Chapter 6: The Supreme Pontiffs of This Period

Telesphorus succeeded Sixtus in the papacy. He was a Greek and had come from the life of the anchorites.

He decreed that clergy should observe a seven-week fast before Easter. He says: “Just as the life of clerics ought to be distinguished from the conduct of laypeople, so too ought there to be a distinction in fasting. Therefore, during the seven weeks let all clerics fast from meat and delicacies, and let them strive to devote themselves to vigils and prayers by day and night.” This is found in Distinction 4, in the canon beginning “We Establish.”

Gratian says that because this ordinance was not approved by common usage, those who do not observe it are not transgressors. He says this, however, concerning the two days immediately following the Sunday of Quinquagesima.

Telesphorus also decreed that Mass should be celebrated during the night of the Lord’s Nativity, and that the angelic hymn beginning “Glory to God in the highest” should be sung. After the words of the angels, the hymn was completed by a doctor of the Church.

Formerly no one dared to celebrate Mass before the third hour because of the canon “At Night,” in On Consecration, Distinction 1. That rule has now been abrogated by contrary custom.

Telesphorus was crowned with martyrdom after sitting for eleven years. He was buried near Saint Peter at the Vatican on the second day of January.

Hyginus succeeded him and sat for four years.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

Pius succeeded Hyginus and sat for eleven years. He was an Italian from Aquileia, the son of Rufinus and brother of Pastor, and lived in the time of Antoninus.

During his pontificate Hermes wrote the book called The Shepherd, because an angel appeared to him in the form of a shepherd and commanded him to celebrate Easter on a Sunday. The work is reckoned among the apocrypha, as appears in Distinction 15, in the canon “The Holy Roman Church.”

Thus Pius says in On Consecration, Distinction 3, in the canon beginning “To Know”: “An angel appeared to Hermes in the form of a shepherd and commanded him that the Lord’s Passover should be celebrated by everyone on Sunday. Therefore, by apostolic authority, we too establish that all must observe the same, because we ourselves observe it, and no one ought in any way to depart from the head.”

He also says in Distinction 3: “Fasting, prayer, and other religious works profit a person nothing unless the mind is recalled from iniquity and the tongue from detraction.” The gloss explains that they do not profit toward eternal life, although they may confer some other benefit.

Pius died on the eleventh day of July and was buried at the Vatican.

Anicetus, a Syrian, succeeded him. He sat for nine years, three months, and four days, and the see was vacant for fifteen days.

He decreed that clerics should wear the crown of their hair in the form of a small sphere, to show that they are spiritual kings who govern themselves and others well by virtues. Jerome is cited concerning this in Cause 12, Question 1, the canon “There Are Two.”

He also decreed that a bishop should be consecrated by no fewer than three bishops, and that the suffragan bishops should be present at the consecration of an archbishop, as stated in Distinction 67, the canon “The Archbishop.” Archbishops are also called metropolitans, though not primates.

Soter, a Campanian from Fondi, succeeded Anicetus. He sat for nine years, three months, and eleven days, and the see was vacant for twenty-three days.

He decreed that no nun should touch the palls—which perhaps means the corporals—or carry incense to the altar, and that nuns should wear the veil.

He also decreed that no woman should be regarded as a legitimate wife unless she had been blessed by a priest and given by her parents according to custom. This decree concerns a first marriage. It was instituted to prevent scandal and to deter people from illicit unions; nevertheless, where the substance of consent is present, a true marriage exists even without these solemnities.

In his time the heresy of the Cataphrygians arose.

Eleutherius succeeded Soter and sat for fifteen years, six months, and five days. The see was vacant for six days.

Lucius, king of Britain, sent a letter to Eleutherius asking that, by his direction, he be made a Christian. Eleutherius sent Fugarius and Damian, who baptized the king and his people.

Eleutherius decreed that no food fit for human beings and governed by reason should be rejected, lest Christians appear to Judaize. He also decreed that a cleric should not be deposed unless he had first been accused and convicted. At last Eleutherius was crowned with martyrdom.

§ II: Polycarp and Papias

Under the pontiffs named above, while Antoninus Pius and his sons were reigning, as will be told, many saints adorned the churches by glorious martyrdom and teaching, especially Polycarp and Papias.

Jerome writes in his book On Illustrious Men that Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John and ordained by him bishop of Smyrna, was chief of all Asia. For he had as teachers some of the apostles and some of those who had seen the Lord in the flesh.

§ II: Policarpus and Papias (continued)

Because of certain questions concerning the day of Easter, Policarpus came to Rome under Emperor Antoninus Pius, while Anacletus [read: Anicetus] was governing the Church in the city. There he brought back to the true faith many believers who had been deceived by the persuasion and heretical depravity of Martion and Valentin.

When Martion happened to meet him and said, “Recognize us,” Policarpus answered, “I recognize the firstborn of the devil.” Bede also reports this in Cause 24, Question 1, the canon “Every.”

Later, when Marcus Antoninus Pius and Lucius Aurelius were ruling and the fourth persecution had been stirred up against the Church, the whole populace at Smirne cried out against Policarpus in the amphitheater, and he was handed over to the fire.

He wrote a very useful letter to the Philippenses, which to the present day is read in the assembly of Asia.

When Policarpus first heard that the crowd had been roused against him with shouts, he was moved in no way but remained fearless. He was tranquil in character and serene in appearance. Although he wished to remain undaunted in the same city, he nevertheless yielded to the entreaties of his household and withdrew to a farm near the city. There he remained with a few companions, doing nothing by day or night except praying for the peace of the churches, as it had been his constant custom to do throughout his life.

Three days before he was arrested, he saw in a vision by night that the pillow beneath his head was consumed by fire. Awakening, he interpreted the dream to those present and declared with certainty that he would be consumed by fire for Christ.

When he learned that those sent to arrest him had arrived, he went out to meet them and received them so joyfully that everyone marveled. He immediately ordered a table to be set before his enemies as though they were guests and abundant food to be served to them.

After praying for the Church, he mounted an ass and proceeded toward the city. As he traveled, the prefect Herodes and his men met him. They lifted him into their carriage and tried to persuade him, saying: “What harm is there in calling Caesar lord and sacrificing, and thereafter living in safety?”

When they perceived that they were accomplishing nothing, they became indignant and contemptuously threw him from the carriage, so that he fell headlong and injured his foot.

As he entered the city and a multitude came running together, a voice descended from heaven, saying: “Be strong, Policarpus, and act manfully.”

The proconsul ordered it proclaimed to the people in a loud voice that Policarpus had three times confessed himself a Christian. On hearing this, the entire multitude of both Gentiles and Jews in the city of Smirne cried out in great fury: “This is the teacher of the Christians of all Asia and the destroyer of our gods. Let him be burned alive!”

A great fire was therefore prepared. His hands were bound behind his back, and he was cast into it, but the flame stood above his body without burning him. When the ministers of wickedness saw that his body could not be consumed by fire, they ordered a man to draw near and pierce with a sword the body from which the flame had withdrawn. When this was done, so much blood poured forth that it extinguished the fire. Astonished by so great a miratuli [read: miraculi, miracle], the people departed in amazement.

Twelve others who had come from Philadelphia were also crowned with martyrdom at Smirne.

§ III: Papias

Jerome writes in On Illustrious Men that Papias, a hearer of John and bishop of Hieropolitanus in Asia, wrote only five volumes.

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 224.]

He entitled them Explanation of the Discourses. In their preface he declares that he does not follow diverse opinions but has the apostles as his authorities. He says:

“I used to consider what Andrew had said, what Peter, what Philip, what Thomas, what James, what John, what Matthew, or what any other disciple of the Lord had said, and also what Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, were saying. For books to be read do not profit me so much as the living voice, which even to the present day resounds in its own authorities.”

From this catalogue of names it is evident that the John placed among the apostles is one person and the elder John, whom Papias lists after Aristion, another. We have said this because of the opinion reported above as handed down by many, namely, that the latter two letters of John are not by John the apostle but by John the presbyter.

Papias is said to have published the false Jewish opinion about the thousand years: namely, that after the final resurrection the saints would reign with Christ for a thousand years amid bodily pleasures. This was based upon the words written in the Apocalypse, “They shall reign with him for a thousand years,” and so forth.

Yet Cause 24, Question 3, in its penultimate canon, says that Cerinthus was the inventor of this error. Hyreneus and Appollinaris followed this opinion, and Tertullian, Victorinus Pictabronensis, and Lactantius were also led into it, as is evident concerning Lactantius in his book of Institutes.

Note here what Helinand says about these men, and says well. Papias, therefore, was the author of the heretics called Chiliasts, that is, Millenarians. Nevertheless he is numbered not among the heretics but among the saints in the martyrology. Likewise neither Hyreneus of Lugdunum nor Victorinus Pictabronensis is judged a heretic. They were glorious martyrs, and yet they followed Papias in this opinion.

For many saints are said or read to have erred innocently in certain matters. Saint Cyprian, for example, denies that true sacraments exist among heretics even when the required form is observed, as appears in Cause 1, Question 1, the canon “For If Anyone.” The Church holds the contrary, as stated in Distinction 32, the section beginning “But.”

Nevertheless such error is not judged ruinous in them because of their other eminent virtues, and because they erred not from obstinacy but from ignorance and in simplicity. Add that these matters had not yet been determined by the Church.

Thus Cyprian says: “One who errs in simplicity can be pardoned. But after inspiration and revelation have been given, whoever knowingly and deliberately perseveres in that in which he had erred no longer sins with the pardon due to ignorance. For he relies upon a certain presumption and obstinacy when he is overcome by reason.” This is found in Distinction 8, the canon “Custom.”

§ IV: Iustinus the Philosopher

Fustinus the philosopher, as Hugh of Fleury says, presented Antoninus Pius with a book composed about the Christian religion and made him favorable toward the Christians.

Jerome says that Iustinus wore the garb of philosophers. He came from the city of Neapolis in Palestine and was the son of Crispus. He labored so greatly for the Christian religion that he presented Antoninus Pius, his sons, and the senate with a work against the Gentiles and did not blush at the shame of the cross. He gave another book to Antoninus’s successors, Marcus Antoninus Verus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus.

There is also another volume by Iustinus against the Gentiles in which he discusses the nature of demons, and a fourth work against the Gentiles. There is another work on the monarchy of God, another entitled The Psalmist, and one on the soul. He also wrote a dialogue against the Jews, conducted against Triphon, chief of the Jews; notable volumes against the heretic Martion, which the martyr Hyreneus mentions; and another work against all heresies.

