice, a master of mercy, and an instructor in humility.
Accordingly, when the Gentiles’ grievous terror oppressed every Christian and savage torments of diverse punishments already tortured some, while a hiding place had provided refuge to others, Fochas was ordered to be sought through vigilant inquiry because of the renown of his name. A man of such great glory could not, or would not, remain hidden any longer.
When Fochas had been found and presented, the prefect Affricanus said to him: “Who is there who testifies that our prince Trajan is not a god, when he has destroyed all his adversaries as he sees them?”
Fochas remained silent at this, as though he had not heard or believed that it had been said to someone else. Affricanus shouted at him: “Why are you silent? Why do you not answer? Do you not know before whose tribunal you stand?”
Fochas answered: “Is it now not enough for Trajan to be called emperor unless, in addition, he ascribes to himself the divine name, invisible to all? Do you think that you can draw me away from the truth by your emperor’s threats, when that master of yours, once the end of his life is completed—who exists today—will not exist tomorrow? The punishments you threaten are things I desire. Hasten, if you take counsel: in haste you will give me joy; in delay, punishment.”
Affricanus said: “A punishment that is desired is no punishment. I therefore spare you because you hasten to perish.”
Fochas answered: “But you are sparing me; kill me. For know first that I cannot live for my salvation unless I die here.”
Affricanus said to him: “Show me your God, and I will obtain from my emperor that he serve him.”
Fochas answered: “The Lord our God, who is great and invisible, reigns in heaven.”
Affricanus said: “You have surpassed the loquacity of Demostenis. What remains is for you to sacrifice, lest you be burned in a harsh fire. Look: more than fifty thousand men direct their eyes and minds toward you alone. If you persist in your obstinacy, you will invite them to a madness like that of this vain religion. We must sacrifice to the pure and great gods, whom you pronounce wicked.”
Fochas answered: “They are to be considered not only wicked, but also wretched adulterers, sacrilegious beings, and demons. Nor they alone, but also those who, through the worship of this perdition, ignore the name of the God who reigns in heaven, whose glory and power are forever and ever.”
The whole crowd of brothers standing around answered, “Amen.” Then thunder sounded, an immense rain poured down, the whole earth shook, and everyone’s footing began to give way.
[Running head: Chapter Three, Folio 219.]
The governor Affricanus fell upon his face. With the soldiers who formed a circle around him, he rolled prostrate upon the ground, without voice or sense.
Some of us saw these things, to whom the divine will granted it. So great was the fear and so great the reverence occasioned by this miracle that scarcely a few were permitted the sight. While these things were happening, an immense fire appeared from heaven, which, by striking the eyes’ power of vision, concealed what took place. That light was seen to be brighter than the sun.
Three angels stood there, arrayed in the manner of horsemen, and flame formed their appearance. Trembling immediately pervaded everyone’s limbs. We stood bloodless and, despairing of safety, were already anxious about death. But the angels, fiery as they were and lofty in stature, joined themselves to Saint Fochas’s side. After conversing with him at some length, they departed and sought heaven in flight.
Behold, a little later Terentiana, Affricanus’s wife, came thunderstruck, her hair disheveled, her face torn, and her clothing disordered. With her five sons and her whole household, she fell at Fochas’s knees. Clinging there to his feet, she begged pardon for so great a crime and bound herself to him with this pledge: if her husband were restored to her, she would pass over to the Christian law with her whole house and her sons.
Her promise was not false, for she denied nothing of what she had pledged. Moved by her tears, Fochas called all the clerics together and, after truly persistent prayer, furnished her with a remedy from the man from whom, a little earlier, she had feared destruction. Affricanus, immediately mindful of his new salvation, fully informed Trajan.
The emperor at once commanded Fochas to come before him. When Fochas had been brought in, he said: “You despise the royal power. What god raises you to such pride that you scorn the emperor? Let us see who that one is to whom you sacrifice.”
Fochas answered: “It is not permitted for you to know. For it is written: ‘Do not cast your pearls before swine.’”
The emperor said to him: “Do we therefore appear to you to be swine, that you say this?”
Fochas answered: “Would that you were animals, for then God’s judgment would not come upon you.”
Trajan said: “Behold, you will be suspended on the wood. Let us see how much that obstinate spirit benefits you.”
Fochas said: “Suspended on the wood, I shall migrate to the heavenly kingdoms. But you, enveloped in darkness with your gods, will be tormented among the dead with eternal death.”
He was then suspended on the wood and tortured through all his limbs by the force of the claws pressed into him, so that his sides themselves gaped in open streams. But in this he uttered no word as one either conquered or angered; he merely moved his lips and gave thanks to his protector in silent prayer. When he reached the end, he cried, “Amen.”