This Iustinus, however, as Vincent says in Book Eleven of the Historical Mirror, was a disciple of Pompeius Trogus the Spaniard. Trogus composed in Latin, in forty-three books, the histories of the whole world from the time of Ninus, king of the Assyrians, to the monarchy of Caesar. This Iustinus made an abridgment of them. I do not know, however, whether this was Iustinus the martyr or another man.

In the apology that he sent to Antoninus Pius, Iustinus says among other things: “I expect that I shall suffer plots from one of those whom I oppose on behalf of truth and that I shall be struck with a staff or club—certainly by Crescens, who in this respect is not a philosopher but a lover of boasting, that is, not a lover of wisdom but a lover of vainglory. For one who publicly makes assertions about matters he does not know, and calls Christians godless and impious for the favor and pleasure of those who are set in error, while he himself entangles them in still greater snares of error, is not worthy to be called a philosopher.”

Eusebius writes of Iustinus that he labored over the contests of others who had been martyrs before him more than over his own, describing them in writing. Iustinus says, “I too expect that I shall suffer plots from one of those whom I have opposed on behalf of truth.”

Jerome says in On Illustrious Men that, while Iustinus held disputations at Rome against that same Cynic philosopher who blasphemed the Christians, he reproved him as a glutton, one fearful of death, and a follower of luxury and lust. At last, through the man’s plots and efforts, Iustinus was accused of being a Christian and shed his blood.

It is also read elsewhere, as Vincent reports, that as a reward for his faithful and learned tongue Iustinus received the gift of martyrdom. A certain Cynic philosopher named Crescens laid traps and plots for him because of his confession as well as because of his conduct. Iustinus had often disputed with him in the midst of an audience and had not only defeated him but, with truth supporting him, confounded him still more forcefully.

§ V: The Martyrs of Lugdunum and Vienne

At that same time, namely, during the reign of Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius, a most severe persecution, as Hugh of Fleury says, invaded Lugdunum and Vienne, the most noble cities of Gaul. Fotinus, bishop of Lugdunum, and Justus, bishop of Vienne, were crowned with martyrdom in those cities together with many others.

Fotinus, as Eusebius says, was already ninety years old and nearly dead. He lived only through his love of martyrdom. He was led to the tribunal—or rather, because he was exhausted by age and weakness, was carried there.

When the governor asked who the God of the Christians was, Fotinus answered: “If you are worthy, you will know.” Angered by these words, the bystanders afflicted him with fists, kicks, and many other kinds of blows, then shut him in prison with many others. A short time afterward he commended his spirit to the Lord.

The soldiers raged especially, as Eusebius says in Book Five of the Ecclesiastical History, against a certain deacon of Vienne named Sanctus; against Maturus, a neophyte in faith but exceedingly strong in endurance; against Attalus, a citizen of Pergameus who was in every respect a pillar and foundation of our church; and also against the woman Blandina. Through her Christ showed that things despised among human beings and regarded as contemptible are held in great glory before God.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

§ V: The Martyrs of Lyon and Vienne (continued)

Because charity makes by grace the things naturally fragile become exceedingly strong, all of us trembled for Blandina. Even her mistress according to the flesh, who was herself one of the martyrs, was anxious that Blandina might yield under the torments and that, because of her bodily weakness, she might scarcely suffice for the torments of the first confession.

Yet Blandina was strengthened with such power of endurance that the executioners’ hands, which succeeded one another because of the judge’s contentious determination, were exhausted and fell before she did. From the first light of day until evening they repeatedly renewed the same torments. At last they confessed themselves defeated, marveling at how any spirit remained in her when nothing seemed to remain of her body after its punishment.

But that truly blessed woman, as she afterward explained to us, received new strength in her body each time she uttered her confession aloud and cried, “I am a Christian.” As though her pains were forgotten through that confession, she was restored fresher for the contests.

The deacon Sanctus likewise endured new kinds of punishment beyond what can be told and beyond what human nature can lawfully bear. The ministers of demons pressed him still more cruelly in the hope of eliciting from him some unlawful confession, and what he endured far exceeded the substance of the human condition.

But that man, filled with God, so mocked their cruelties and held so firm a response under interrogation that he never deigned to disclose his family, home, country, or even his name. When questioned about each of these things amid every torment, he answered nothing except that he was a Christian.

“This,” he said, “is my name, this my family, this my country. I am nothing else at all but a Christian.”

They were therefore driven by an unbelievable madness because, after exhausting so many kinds of punishment, they had been unable to wrench from him even the declaration of his own proper name.

At last they applied red-hot plates of bronze to his groin and to all the more delicate parts of his body, renewing the fires. His burned flesh now flowed away, yet he remained immovable, unshaken, and fearless, tempering the human flames within himself with the heavenly and eternal streams that proceed from the belly of Jesus.

The recognizable human form perished in him. The cruelty of the torments had taken away not only the ability to recognize who he was, but even what he was. Christ alone was nevertheless recognized in him through the glory of martyrdom.

Yet the craftsmen of wickedness were never ashamed before the martyr’s courage. Rather, after allowing a few days to pass, they planned to inflict the torments again and to assault anew his already putrefying limbs. They hoped that he might at least in this way believe, or that, if he surrendered his soul amid the torments, they might strike fear into the others.

The outcome was far different from what the impious men intended. What unbelievers could scarcely credit came to pass: through the second torments his body was restored to its former appearance, and the second cruelty restored the functions of the limbs that the first had taken away, so that the repeated punishments now brought him healing rather than pain.

In the same way Blandina, whom we mentioned a little above, was recalled for a second round of sufferings. She was almost half dead and placed at the very boundary of death when she was struck with the renewed tortures. Suddenly, as though awakening from a certain sleep, she called to mind the blessedness to come and addressed the people with a constant voice as though speaking from a height. Thus, persevering in her confession, she was again thrust back among the number of the martyrs.

Blandina was led out again with other faithful people who were to be tortured. After various torments, when their necks had finally been struck, Blandina herself was bound to a stake, stretched out in the form of a cross, and prepared as food for the beasts. Hanging upon the wood, she poured forth prayer to the Lord with a fearless and exceedingly joyful face. None of the beasts, however, dared touch her body. She was therefore taken down from the wood and recalled to prison, to be prepared for still other contests.

On another day Blandina was brought out again with Ponticus, a boy of about fifteen years. They were placed in the midst and commanded to swear by the gods. On the contrary, they said that those beings were no gods at all and reproached the gods of the Gentiles with other words.

The populace therefore became still more frenzied. They had compassion neither upon the boy’s tender age nor upon the woman’s sex, but led them as though in a circle through every kind of torment and allowed no punishment that cruelty had invented to be omitted.

Ponticus persevered in the confession of the faith and returned his unstained spirit to God. Blessed Blandina, last of all, hastened confidently to follow the children whom she, like the noble mother of them all, had sent ahead to the crown of martyrdom. She exulted and triumphed as though invited to the bridal chamber of her bridegroom and to the wedding banquet.

Thus she danced amid the blows, rejoiced while burned upon the griddles, and appeared as cheerful and joyful as though reclining at a royal feast. After this she was handed over to the beasts but remained untouched by them. Next she was exposed to a bull that had been fiercely provoked. Although it assailed her with countless blows and tossed her around the whole circuit of the arena, she was not harmed at all but remained joyful.

At last she was ordered to be killed by the sword. Even the impious stood astonished and said that there had never been a woman who could endure such great and such numerous things.

Many others also suffered through various kinds of punishment, including Maturus, Blandinus, the aforementioned deacon Sanctus, Alexander, and Attalus.

When Attalus was asked amid the torments, “What name does God have?” he answered: “Those who are many are distinguished by names and need names. He who is one does not need a name.”

Among the brethren these martyrs were humble; among their persecutors, exalted. They were gentle toward their own and terrible to their adversaries, subject to Christ and raised up against the devil. They humbled themselves beneath the most powerful hand of the Lord, by which they are now exalted still higher.

§ VI: Saint Felicity and Her Seven Sons

In the time of Emperor Antoninus, the illustrious woman Felicity was tried together with her seven most Christian sons. Remaining a widow, she had vowed her chastity to God. Devoting herself to prayer by day and night, she provided great edification to chaste minds by her example.

The priests of the idols therefore accused her before Augustus, saying: “This widow and her sons insult your gods to the peril of your welfare. Unless she venerates them, let Your Piety know that the gods will become so angry that they can never be appeased.”

The emperor then ordered Publius, prefect of the city, to compel her and her sons to mitigate the anger of his gods by sacrifices. Publius ordered her to be brought to him privately and urged her with gentle speech to sacrifice, threatening that she would die under punishment if she refused.

Felicity answered: “I can neither be bent by your flatteries nor broken by your terrors. For I possess the Holy Spirit, who will not permit me to be conquered by the devil. I am therefore certain that I shall overcome you while alive and, if I am killed, shall overcome you still better when dead.”

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 225.]

Publius said to her: “Wretched woman, if it is sweet for you to die, at least cause your sons to live.”

Felicity answered: “My sons will live if they do not sacrifice to the idols. But if they commit so great a crime, they will go into eternal fire.”

On the next day he ordered her brought into the Forum of Mars and said to her: “Have pity upon your good sons, who flourish in the first bloom of youth.”

Felicity answered: “Your mercy is impiety, and your exhortation is cruelty.” Turning to her sons, she said: “Look, my sons, at heaven, and gaze upward. There Christ awaits us with his saints. Fight for your souls and show yourselves faithful in the love of Christ.”

On hearing this, Publius ordered her struck with open hands, saying: “Have you dared in my presence to give these instructions to your sons, so that they should despise the ordinances of our gods?”

Publius then summoned the first son, Ianuarius, promising him infinite present goods if he would consent and threatening him with innumerable evils if he scorned to sacrifice to the idols.

Ianuarius answered: “What you urge is foolish, for the wisdom of God preserves me and will cause me to overcome all these things.” The prefect immediately ordered him beaten with rods and placed in prison.

He then addressed each of the others separately. Unable to turn them away from the faith of Christ, and receiving constant answers from them, Publius reported these things to Emperor Antoninus. The emperor ordered various judges to torture them in different ways.