A voice thundered from heaven with a mighty rumbling, saying: “Be cheerful, Fochas; I am with you. A place is prepared for you in paradise with the patriarchs and with those who denied neither me nor my Father. Trajan, however, will be tortured in the place and in the punishment in which you wished.”
The emperor was immediately terrified. He ordered Fochas removed from the rack and assigned four soldiers and a centurion named Crispinianus to guard him. Received by them, Fochas went joyfully to prison, fulfilling his vows to the Lord.
At midnight, when he had prayed, the prison’s barriers opened as light poured down from above. More than a thousand soldiers belonging to that great guard, terrified by the miraculous power, fell at Fochas’s knees and implored the remedies of salvation.
The people therefore went outside the walls to the seashore and received the grace of baptism and the sign of the cross. And so that a firmer root of miracle might arm with greater certainty minds that were still tender and untrained, the Lord showed himself to everyone, and the heavenly majesty flashed forth as mortal eyes were able to behold it. Now regarding the enjoyment of this world as worthless, they returned to the prison no longer ignorant of the divine law.
When night had been driven away and day had dawned, the whole multitude gathered in the forum, awaiting Fochas’s coming contest.
Trajan said to him: “Sacrifice to Neptune.”
Fochas answered: “I do not sacrifice to monsters. I shall always utter this declaration. Seek whatever torments you wish: I am a Christian.”
Trajan, angered, pronounced a cruel sentence. He commanded Fochas to be plunged quickly into a furnace of burning lime and to be cast headlong and face-down into that lake of flowing heat, fearing lest the fire fail to reach some part of his limbs. He said: “Let us see how much that one whom you fear benefits you.”
Placed, therefore, in the flame Trajan had ordered prepared, Fochas remained in the fire for three hours. He was brought out from it so intact in every limb and feature that it was as though he had not been in the flame.
Defeated in this suffering, Trajan was again inflamed with renewed madness. He said: “The baths were fired for you three days ago and no one has yet opened them. We command you to be led into them.”
After making the sign of the cross upon himself, Fochas entered as he was commanded. So great was that fire and so great the force of the flame that the furnaces glowed on every side and even the walls themselves took on the color of fire. Standing joyful amid these things, Fochas fulfilled these vows to God:
“I give thanks to you, Lord, because, chosen for this honor, I have by your favor reached the glory of a happy martyrdom; because for the confession of your name I did not fear prison, chains, the cross, or fire. And now, Lord, send your angel and snatch me from Trajan’s hands, lest the Gentiles say, ‘Where is your God?’”
As soon as he completed his prayer, he breathed forth his spirit. When the baths were opened a little later, his remains were found lying in order within them and defiled by none of the fire’s harshness. His body had drawn in the fragrance of nard. The baths had become cold, as though they had never been kindled.
When Trajan examined Saint Fochas’s remains, he was astounded by so novel a miracle. He allowed his soldiers to carry them back to Fochas’s homeland and, marveling at his strength of mind and body, said: “Truly there is no other God than he who reigns in heaven.”
As Trajan himself was leaving those baths, the joyful Fochas appeared before the door and said: “Trajan, Trajan, proceed to the places of the uttermost abyss, and hasten to the torments prepared for you, where you must be burned with perpetual night and savage fire. You will live in this light for three days; when that time has elapsed, the darkness of death will receive you.”
Trajan then went up to the palace, and from the miracle itself he was kindled with the heat of fevers. On the third day he expired. Fochas suffered on the third day before the Nones of March in Pontho.
§ I: On the Cruelty of the Persecution against the Christianistians [read: Christians] and Pliny’s Writing on Their Behalf
Eusebius says: So immense were the companies of martyrs slaughtered daily under Trajan that Plinius Secundus, who governed the province, was moved by the multitude of those killed and reported to Emperor Trajan that innumerable thousands of people were cut down every day. In them no crime whatsoever was found to have been committed, nor anything contrary to Roman laws, except that before dawn they sang hymns to a certain Jesus Christ as God. Among them adultery and other crimes of this kind were considered unlawful and were utterly excluded. In all other matters they acted according to the common laws.
[Running head: Seventh Title.]
Trayanus then decreed by the authority of his rescript that Christians were not indeed to be sought out, but that any who happened to be encountered should nevertheless be punished. By this he was thought in some measure to have extinguished the fire of persecution. Yet those who desired to exercise their wickedness against the Christians did not appear to have been deprived of an opportunity to harm them. Sometimes the people were incited; sometimes even a judge made use of occasions and denied that those whom he wished to punish had been sought out, claiming instead that they had been brought before him.