One judge killed the first, Ianuarius, with lead-weighted scourges. Another slew the second, named Felix, and the third, Philip, with clubs. He killed the fourth, named Siluanus, by casting him over a precipice. Another judge caused the other three—Alexander, Vitalis, and Marcialis—to undergo capital punishment. He also caused their mother to be beheaded.

Saint Pontianus also suffered at Spoleto, a city of Tuscany, under Emperor Antoninus and the judge Fabianus. First he was beaten with rods so that his blood flowed like a river. Second, he walked barefoot over live coals, but, protected by the sign of the cross, was not harmed. He was then suspended upon the rack and torn with iron hooks, until the attendants failed at their task and were tormented with pain.

Afterward he was cast before two lions, but they prostrated themselves at his feet and became gentle. Seeing this with wonder, the people cried: “Great is the God of the Christians! Let the saint of God be released!”

Fearing a riot, the judge ordered Pontianus thrust back into prison, where he merited to be strengthened by angelic consolation. Finally, boiling lead was poured over him, but he was harmed in no way. Struck by the sword, the martyr ascended to heaven.

§ VII: Antoninus Pius

Antoninus Pius succeeded Hadrian. Hadrian had adopted him as his son and had him as his son-in-law. Antoninus was the thirteenth emperor of the Romans. He began to reign in the year of the Lord 140 [read: 138]. According to the shorter computation from the beginning of the world, which Vincent follows in the Historical Mirror, this was the year 4,103; according to the other, longer computation, which Bede and the Seventy translators follow, it was the year 5,339. He reigned for twenty years [read: twenty-three years].

As Hugh of Fleury says, Antoninus was a most skillful man, benevolent by nature, and so tranquil that he was deservedly called Pius. Foreign peoples sent ambassadors to him—the Indians, Bactrians, and Hyrcanians—because they had learned of the justice of so great an emperor. He was free from the appetite for glory and display.

He left a wealthy treasury, enlarged the commonwealth, and was called father of the fatherland. After death he was worshiped almost as Romulus had been. He is said to have declared, following the example of Scipio, “I prefer to save one citizen rather than destroy a thousand enemies.” Throughout his whole realm he retained the written securities but remitted the debts.

In this Antoninus’s time Apollonius, a Stoic of Calcidonicus nationality, and Basilides of Scitopolitanus were regarded as illustrious philosophers. They were also the teachers of Verissimus Caesar. Thaurus Biretius, a philosopher of the Platonic school, was likewise renowned.

Helinand says that the governor of the province of Crete and his father are read to have come together to Athens to visit and become acquainted with Taurus. Taurus privately invited only the father to sit down first.

The father said concerning his son: “Let this man, who is a magistrate of the Roman people, sit first.”

“Without prejudice,” Taurus replied, “you sit meanwhile, until we have considered and inquired what befits you: whether you, who are the father, ought rather to sit, or the son, who holds the magistracy.”

When the father had sat down, another chair was placed for the son. Taurus then delivered an address about the matter to those who had gathered. Among other things he said:

“In public places and offices, the rights of fathers, when their sons have been placed in magistracies or power, ought to pause for a little while and even convivere [read: conivere, yield]. But when outside the commonwealth one sits and walks in domestic life and reclines at a familiar banquet, then it is equitable that public honors should cease between a son who is a magistrate and a father who is a private citizen, while natural and inborn honors are preserved.”

At this same time the celebrated physician Galien flourished, as Eusebius writes in the Chronicles. He is found to have written a book on alchemy entitled On the Branch of the Frozen Apple, and very many books on medicine.

Jerome says of him in Book Two Against Jovinian: “Galien, the most learned interpreter of Ypocrates, says in his Exhortation to Medicine that athletes, whose life and art consist in fattening, can neither live long nor be healthy, and that their souls are so enveloped in excessive blood and fat as though in mud that they have nothing refined, nothing heavenly, but always belch of meats and think about the gluttony of the belly.” This is found in On Consecration, Distinction 5, the canon “Nor Such Persons.”

Around those times Tholomeus the astrologer shone forth, a man marvelous in mathematics and especially in astrology. He wrote more in that art than all that had been written before him. He wrote the Almagest and the Optics, and, concerning judgments, the Quadripartite Work and the Centiloquy. In the latter he says, among other things, “The wise man, that is, the virtuous man, will rule the stars.”

Tholomeus was raised at Alexandria. He was strong in anger, sparing in food, and fragrant in breath. He lived seventy-eight years and died in Panonia.

§ VIII: Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus

Antoninus Pius was succeeded in the empire by his two sons, namely Marcus Antoninus, who was also called Verus, and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, as Eusebius reports in the Chronicles. They were the first to administer the empire with equal right, since up to that time there had been only one Augustus at a time.

In their time the fourth persecution against the Church was stirred up, and many were crowned with martyrdom. A great plague followed that persecution, as Vincent reports in Book Eleven of the Historical Mirror. It devastated many provinces far and wide and especially afflicted Italy so greatly that everywhere villages and fields remained without cultivator or inhabitant.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

In short, there was never any respite from arms. Wars raged throughout the whole East, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul. Earthquakes accompanied by the destruction of cities and inundations of rivers also became frequent. Plagues likewise multiplied, and locusts infested the fields.

Eusebius says in the Chronicles: “The histories report that, in the time of Antoninus in which these events are related, Marcus Aurelius, his brother and Caesar, waged war against the Germans and Sarmatians. When his army was endangered by thirst, he was distressed and sought what must be done. He discovered in a certain legion some Christian soldiers who, according to our custom, bent their knees and prayed. God heard their supplications. Suddenly, contrary to everyone’s expectation, most abundant rains poured down and quenched the thirst of the endangered army for which the Christians had prayed, while frequent thunderbolts and fires falling from heaven drove away the enemies who were already threatening them with destruction.

“This deed is indeed reported in the histories of the Gentiles, but they do not report that it was accomplished by the prayers of our people. Naturally, neither this nor the other miracles performed by our people receive credence among them. Of our writers, however, both Tertullian commemorates it and Appollinaris among the Greeks. Appollinaris also said that, because of the miracle of this extraordinary deed, the emperor changed the legion’s name and called it the Thundering Legion.” Thus Eusebius.

§ IX: Victor, Corona, Concordius, Marcellus, and Valerius

In their time Saint Victor, a man from Cicilia, declared in the presence of the judge Sebastian that he was a soldier of Christ and refused to sacrifice to the idols. The commander ordered Victor’s fingers broken and his sinews pulled out until they came forth from his skin.

While Victor gave thanks and remained in the faith, the judge ordered him cast into a burning furnace. But while he prayed, neither the fire nor its smoke touched him, and after three days he was found alive.

The commander then had a deadly poison prepared and ordered a magician to give it to Victor to eat. Victor ate it and felt no harm from it. The magician then offered other, worse poisons. When Victor ate these and suffered no injury, the magician burned all his books, renounced his temporal possessions, and believed in Christ.

Victor was again admonished, and when he refused to sacrifice, the judge ordered the sinews pulled from his body. He then ordered boiling oil poured upon Victor’s private parts. Once again Victor was suspended, burning lamps were applied to him, and they were placed against his sides. Victor felt no pain, however, but was comforted by God.

The enraged judge ordered vinegar and lime mixed together and given to him in his throat. After this he ordered Victor’s eyes torn out. Victor said, “Do not spare me, for I am ready to endure all your torments.” The judge therefore ordered him suspended head downward for three days, until blood dripped from his nostrils to the ground.

After three days soldiers came to see whether he was still alive. When they saw him they became blind, but through the saint’s prayer for them they received their sight. They returned to the judge and related everything that had happened. The judge ordered Victor flayed.

Then Corona, the wife of a certain soldier and about sixteen years old, cried out in a loud voice: “Blessed are you, Victor, and blessed are your works. Your sacrifice has been accepted like Abel’s sacrifice.” After saying many other things, she added: “Behold, I see two crowns coming down from heaven, borne in the hands of angels. Of these, the larger will be given to you and the smaller to me. Yet although I am a weak vessel, I hope in Christ the King that I shall possess an inheritance with the strong.”

When the judge heard this, he ordered her summoned and invited her to sacrifice. She answered him: “I am called Corona, and you seek to destroy my crown.” When she refused to consent, the judge ordered his soldiers to bend two palm trees toward one another, bind blessed Corona between them by both sides of her body, and then release them suddenly. As soon as they released the trees, blessed Corona was torn into two parts. Thus she confidently fulfilled her martyrdom.

Finally, the judge caused Victor’s head to be cut off, and milk instead of blood flowed from his neck. Because of these miracles many believed in Christ.

At that time Saint Concordius suffered in the city of Spoleto. His father, Concordianus, caused him, being noble by birth, to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures and ordained subdeacon by Saint Pope Pius. When Concordius became renowned for miracles, the count of Tuscany, who was then residing at Spoleto, caused him to be brought before him.

When the count invited him to sacrifice to their gods, Concordius answered: “You should instead sacrifice to the Lord Jesus Christ, so that you may escape torment. For if you do not, both you and your gods will burn forever.” The count then ordered him beaten with clubs and thrust into prison.

Blessed Bishop Antonius, who was a friend of the count, together with blessed Eutyches, asked that Concordius be entrusted to them for a few days. When the count granted this, the bishop ordained Concordius a priest.

After a few days the count saw Concordius presented before him again and said, “What have you decided concerning your salvation?”

Concordius answered: “Christ is my salvation, and to him I offer a sacrifice of praise every day. But you and your gods will burn in hell.”

The enraged count ordered him suspended upon the rack. Concordius glorified God with a cheerful countenance. When the count said, “Sacrifice to great Jupiter,” he answered: “I do not sacrifice to a deaf and mute stone, because I have the Lord Jesus Christ, whom my soul serves.”

The angry tyrant ordered him thrust into the depths of the prison, loaded with iron, and left without food or drink so that he would perish from hunger. But at midnight he was comforted by an angel of the Lord. Finally, because he refused to sacrifice and instead spat in Jupiter’s face, the count commanded that he be beheaded.

While this same Antoninus was emperor, Saint Marcellus was crowned in the city of Chalon, under the governor Priscus, by an unheard-of martyrdom. The governor urged him to sacrifice to the almighty gods Jupiter, Saturn, and the others, as the emperors had decreed.

Marcellus answered that the images bearing those names had been mortal men polluted by crimes, long dead and buried in hell, and that whoever believed in them proceeded with them into eternal fire. He himself, however, believed in Christ and was a true Christian, believing in the Son of God and Creator of the world.