Tertullian says this in his Apologeticum, and among other things he says: “O sentence necessarily confused [read: O sentence confused by necessity]! It says that they are not to be sought out, as though innocent, yet commands that they be punished, as though guilty. It spares and rages, dissembles and takes vengeance. Quid timens ipsam eē secundam circumuenis [read: Why do you circumvent yourself by your own censure?] If you condemn them, why do you not also seek them out? If you do not seek them out, why do you not also acquit them?”
In Trayanus’s fourteenth year, therefore, Plinius Secundus nocomenſis is held to have been an illustrious orator and historian. Many works of his talent survive, Vincent says in Book 11, Chapter 67 of the Historical Mirror. He wrote thirty-seven books of Natural History, which he addressed to Vespasian with a prefatory letter. He also wrote about one hundred letters to various people, from which the few written below have been excerpted.
In the letter to Junius: “This very thing belongs to one who loves: not to honor a friend with praises.”
In the letter to Cornelius zicianus: “It is wicked and malicious not to admire a person most worthy of admiration.”
In the letter to Cornelius Tacitus: “Everyone favors his own invention and embraces it as though it were the strongest when another has said what he himself foresaw. A short speech is more pleasing to many.”
In the letter to Cathulium: “Greatness of mind regards nothing for display, but refers everything to conscience. It seeks the reward of a deed rightly done not from the speech of the people but from the deed itself.”
From the letter to Nothomius: “Librum quem misi ad vota que putaueris corrigenda [read: Mark the things that you think must be corrected]. For I shall more readily believe that certain things please you if I learn that certain things have displeased you.”
In the letter to Ursus: “Just as torches preserve their fire by continual shaking but grow slack when lowered, so the speaker’s heat and the listener’s attention are preserved by continuity, but languish through an interruption and, as it were, a relaxation.”
In the letter to Arrianus: “It is necessary that everyone rejoice in the extent, course, and journey of his praise. For somehow widespread glory delights people more than great glory.”
In the letter to Fundanus: “Love commonly runs ahead of its own wishes, and the very anticipation of the things you desire to attain is delightful.”
Tranquillus speaks of him as follows in his book, or catalogue, of illustrious men: Pliny the Second diligently performed equestrian military services and administered the most splendid and continuous procuratorships with integrity. Yet he devoted so much effort to liberal studies that hardly anyone in leisure would have written more. Accordingly, he embraced in thirty-seven volumes [read: twenty volumes] all the wars waged with the Romans [read: wars waged with the Germans]. He likewise completed thirty-seven books of Natural History.
He died at Gades in Campania [read: He died in the disaster of Campania]. For when he commanded the Misenian fleet and Mount Vesuvius was burning, he hastened in Liburnian vessels to explain the causes more closely [read: to investigate the causes more closely]. Unable to return because the winds opposed him, he was overwhelmed by the force of dust and ash. Or, as some think, he was killed by his own servant, whom he had asked to hasten his death when he was failing from the heat.
§ II: On Trayanus’s Death and the Marvels Occurring at That Time
Eusebius says that in Trayanus’s seventeenth year an earthquake at Antioch nearly destroyed the whole city. The Jews who were in Libya also fought against their foreign fellow inhabitants, and likewise in Egypt and Alexandria. At Cyrene and in the Thebaid too they contended in a great sedition, but the party of the Gentiles prevailed at Alexandria.
When the Jews in Mesopotamia rebelled, Emperor Trayanus commanded Lusius Quietus to exterminate them from the province. Quietus drew up a battle line against them and killed countless thousands of them. For this achievement the emperor appointed him procurator of Judea.
At last Trayanus died from a flux of the belly at Seleucia, a city of Isauria, in the seventy-third [read: sixty-third] year of his age and the nineteenth of his reign. His bones were gathered into a golden urn and placed in the forum beneath his column.
Helinand says of him: He alone of all the emperors was buried within the city after Julius Caesar. The senate enrolled him among the gods for this reason: by his moderation he had surpassed the military glory with which he had been filled. At Rome and throughout the provinces he showed himself equal to everyone. He often visited his friends to greet them, including those who were ill; on feast days he held convivial meals with them without distinction; and in turn he used their vehicles and clothing without distinction.
He enriched everyone both publicly and privately, granted every immunity to cities, and remitted the provinces’ debts. He was dear to everyone and burdensome to no one, so much so that even down to our age no other acclamation is made in the senate than: “May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trayanus.”
His statue was placed in Trayanus’s forum in the attitude in which he had once delivered a widow during an expedition. This later moved Blessed Gregory to compassion. It is therefore said that Gregory wept so much on his behalf that he obtained the liberation of Trayanus’s soul from hell. How this was done, however, you have above in the fourth book of the Sentences, from Blessed Thomas.
Eutropius records this excellent saying about Trayanus. When his friends blamed him for being too familiar with everyone, he answered that he was such an emperor toward private persons as, when he was a private person, he had wished emperors to be.