Priscus, raging with a persecutor’s fury beyond any example of unheard-of cruelty, ordered Marcellus buried upright as far as his waist. Thus already half buried but wholly alive, and hastening to the kingdom of heaven, Marcellus did not flee the punishment. For three days he persevered, in speech and love, in the praises of Christ, his almighty Lord and God. Entrusting his earthly members meanwhile to the earth, he sent his spirit to heaven.

The same tyrant in the same place caused Saint Valerius, after other torments, to be beheaded. Looking toward heaven, Valerius saw Christ offering him the crown, for Christ had given him the victory of martyrdom.

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 226.]

§ X: Egisippus and Other Writers

At that time Egisippus was regarded as illustrious according to Eusebius, and he was most renowned among the bishops in Crete. Philip, Appollinaris, Melito, Musanus, Modestus, and especially Hyreneus also flourished. Most illustrious monuments of the apostolic faith and sound doctrine have been handed down to us from all of them.

Jerome says in On Illustrious Men: “Egisippus, who lived near the time of the apostles, composed five books in a simple style. In them he wove together a history of ecclesiastical events from the Passion of the Lord down to his own age, gathering from different places many things pertaining to the benefit of believers, so that his manner of speaking might express the character of those whose life he followed.

“He declares that he came to Rome under Anicetus, whom we say was bishop after Peter, and that he remained until Eleutherius was bishop of the same city, who had formerly been Anicetus’s deacon. Moreover, when disputing against idols, he appended a history explaining from what first error they had grown.”

Dionysius, bishop of the Corinthians, possessed such eloquence and diligence that he instructed by letters not only the peoples of his own city and province but those of other provinces and cities as well. Among these letters, one is to the Lacedaemonians, another to the Athenians, a third to the Nicomedians, and a fourth to the Cretans. He wrote several others to different places.

Theophilus, the sixth bishop of the church of Antioch, composed under Emperor Marcus Antoninus a book against Marcion the heretic, which remains to this day; three volumes to Antholicus [read: Autolycus]; one book against the heresy of Hermogenes; and commentaries on the Gospel and the Proverbs of Solomon.

Appollinaris, bishop of the Asian city of Hierapolis, flourished under the same Antoninus. He also presented to the emperor an excellent volume on behalf of the Christian faith. Five other books of his against the Gentiles remain, two On Truth, and a work against the Cataphrygians.

§ XI: The Deaths of the Two Emperors

Aurelius Commodus, as Hugh of Fleury says, was riding in a carriage with his brother in the eleventh year of his reign when he was suffocated by an attack of the disease that the Greeks call apoplexy. After his death Marcus Antoninus alone governed the commonwealth for a few days.

He was a man of such severity that from infancy he altered his expression neither from joy nor from sorrow. When founding a city he named it Verona from his own name, because he was called Antoninus Verus. In his time a marble image seemed to move, and a bronze statue of Hercules sweated for many days.

He moderated the harsher laws by new enactments. He remitted taxes throughout all the provinces, and, after gathering together all the calumnious records of fiscal suits, he burned them in the forum. He, the fourteenth emperor from Augustus, died from a sudden illness while stationed in Pannonia. Temples, columns, and many other things are found to have been erected in his honor. He was succeeded by his son Lucius Aurelius Commodus.

In the times of Antoninus Verus flourished Theodocion [read: Theodotion], an interpreter of the divine law, namely from Hebrew into Latin, and Atticus, a Platonic philosopher.

Eusebius says that in the times of these emperors Fronto was considered an illustrious orator. He instructed Marcus Antoninus Verus in Latin letters.

The city of Seleucia, together with three hundred soldiers of men [read: three hundred thousand men], was captured by the Romans. At that time Smirna, a city of Asia, collapsed in an earthquake. For its restoration, a ten-year of taxes was granted [read: a ten-year exemption from taxes was granted]. So great a plague also spread throughout the whole world that the Roman army was almost destroyed to the point of annihilation.

Aurelius Commodus therefore succeeded his father and reigned for thirteen years. As Hugh of Fleury says, he was devoted to luxury and obscenity. He killed many senators, and especially those whom he perceived to excel in ability or nobility.

“In that season,” Eusebius says in Book Five, “peace was extended to the churches throughout the whole earth, and the word of the Lord gathered souls from every class of people to the knowledge and worship of the supreme God. In Rome, finally, it joined to the faith many illustrious and exceedingly wealthy persons together with their children, wives, and whole households.

“But that ancient enemy of human salvation did not look upon this with an impartial eye. Hence in the city of Rome he dragged to trial a certain Apollonius, an illustrious man learned both in our faith and in every branch of philosophy, raising against him as an accuser a certain most wretched man who had despaired of salvation. Apollonius was urged to publish in writing the defense of his faith that he had delivered lucidly and splendidly before the senate and the whole people. After this he was punished by beheading in accordance with a decree of the senate. For a most unjust law promulgated by earlier rulers had so prescribed.”

§ XII: Philip and Eugenia

Philip, a most illustrious Roman man, was sent by Emperor Commodus into Egypt to serve as prefect of Alexandria. He took with him his wife, his two sons, and one daughter named Eugenia. She was most perfectly educated in the liberal arts. Although she was very beautiful in body, she was still more beautiful in chastity. Though sought in marriage by many, she resisted them all, for even while living under pagan parents she had begun to be a Christian in spirit.

One day she was traveling through the suburbs outside the city of Alexandria with the eunuchs Protus and Hyacinthus, with whom she had been educated. Christians lived there, and she heard them singing psalms and saying the verse, “All the gods of the Gentiles are demons,” and so forth.

Strengthening herself and sighing, she said to her eunuchs Protus and Hyacinthus: “With vain labor we have examined the syllogisms of the philosophers, Aristotle’s arguments, Plato’s ideas, everything the poet has sung, everything the orator has devised, and everything the philosopher has thought. All are excluded by this sentence that we heard the Christians sing exultantly: ‘All the gods of the Gentiles are demons.’”

Considering very deeply the force of these verses, she said, “If we do not wish to perish, we must believe.” As they discussed the true God with one another, agreement in faith was formed among them, and they sought an arrangement by which a holy flight might be established and the right faith maintained.

When they learned that a certain holy man named Helenus was bishop there, they resolved to approach him. Helenus had been a Christian from infancy and afterward had been raised in a monastery. He possessed such holiness that he carried burning coals in his cloak without injury.

Helenus, now made bishop of helipolis, once confronted a magician named Zereas, who preached falsehoods to the people and said that he had been sent by Christ. Helenus disputed with him before the people to expose his falsehoods, but the magician now appeared superior to the people because of his words. Helenus therefore said before everyone: “Let a fire be kindled in the middle of the city, and let us enter it together. Let us believe that the one who is not burned has been sent by Christ.” This proposal pleased everyone.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

A fire was therefore kindled, and Helenus entered it first at the magician’s request. After he had remained in it for half an hour without being burned in either hair or clothing, he commanded Zereas to enter as well. When Zereas resisted, the people handed him over to the fire. As he began to burn, Saint Helenus rescued him half burned from the flame, but the people expelled him from that region.

The old man Helenus permitted no woman to approach his lodging so that she might hear and speak with him. Eugenia therefore assumed male clothing, cut her hair, and approached the bishop with the aforementioned eunuchs as though she were a young man. The Lord had revealed to him everything concerning their arrival.

They humbly requested holy baptism and admission to a monastery, saying that they were brothers from the city of Rome. Their desire was fulfilled. Although Helenus knew that she was a woman and they were her servants, and disclosed this to them, he nevertheless strengthened them, baptized them, and caused them to be received among the monks.

Because Eugenia did not return home, her father and the whole household caused a diligent search for her throughout that region. When she could not be found, they consulted demons through pythonesses and soothsayers. The answer was that the gods had taken her up into heaven and received her into the number of the goddesses. Because of this her father caused a golden image of her to be made for himself.

Eugenia herself remained in that monastery of men in male clothing and progressed so greatly in divine learning that before the end of her second year she retained nearly all the Scriptures of the Lord. Her spirit possessed such tranquility that everyone called her one of the company of angels. She was all things to all people: she comforted the sorrowful, rejoiced with the joyful, and calmed the angry.

She received such great grace from the Lord that, whoever might be in pain when she visited, all pain immediately withdrew and health arrived. In the third year, when the abbot of that monastery died, Eugenius was elected by everyone.

She then feared that, contrary to rule, she as a woman would be set over other men. Yet she also feared scorning all those who unanimously urged this upon her. She said: “Let us see what the Lord commands in this election of ours. ‘If anyone,’ he says, ‘wishes to be first, let him be the last of all.’ Behold, in obedience to your commands I have resolved to accept the primacy, and, obeying the Lord’s vision, I make myself the least of your community.”

Accordingly, in every respect she undertook every task of the monastery customarily performed by the lowest person: carrying water, cutting wood, and removing filth. She began to be so dear to God that she cast demons out of possessed bodies and opened the eyes of the blind.

A certain Alexandrian matron named Melancia, more eminent than the others, had been afflicted with quartan fever for a year and longer. Hearing of Eugenia’s reputation, she came to her. When Eugenia anointed her with oil, Melancia immediately vomited an abundance of bile and was healed.

When Melancia sent her three cups filled with solidi, Eugenia sent them back, saying: “We abound and superabound, but I ask you to distribute them to the poor.” Melancia came to her in sorrow and began to ask her to accept them. While she was making frequent visits over this matter, she did not discover that Eugenia was a woman. Deceived by the attractiveness of her youth, she fell into desire for her.

Thinking that Eugenius desired more money, Melancia offered boundless wealth. When she saw that Eugenius rejected everything, she began to address her privately in these words: “Why do you torment yourself with vain abstinence and waste the flower of your most pleasing youth, as though God loved the sorrowful, cherished those who spurn his delights, and delighted only in human torments? We seem to misuse his gifts. Therefore put an end to affliction and embrace more joyful times.”

While Melancia said such things, Eugenia, wishing to rescue her soul from the devil’s snares, showed her how wretched the desires of the world are, how they flee while people think they hold them, and how the pleasure of a single moment brings eternal losses.

But Melancia heard these things with a deaf ear and carefully considered how she might ensnare Eugenius. She feigned illness and caused Eugenius to be asked to visit her as a sick woman. When Eugenia had entered her chamber out of piety and sat down, the unhappy Melancia began to tempt her with obscene embraces and to urge her to sin with wanton words.

Eugenia said to her: “You are rightly called Melancia, for you are filled with the blackness of treachery and have prepared yourself as a great dwelling for the devil. Begone from the servants of God, deceitful seductress, for we wage war in another manner.” Thus, reproaching the wretched woman and dismissing her, Eugenia departed.

Melancia could not bear the shame of her deception. Fearing that she herself would be exposed unless she first exposed Eugenia, she approached the prefect of Alexandria. She denounced a wicked young man who feigned the Christian religion, saying: “Because he was said to be skilled in the art of healing, he was summoned by me for treatment. During my illness he shamelessly dared speak to me and urge me to sin. Had I not raised my voice and been delivered by the help of my maidservant, he would have made me captive to his lust.”

When the prefect heard these things, he became furious and immediately sent his servants to the monastery. He ordered Eugenius and her companions brought to him in chains, and, once they had been presented, commanded them to be shut in different prison cells. The shameless report spread throughout Egypt. Everyone believed it, everyone condemned them, and it seemed plausible to everyone that Melancia, an illustrious woman, could not lie.

On the appointed day, therefore, the neighboring cities assembled to see the corruptors handed over to the bites of beasts. Racks, scourges, flames, torturers, and the other things customarily employed to occulpare [read: exsculpere, draw out the hidden things of the heart] were prepared.

When Eugenia was brought forward, Philip the prefect said before all the people: “Speak, most wicked of Christians. Did your Jesus teach you these things, that you should devote yourself to the work of corruption and capture a matron’s modesty by fraudulent cunning?”

Eugenia, her head lowered so that she could not be recognized, answered: “My God Jesus Christ, whom I serve, taught chastity and promises eternal life to those who preserve it. And so that you may turn the sentence against this false witness, we shall prove in due time that the charge she brings rebounds upon her.”

She said to Melancia: “O Melancia, name of blackness and dark wickedness, order your maidservant to be brought forward so that the lies may be refuted from her own mouth.” When the maidservant was brought in, she began, after being suborned by her mistress, to bear testimony against Eugenius, as did the others of her household.

The enraged prefect said: “What will you still say, ill-omened man, when all these witnesses wholly convict you?”

Eugenia answered: “It is time to speak, because the time for silence has passed. So great is the power of Christ’s name that even women who abide in fear of him attain manly dignity. I, therefore, though a woman, have played the man by acting courageously and by bravely embracing the virginity that is in Christ.”

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 227.]

Saying this, she tore from top to bottom the tunic in which she was clothed, and she appeared as a woman. She added: “You, according to the flesh, are my father; Claudia is my mother; and my brothers who sit with you are Avitus and Sergius. For the love of Christ I rejected the world with its delights. And behold Prothus and Iacinctus, my eunuchs, with whom I entered the school of Christ.”

Her father, mother, brothers, and servants recognized her and fell upon her with tears and embraces in the sight of the people. Garments woven with gold were brought, and although unwilling, she was clothed in them. She was placed in a high position before the tribunal, and all the people acclaimed: “There is one true God, Christ, who is the true God of the Christians.”

So that proof of her chastity would not be lacking amid such great joy of the people, fire was seen descending from heaven. It so completely surrounded Melancia’s house that no trace of anything belonging to her remained. The people therefore rejoiced with the fear of God.

Philip the prefect, his wife Claudia, and their children were baptized. His whole household and an innumerable multitude of pagans were converted to Christ. The Christians received privileges, and the whole city of Alexandria became as though one church.

The whole Church agreed upon Philip for its bishop. Because he had embraced Christianity, Philip was deposed from the prefecture by the emperor, but he was elected and ordained bishop by the faithful. Devoting himself to fasts, prayers, and other holy works, he was finally crowned with martyrdom.

Eugenia, however, returned to Rome with her mother, brothers, Prothus, and Iacinctus. By word and example she drew many to the faith. Among them was a certain most noble virgin betrothed to an illustrious man named Pompeius. The virgin was named Basilla.

One day Eugenia said to Basilla, “It has been revealed to me by God that a great reward of virginity awaits you.”

Basilla answered her: “And it has been revealed to me that you will receive a double crown of martyrdom: one that you acquired through your righteous labors at Alexandria, and the other that you will receive through the shedding of your blood.”

Eugenia then addressed the holy virgins who were present with many words about preserving chastity. Commending them to the Lord, she departed from them.

On that same day one of Basilla’s maidservants accused her before her betrothed, Pompeius. She said that his bride had become a Christian and did not wish to marry him, and that this had been accomplished through Prothus and Iacinctus, teachers of magical art.

After Pompeius learned that his bride refused even to see him, asserting that she was preserving her body intact for Christ, he became furious. He prostrated himself before the emperor and said: “Most sacred princes, come to the aid of your Romans, and drive from this city the new gods that Eugenia brought with her from Egypt. Behold, the Christians separate the favor of marriage and take those who are betrothed as their own. They have discovered gods who forbid human beings to be born.”

The emperor then decreed that Basilla must either receive her bridegroom or be struck by the sword, while Eugenia must either sacrifice to the divine powers or perish cruelly.

Basilla refused to receive her bridegroom, saying that she had Christ, the Son of God and King of kings, as her bridegroom. Because she was of royal lineage and could not be tried publicly, she was pierced with a sword inside her house.

Prothus and Iacinctus were led to the temple of Jupiter and compelled to sacrifice to him. The image fell at his feet [read: at their feet] and was so completely shattered that it could not be seen where it had stood. The prefect Vicetius [read: Nicetius] attributed this not to the power of God but to magical art and caused them to be beheaded.

The same prefect summoned Eugenia and began to question her about the magical arts. She answered him steadfastly: “I confess to you that our art is greater than magical art. For our master has a father without a mother, a mother without a father, and a virgin wife who daily bears him children yet remains entirely steadfast in his love.”

When she was led to the temple of Diana to sacrifice, an earthquake occurred at her prayer, and the foundations of the temple were overthrown together with the idol. The Roman people then rushed together, and various opinions about her circulated: some declared her innocent and holy, others a magician.

When a report concerning these things was made by the prefect to the emperor, he ordered Eugenia bound to a stone and thrown into the Tiber. As soon as this was done, the stone broke apart, and Eugenia, sitting upon it, was carried over the river’s water. It was apparent to everyone that he was with her in the river and would not permit her to be swallowed up who had been with Peter upon the sea and prevented him from sinking.

She was taken from there and cast into the furnaces of the baths, which were immediately extinguished. After this she was thrown into a dark prison and left there for twenty days without light or food, but every day an abundance of radiance filled the place. The Savior also appeared to her there, and from his hand she received bread of snowy whiteness as he comforted her.

On the day of the Lord’s Nativity, an executioner was sent who struck her down and killed her in prison. Her body was buried not far from the city on her own estate, where she herself had buried many.

While her mother Claudia prayed with tears at her tomb, Eugenia appeared to her in a garment woven with gold amid a multitude of virgins. She comforted Claudia and said that her father—that is, Claudia’s husband Philip—had been placed in the company of the patriarchs, and that Claudia herself would be received by the Lord in heaven on the following Sunday.

Claudia returned home, instructed her sons in the Lord, and on the appointed day yielded up her spirit. Her sons buried her beside Eugenia. Perfect in the fear of the Lord, after converting many pagans, they passed to the kingdom of heaven.

It should be noted that Eugenia pretended to be a man in order to be received as a monk and consented to be appointed abbot. This was permitted by the law of heaven, not by the law of the forum, for she was inspired to it by the Holy Spirit, whose law is not subject to human law, as stated in Cause 19, Question 2, “There Are Two Laws.”

It is therefore not lawful to follow her example unless someone possesses a special inspiration for it from the Holy Spirit and is certain of it. Hence the rule of law in Book Six, On Rules of Law: “Things that depart from the common law are not to be drawn into precedent.” Yet in that time the canons prohibiting these things had not yet been established.

§ XIII: Commodus’s Birthday Persecution

While Commodus was raging in persecution against the Christians, his own birthday arrived. He issued an edict that the whole populace of the city of Rome should assemble in one place and acclaim Hercules and Jupiter with ceremonial cries of praise. This was done.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

For when the emperor, publicly clothed in a royal garment with a miter, ascended his seat, he offered incense to a golden statue of Jupiter. All the people acclaimed: “May Hercules be the protector of the commonwealth and the defender of the boldness of Roman liberty!”

At that time certain worshipers of Christ were staying in a particular district. Among them were Eusebius, Vincentius, Peregrinus, and Potentianus, who had distributed all their possessions to the poor so that they might serve God more freely, desiring to die for him.

When these men heard Commodus’s edict, they ran through the streets, preaching to everyone that they should withdraw from the worship of demons, do penance, believe in God three and one, and receive baptism.

A certain senator named Julius was moved by their teaching. He believed in Christ with his household and received baptism through the priest Rufinus. He became so fervent that he desired to die for Christ.

When Caesar heard this, he ordered Julius brought before him and said: “Julius, how have you become so mad that, abandoning Jupiter and Hercules, you follow some unknown and empty madness?”

Julius answered him courageously: “You will endure punishments together with your gods, whom in your empty error you rashly and falsely declare to be gods.”

Confounded, Caesar committed the investigation of this case to a certain master of the infantry named Vitellius, ordering that Julius’s property be taken away and that he be condemned to death if he refused to sacrifice to Hercules.

Vitellius, savage in spirit and beset by every vice, received Julius and thrust him into prison. After three days he caused him to be brought naked and chained before his tribunal. He urged Julius to sacrifice to their gods so that he might not perish and lose everything in which he trusted.

Julius answered: “My confidence is eternal life, and my hope is Christ, who will condemn you with your ruler forever.” Filled with fury at this, Vitellius ordered him beaten with clubs until he breathed out his spirit.

Eusebius and the others named above secretly took his body and buried it devoutly. When Vitellius heard this, he caused them to be seized. Brought before him, they confessed that they had buried Julius. They did not fear his threats but desired with all their hearts to suffer for Christ.

Vitellius ordered them suspended upon the rack and beaten with sinews and clubs. Eusebius said to him: “Your time for torturing us will fail before my spirit, persevering in Christ, fails.”

Vitellius said to those standing nearby: “Confident in their magical art, these men rejoice in their torments.”

Vincentius answered: “We rejoice and exult in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Vitellius then ordered flames applied to their sides. Becoming joyful, they said: “Glory to you, Lord, who surround us with your visitation.”

One of the executioners, named Antoninus, gazed intently and saw a young man standing with a sponge, shining with an exceedingly great radiance and wiping their sides. Raising his voice with great joy, he began to cry: “There is one true God of the Christians, whom these men preach with the clearest reason. I see an angel of the Lord standing around them and protecting them from the pressure of the flames.”

The judge then began to roar like a lion, crying: “O magical art! O seducers, who have alienated from his own mind a man most distinguished in the commonwealth!”

Antoninus immediately vowed that he would believe in Christ. Approaching the priest Rufinus, he received baptism.

Vitellius then caused the martyrs to be taken down from the rack and said: “Why are you so cruel to yourselves? Why do you not put away your madness, adore those whom the rulers have commanded, and enjoy this life with us?”

Blessed Vincentius answered: “O most wretched of all men, you are cruel, for you do not spare yourself. We have already been established in glory, but you will perish in Gehenna with your ruler.”

Vitellius then commanded Saint Eusebius’s tongue to be cut out. Antoninus ran forward, crying: “O most wretched Vitellius, what business do you have with these righteous men? Why do you torture them?” Vitellius began to vomit blood from his mouth. Nevertheless, after his tongue had been cut out, Eusebius, the Lord’s athlete, offered praises to Christ in the highest.

At Vitellius’s order Antoninus was led away by the executioners and beheaded on the Aurelian Way.

Eusebius and his companions, after being wasted by torments, were thrust into prison. Saint Julius appeared to them there, comforted them, and foretold the conversion of the prison guard.

A priest of the Capitol named Lupulus, who was blind, approached them in prison so that the holy martyrs might instruct and baptize him. Instructed in the faith and having received baptism, he recovered his sight. When the prison guard saw this miracle, he too was baptized.

Finally, when these things were reported to Emperor Commodus, he ordered that, if they refused to worship the gods, they should be beaten with lead-weighted scourges until they breathed out their spirits. This was done, and they rested in the Lord.

Emperor Commodus, moreover, caused the head of the Colossus to be removed and the head of his own image to be placed upon it, as Eusebius says in the Chronicles. The same Commodus killed many nobles and provided the Roman people with remarkable spectacles.

When a fire broke out in Rome, the palace, the temple of the goddess Vesta, and a very great part of the city were leveled to the ground. “Thus,” Hugh of Fleury says, “the punishment of the city followed the crimes of Emperor Aurelius Commodus. For the Capitol was struck by lightning, and the resulting fire consumed the Roman library in a devouring whirlwind.”

At length Caesar Commodus, troublesome to everyone, was strangled to death in the Vestal house.

§ XIV: Heluis Pertinax, Julianus, and Severus

The aged Heluis Pertinax was made emperor by the senate. According to Eusebius, when the senate begged this emperor to call his wife Augusta and his son Caesar, he refused, declaring it sufficient that he himself reigned unwillingly. For he was more than seventy years old when he administered the prefecture of the city and was commanded by a decree of the senate to rule.

At last he was killed through the crime of the jurist Julianus, whom Severus afterward killed at miluum pontem. Julianus, who usurped the Roman Empire for himself, reigned for seven months, Hugh says. Thus one year was consumed between Pertinax and Julianus, his successor in the empire.

Severus, therefore, an African by birth, attained the Roman Empire. From the name of the emperor whose murder he had avenged, he wished to be called Pertinax. According to Hugh, he reigned for eighteen years.

He was savage by nature and was provoked by many wars. He governed the commonwealth with the greatest courage, but also with the greatest toil. For he killed the man who had aspired to tyranny in Egypt and Syria; overcame the Jews and Samaritans when they attempted to rebel; restrained the Parthians and Arabs; and finally, after killing claudio albino at lugduni, where Albinus had made himself Caesar in Gaul, transferred the war into Britain.

After repeatedly waging great and serious wars there, he recovered the island. He fortified it from sea to sea with a rampart and frequent towers extending for 132 miles.

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 228.]

After Nero, Severus also exercised the fifth persecution against the Christians. During this persecution many saints are related to have suffered in different places and provinces. Among them was Leonides, the father of Origen. Beheaded for Christ, he left his son Origen still of tender age.

Origen, then in the seventeenth year of his life, procured what he needed by teaching grammar. For the property of his father Leonides, which had been very great, had been added to the imperial treasury through confiscation.

According to Eusebius in the Chronicles, Severus began to reign in the year of the Lord 194. This Severus was also keen in intellect, sufficiently instructed in both Greek and Latin letters, and persevering to the end in everything to which he directed himself. In whatever direction his goodwill inclined, it was marvelous and perpetual. He was diligent in acquiring, liberal in giving, and equally vehement toward friends and enemies.

At first he was an advocate. He was the first and last man from Africa to rule. His son Antoninus Caracalla succeeded him in the empire.

When Severus died at eborachum, he left two sons: Antoninus, who was also called Bassianus, and Geta. Geta died after being judged a public enemy, and Antoninus assumed the empire. He was surnamed Caracalla because of the kind of garment that he had distributed at Rome. Antoninus was succeeded in the empire by Alexander.

§ XV: Narcissus and Alexander, Bishops of Jerusalem

Concerning Narcissus and Alexander, bishops of Jerusalem, who lived around the times of Pope Victor and Emperor Severus: on the solemn day of the Easter vigil, oil was lacking for the lamps while Narcissus was bishop. When the ministers informed him of this, the people experienced great sorrow.

But Narcissus, trusting in faith, commanded the ministers to draw water and bring it to him. After praying, he blessed the water that had been brought and commanded it to be poured into the lamps. Then suddenly, by a marvelous kind of power unheard of through the ages, the nature of the water was changed into the richness of oil, and it made the light of the lamps shine even more brightly than usual.

Because Narcissus was an inflexible adherent of justice and righteousness, certain wicked little men, conscious of evil in themselves, feared that they could not escape punishment for their crimes if they were accused. Through their plots they anticipated vengeance and prepared to ensnare the man whose judgment they feared.

They therefore contrived against him a sufficiently infamous and criminal charge. The hearers came together and brought forward witnesses from among themselves, who confirmed under oath what was alleged. One witness swore that he would be consumed by fire if he did not testify truthfully; another, that he would be corrupted by jaundice; and the third, that he would be deprived of his eyes.

Although none of the faithful and God-fearing believed even their oaths, because Narcissus’s manner of life and chastity were known to everyone, Narcissus himself could not endure the indignity and annoyance of the charges that had been raised. At the same time, he had always desired to possess a secret and philosophical life. He therefore fled from the multitude of the Church and remained hidden for very many years in desert places and more secluded little fields.

Yet the great eye of divine providence did not rest for long. Rather, it prepared vengeance against the impious men for this very matter according to the curses they had established for themselves in their perjuries.

For the house of the first witness was ignited at night by a small spark of fire, and he was burned up in avenging flames together with his whole family and kindred. The second was suddenly filled, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, with the jaundice he had invoked, and he was consumed by it.

The third saw the fate of the first two and perceived that he had not escaped the divine eye. He came forward publicly and, in the hearing of everyone, disclosed in late repentance the whole course of their obstinate crime. He lamented the enormity of the offense they had committed with such great tears and continued weeping day and night so long that he lost his sight. Thus these men paid punishments of this kind for their own invention.

Narcissus, however, had gone into the desert and hidden himself in more secluded places, so that no one knew where he now lived. The bishops therefore judged it necessary to ordain another man in his place, whose name was Dius. When he had governed the Church for a short time, Germanus succeeded him, and Vigordius succeeded Germanus.

Then behold, Narcissus suddenly appeared, as though restored to life and returned from heaven, and the brethren again asked him to preside over the Church. But since he was now too old to suffice for the ministry of the pontificate, a certain Alexander, a Cappadocian by birth and already bishop of a distinguished city, hastened to Jerusalem to worship and visit the holy places.

The Lord showed plainly, not only to blessed Narcissus himself but also to very many others through revelations among the people, that they should retain Alexander as bishop in the holy place. Moreover, something more fearsome than all the rest occurred. On the day when Alexander was reported to have entered the city, a very great multitude of the brethren went outside the gates to meet him. A voice from heaven was manifestly heard by everyone, saying: “Receive the bishop whom God has appointed for you.”

When the event had thus been fulfilled as foretold, all the bishops of Palestine assembled in one place. With Narcissus himself especially consenting, Alexander undertook with him the governance of the Church of Jerusalem. Eusebius writes all these things in his Ecclesiastical History.

Jerome reports that this Alexander says at the end of a certain letter that he wrote to the antinoitas concerning the peace of the Church: “Narcissus, who before me held the episcopal office here and who now governs the same place with me by his prayers, greets you. He has done so for about seventeen years [read: being about one hundred sixteen years old], and together with me he exhorts you to be of one mind.”

During the seventh persecution under Decius, in whose time Babillas suffered at Antioch, Alexander was led to Caesarea and shut in prison. Because of his confession of Christ, he was crowned with martyrdom.

§ XVI: Saint Cecilia

Cecilia, a most illustrious virgin sprung from a noble Roman family, was raised in the faith of Christ from her very cradle. She always bore the hidden Gospel of Christ in her breast, which I understand to mean in the breast of her mind and in the words of the Gospel.

Neither by day nor by night did she cease from divine conversation and prayer, and she begged the Lord to preserve her virginity.

She was betrothed to a certain young man named Valerian. When the appointed wedding day arrived, she wore a hair shirt next to her flesh and was covered above with golden garments. While instruments played, she sang to the Lord in her heart, saying: “Lord, let my heart and my body be immaculate, so that I may not be confounded.” First afflicting herself with fasts of two and three days, she commended her chastity to the Lord.

The night came in which she entered the secret silence of the bridal chamber with her husband. There she addressed him as follows.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

“O most beloved young man, there is a mystery that I will confess to you if you swear to me that you will preserve it.”

When he had sworn, she said: “I have an angel of God as a lover, and he guards my body with exceedingly great jealousy. If he perceives even slightly that you presume to violate my chastity or touch me with polluted love, he will immediately strike you in anger, and you will lose the flower of your most pleasing youth. But if he recognizes that you love me with sincere love, he will love you as he loves me and will show you his grace.”

Struck with fear at God’s prompting, Valerianus said: “If you wish me to believe you, show me the angel himself. If I truly prove that he is an angel, I shall do what you urge. But if you love another man, I shall strike both you and him with the sword.”

Cecilia said to him: “If you believe in the true God and receive baptism, you will be able to see the angel. Go, therefore, to the third milestone from the city on the road called the uia Appia. Say to the poor people whom you find there: ‘Cecilia has sent me to you so that you may show me the holy old man Urbanus, because I have secrets to deliver to him.’ When you see him, report my words to him. After he has purified you, you will return and see the angel himself.”

Valerianus therefore went there and found Saint Urbanus hiding among the tombs of the martyrs. When he had related everything to him, Urbanus gave thanks with tears and said: “Lord Jesus, sower of chaste counsel, receive the fruit of the seeds that you sowed in Cecilia. Lord Jesus, good shepherd, your servant Cecilia has served you like a resourceful ewe. For she received her bridegroom as though he were a fierce lion and has sent him to you as a most gentle lamb.”

Behold, an old man suddenly appeared, dressed in snow-white garments and holding an open book in his hands. In it these words were written in golden letters: “One God, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in us all, blessed.”

Seeing him, Valerianus fell as though dead from his exceedingly great fear. The old man raised him and said: “Do you believe these things are so, or do you still doubt?”

Valerianus then cried: “There is nothing under heaven that can be believed more truly.” The old man immediately disappeared, and Valerianus received baptism from Saint Urbanus.

When Valerianus returned home, he found Cecilia speaking with an angel in the bridal chamber. The angel held two crowns of roses and lilies. He handed one to Cecilia and the other to Valerianus, saying: “Guard these crowns with an immaculate heart and a pure body, because I have brought them to you from God’s paradise. They will never wither or lose their fragrance, nor can they be seen by any except those to whom chastity has been pleasing.

“You, Valerianus, because you believed beneficial counsel, ask of God whatever you wish.”

Valerianus answered: “Nothing in this life has been sweeter to me than the affection of my only brother. I therefore ask that he too may recognize the truth with me.”

The angel said to him: “Your request pleases the Lord, and you will both come to me with the palm of martyrdom.”

After this Tyburcius, Valerianus’s brother, entered the chamber. When he perceived the exceedingly strong fragrance of roses, he said: “I marvel whence this fragrance of roses and lilies breathes here at this season. Even if I held roses and lilies in my hands, they could not pour forth scents of such great sweetness. I confess to you that I am so refreshed that I think myself suddenly transformed entirely.”

Valerianus said to him: “We possess crowns made from flowers that your eyes cannot see. But just as, with one interceding, you perceived the fragrance [read: just as, at my intercession, you perceived the fragrance], so you will also be able to see them if you believe.”

Tyburcius said to him: “Do I hear these things in a dream or in truth?”

Valerianus answered: “Until now we have been in a dream, but now we remain in the truth.”

Tyburcius asked, “Who taught you these things?”

Valerianus answered: “An angel taught me. You will be able to see him if you are purified and renounce the idols.”

Cecilia then clearly showed him that all the idols were insensible and mute, so that Tyburcius said, “Whoever does not believe this is a beast.”

Immediately kissing his breast, Cecilia said: “Today I acknowledge you as my kinsman. For just as the love of God caused your brother to become my husband, so contempt for idols causes you to become my kinsman. Go, therefore, with your brother so that you may receive purification and be able to see angelic faces.”

When Valerianus wished to lead him away, Tyburcius said to him: “I beg you, my brother, to whom do you wish to lead me?”

He answered, “To Bishop Urbanus.”

Tyburcius said: “Do you speak of that Urbanus who has so often been condemned and still remains in hiding? If he is found, he will be burned, and we shall be enveloped in his flames. While we seek a divinity hidden in heaven, we shall incur a burning fury on earth.”

Cecilia answered him: “If this were the only life, we would justly fear to lose it. There is another, better life that is never lost, which the Son of God disclosed to us.” She explained to him many things concerning the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the Passion.

Moved by these things, Tyburcius said to Valerianus: “I beg you, my brother, lead me to the man of God so that I may receive purification.” Brought to Urbanus and baptized, he saw the angels of God, and whatever he and Valerianus asked from God they received.

After this Almachius, prefect of the city, was persecuting the Christians and killing many. When he heard that Tyburcius and Valerianus buried them and devoted themselves to almsgiving, he caused them to be brought before him and asked why they buried Christians whom he had condemned for their crimes.

Tyburcius answered him: “Would that we were the servants of those whom you call condemned! They despised what seems to be and is not and found what seems not to be and is.”

The prefect asked him, “What is that?”

Tyburcius answered: “What seems to be and is not is everything in the world that leads a person into nonbeing, namely the abuse of the things of the world. What seems not to be and is, is the life of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked, because they are not sensibly seen.”

The prefect said: “I do not think you speak from your own mind.” He therefore ordered Valerianus to stand before him and said to him: “Because your brother is not of sound mind, you at least will be able to give a wise answer. It is clear that you err greatly, for you reject joys and desire everything inimical to joy.”

Valerianus then said that in the icy season he had seen idle men at play and mocking laboring farmers. But in summertime, when the glorious fruits of their labors had arrived, the laborers whom people had considered foolish rejoiced, while those who had seemed sophisticated began to weep.

“So we Christians, who endure disgrace and labor in the present, shall receive glory and an eternal reward in the future. But you, who now possess worldly joy, will encounter eternal destruction in the future.”

The prefect said to him: “Then shall we, the most invincible rulers, possess everlasting grief, while you, the vilest persons, possess perpetual joy?”

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 229.]

Valerianus answered him: “You are little men, not rulers, born in our time and soon destined to die, and you will have to render a greater account than everyone else.”

The prefect said: “Why do we linger in a circuit of words? Offer libations to the gods and depart unharmed.”

The saints answered: “We offer sacrifice to God every day.”

The prefect asked them, “What is his name?”

Valerianus answered him: “You will not be able to discover his name even if you fly with wings.”

The prefect said: “Then is Jupiter not the name of a god?”

Valerianus answered him: “It is the name of a murderer and a rapist.”

The prefect said: “Does the whole world therefore err, while you and your brother know the true God?”

Valerianus answered: “We are not alone, but an innumerable multitude has received this holiness.”

The saints were therefore handed over to the custody of Maximus. He said to them: “O purple flower of youth! O genuine affection of brotherhood! How do you hasten toward death as though to a feast?”

Valerianus told him that, if he promised to believe, he would see the glory of their souls after death.

Maximus answered him: “May I be consumed by fiery thunderbolts if I do not confess the one God whom you worship, if what you say comes to pass.”

Maximus himself, his whole household, and all the executioners believed and received baptism from Saint Urbanus, who came there secretly.

When dawn put an end to the night, Cecilia cried: “Come, soldiers of Christ! Cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

The saints Tyburcius and Valerianus were then led to the statue of Jupiter at the fourth milestone from the city. When they refused to sacrifice, they were beheaded together.

Maximus then affirmed with an oath that at the hour of their suffering he had seen shining angels and the martyrs’ souls coming forth like virgins from a bridal chamber, and that the angels carried those souls into their bosom.

When Almachius heard that Maximus had become a Christian, he ordered him beaten with lead-weighted scourges until he returned his spirit to God. Cecilia ordered his body buried beside Tyburcius and Valerianus.

Almachius then began to inquire into the property of the two men. He ordered Cecilia to stand before him as Valerianus’s wife, commanding her either to sacrifice to the idols or receive a sentence of death.

When her young kinsmen pressed her toward sacrifice with their persuasions and wept bitterly because so beautiful and noble a girl was willingly handing herself over to death, she said to them: “Good young men, this is not to destroy youth but to exchange it: to give mud and receive gold, to give a worthless dwelling and receive a precious one,” and so forth.

Concluding, she asked: “Do you believe these things that I say?”

They answered: “We believe that Christ is the true God, for he possesses such a servant.”

When Bishop Urbanus had been summoned, four hundred and more were baptized.

Almachius caused Cecilia to be brought before him. When she answered his questions boldly and confounded the prefect, he said: “Do you not know how great my power is?”

Cecilia answered: “Your power is like a wineskin filled with wind. If a needle pricks it, all its stiffness at once grows pale, and whatever rigidity it seems to possess bends. But because we know God’s holy name, we can by no means deny it. It is better to die happily than to live unhappily.”

Almachius asked, “Why do you speak with such great pride?”

She answered, “It is not pride but constancy.”

Almachius said: “Now put away your madness and sacrifice to the gods.”

Cecilia answered him: “I do not know where you have put your eyes. For we see that those whom you call gods are mute stones. Put forth your hand and learn by touching what you are unable to see with your eyes.”

The enraged Almachius then ordered her returned to her house, where he commanded her to be burned for a whole day and night in a boiling bath. She remained as though in a cold place and did not feel even the least sweat.

When Almachius heard this, he ordered her beheaded in the bath itself. The executioner struck her neck with three blows but was unable to cut off her head. Because it had been decreed that a person being beheaded should not receive a fourth blow, the bloodied executioner left her half alive.

She survived for three days, distributed all her possessions to the poor, and commended to Bishop Urbanus all those whom she had converted to the faith, saying: “I asked the Lord for a reprieve of three days so that I might commend these people to Your Blessedness and so that you might consecrate this house of mine as a church.”

Saint Urbanus therefore buried her, crowned with martyrdom, among the bishops and consecrated her house as a church, as she had requested. She suffered around the year of the Lord 220, in the time of Emperor Alexander.

§ XVII: Saint Martina

In the time of the same Emperor Alexander, as Vincent reports in Book Twelve, Chapter Twenty-Seven of the Historical Mirror, there was a holy virgin named Martina. A noblewoman born at Rome from the splendid order of senators, she was instructed from infancy in the mysteries of Holy Scripture and adorned with every virtue. Possessing many estates and riches, she distributed them generously to the poor.

When she was brought as a believer before Emperor Alexander, who was persecuting the Christians, he saw that she was exceedingly beautiful and burned with love for her. He therefore invited her to worship the gods so that she might preside over the palace and become his partner in the empire.

Martina answered that she had offered herself to the true God, who delights in a pure heart and a chaste body.

When she was brought into the temple of Apollo, her prayer caused all Rome to be shaken by an earthquake. Apollo was shattered, and a falling quarter of the temple crushed a multitude of pagans with their priests.

Martina said to the emperor: “Help your god, who has been shattered.”

Then the demon, rolling himself in the idol’s dust, cried: “O Martina, virgin of God and servant of the great God, by casting me from the dwelling in which I have remained for ninety-eight years, you have displayed me in a hideous state. I had 472 spirits beneath me, who daily offered many souls to me, but now you hand me over to the tardarico [read: tartarico, Tartarean] fire.” When the demon himself departed, the air wherever he passed was exceedingly foul.

The virgin was then ordered beaten, but the eight executioners cried that she was tormenting them more. They asserted that they saw four most splendid men threatening them with blows.

The virgin therefore prayed to God for those same eight torturers and converted them to the faith when light poured from heaven over them together with this voice: “Because of the prayer of my servant, I spare you.”

Converted to Christ, they refused the emperor’s command to sacrifice to the idols. After being suspended on the rack and then lacerated over their whole bodies, they were beheaded for Christ.

On the following day the emperor caused Martina to be brought before him, stripped, and her flesh cut with swords. Yet she appeared white as snow, and a radiance proceeding from her body dazzled the eyes of those who looked upon her.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

Milk also flowed from her wounds instead of blood. Those who struck her said, complaining, that the angels struck them in return and that they were being burned as though by fire.

On the following morning Limineus, a relative of the emperor, was sent to bring her forth. He was filled with a most pleasant fragrance. Opening the prison, he saw her surrounded by an immense light. Falling to the ground from fear and scarcely rising again, he saw her seated upon a glorious throne and a multitude of white-clad men around her. She herself held in her hand a golden tablet on which was written: “How greatly magnified are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom.”

Limineus reported these things to the emperor, but they attributed them all to magical art, saying that the virgin’s magic had deceived Limineus.

The virgin was led out of prison and commanded to sacrifice to the god Archemides. When she entered the temple, the demon who inhabited the idol cried: “Woe is me, because fire pursues me through the four corners of the temple!” When the virgin commanded him to move and come out shrieking, thunder immediately sounded with lightning. Fire also fell from heaven, burned the priests of the idols, and reduced the idol to ashes.

The virgin was then ordered stretched out as a destroyer of the temple. Her limbs were cut with swords, and the area around her breasts was handled with hooks. Since amid all these things she stood steadfast and glorified God, she was ordered handed over to beasts so that she might be scattered and die torn apart.

A most savage lion, which had not eaten for three days so that it might devour her more quickly, was released against her. Coming forth, it roared over her, displaying not terror but compassion. Caressing her with its face, it walked up to her, bent down, and kissed her feet.

She said: “You shine in your powers, O God, for I behold angels on my right and left glorifying the divinity.”

Seeing this, the emperor commanded the lion to be led back into its cage. Making a rush, it killed Eumenius, a relative of the king. Enraged because of this, the emperor ordered Martina thrown into a kindled fire. But rain descending from heaven extinguished the fire and dispersed its flame by the wind, while the flame burned many of the bystanders. Thinking that the power of her magical practices resided in her hair, the emperor caused the hair of her head to be shaved.

Emperor Alexander caused her to be shut in the temple of the god Zeus. When they opened it after three days, they found her shining, with splendid men—that is, angels—beside her, and the god Zeus fallen and reduced to dust.

Finally, the emperor commanded that she be cast outside the city and her head cut off with a sword. A voice came from heaven, saying: “Because you have contended for my name, Virgin Martina, enter with all the saints into the kingdom of heaven.” At that voice the terrified executioners died.

Her body was honorably buried by the clergy and people on the Kalends of January, that is, January 1. When a great earthquake occurred, 2,300 people believed in Christ.

Eusebius says in the Chronicles that Emperor Alexander was killed during a military riot at maguntiam. This Emperor Alexander prohibited himself from being called lord, although he retained the title of emperor. He enacted no law unless twenty most learned men had first written down their carefully considered judgments.

He resolved to build a temple for Christ and receive him among the gods. It is also said that Hadrian had thought of this, for he commanded temples to be built without images in every city. But those who guarded the sacred rites prohibited him, asserting that through this everyone would become Christian.

Alexander maintained that it was safer for the commonwealth to have a bad emperor than to have bad counselors, because one bad man is often corrected by many good men, but the reverse does not occur.

Glodius albinus was an extraordinary Caesar. While fasting he ate five hundred dried figs, one hundred Campanian peaches, ten Hostian Belones [read: melones, melons], and four hundred Obscreas [read: ostreas, oysters]. He abhorred sexual intercourse. He was most learned in agriculture, as is read in a certain chronicle.

§ XVIII: Pope Callistus and His Companions

In the year of the Lord 222, in the time of Emperor Alexander, the more elevated part of the city of Rome was burned by a divine fire. In the temple of Jupiter his golden left hand was melted.

The priests of the idols then came to Alexander, asking that the angry gods be appeased with sacrifices. While they were sacrificing at Alexander’s command, four priests of the idols were suddenly struck by lightning together with Jupiter’s altar, under a clear sky on Thursday morning. The day was darkened so that the Roman people fled outside the walls.

When the consul Palmatius heard that Pope Callistus was hiding with his clerics trans tyberim, he asked the emperor that the Christians, on whose account this sign had come, should be compelled to purify the city. Having received authority, Palmatius hastened there with soldiers. But militibus excecatus [read: militibus excecatis, the soldiers having been blinded], the terrified Palmatius quickly reported this to Alexander.

The emperor then ordered all the people to assemble and sacrifice to Mercury. While this was being done, a temple virgin named Juliana, seized by a demon, cried: “The God of Callistus is living and true, and he is angered by our pollutions.”

Hearing this, Palmatius ran to Saint Callistus trans tyberim, in the city of the Rauennatium. Prostrating himself before him and professing the truth, he requested baptism. Immediately baptized with his entire household and family, forty-two in number, he distributed all his possessions to the poor over the course of forty days.

Because of this, Alexander caused Palmatius to be presented to him and handed him over to Senator Simplicius, so that by treating him gently he might convert him, since Palmatius was very necessary to the commonwealth.

While Palmatius continually wept and prayed, a certain man named Felix came to him and asked him to pray for his paralyzed wife, promising that he would believe if Palmatius healed her. When Palmatius prayed, she was healed. Felix was baptized with her by Pope Callistus, and the miracle he witnessed converted Senator Simplicius himself to the faith.

When Alexander heard all these things, he ordered everyone who had been baptized to be beheaded. He ordered the priest Calepodius beheaded and cast into the Tiber, and the heads of those who had been beheaded suspended at every gate of the city to terrify the Christians.

Pope Callistus then fled with his clerics and hid in the house of Pontianus. After seeking and finding Calepodius’s body, he buried it honorably in his own cemetery.

When the emperor heard this, he caused Callistus to be brought before him and kept him for five days without food or drink. Seeing him still more comforted, he ordered him scourged every day and prohibited everyone from entering to him.

Callistus, however, was comforted when Saint Calepodius appeared to him. A private soldier who came to him was beaten with lead-weighted scourges to the point of death. Callistus himself was thrown from a window, bound to a stone, cast into a well, and rubble was heaped upon him.

[Running head: Chapter Six, Folio 230.]

Asterius, however, together with his clerics, raised Callistus’s body from the well at night and buried it. Therefore the aforementioned priest Asterius was thrown from a bridge six days later and completed his martyrdom in the city of Hostia.

This notable saying of Callistus is found in Distinction 50: “Let each person weigh his words, and let him not say to another what he does not wish to have said to himself. For we need time so that we may act more maturely. Let us not rush our counsels and deeds, nor corrupt their order. But if anyone has in any way fallen, let us bear with him and correct him with brotherly affection.”

And below, at the end: “Brethren, flee not only from holding but even from hearing a judgment that forbids mercy, because mercy is greater than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

§ XIX: Pope Urban and His Companions

Urban, a Roman nobleman, was noble by birth but nobler in holiness. A Christian from infancy and adorned with the virtue of abstinence and chastity, he adhered to Saint Pope Callistus while the persecution of Christians still raged cruelly.

Adorning the office of this dignity with the best pursuits of virtue, he suffered the confiscation of his possessions and was condemned many times after he was made pontiff and driven from the city. Secretly brought back by the faithful to the third milestone from the city, he continually preached to the peoples who gathered around him.

Meanwhile Alexander, the son of Mammaea, whose mother Origen had converted, began to reign. Compelled by his mother’s entreaties, the emperor became merciful and mild toward Christians and did not inflict persecution upon the innocent. He indeed consented to this, but did not decree it by edicts.

Consequently Almachius the prefect, an enemy of every good, laid secret snares and publicly punished those who came forth. After he had beheaded Cecilia with many others and had ordered Saint Urban sought everywhere, Carpasius, one of his ministers, entered a certain cave. Finding Saint Urban praying with three priests and three deacons, he immediately presented them to Almachius.

When they refused the order to sacrifice to Jupiter, they were immediately dragged before the tribunal as murderers, as burners of the city, and as seducers of the commonwealth. After despising the idol, they were thrust back into prison. They encouraged one another in prison, and Christians came to them.

When morning came they were presented to the judge and handled with dreadful blows. When they could not be overcome, they were again consigned to prison. Three magnificent men of tribunician rank who came to them, together with two priests, were excellently comforted by Saint Urban.

Hearing Urban’s words, the jailer Anolinus was moved and immediately asked to be baptized. Thus they kept vigil throughout the entire night and, when morning came, secretly departed to their own places.

When it was learned that Anolinus was a Christian, he was presented to Almachius with the saints. Immediately refusing to sacrifice, he was beheaded.

On the following night Almachius addressed Urban and the saints, promising that if they placed incense before Jupiter, they would be released and recover their liberty and possessions.

When they were led to the image and compelled to place incense before it, Saint Urban prayed. The image immediately fell, part of the temple collapsed, and twelve of the priests who tended the fire were killed.

Overcome by fear and anxiety, Almachius then ordered the saints led away with insults and mangled with the most grievous blows. While they were being seized in a beastly manner, the deacon Lucian passed to the Lord under the hands of those beating him. At the prefect’s order his body remained unburied throughout the day until the priest Fortunatus buried it at night.

When Urban, received again into prison, ceaselessly urged his companions to perseverance, he was led out on the third day and compelled to sacrifice. Spitting upon the idol together, they were beaten most cruelly with lead-weighted scourges. At last, as they all stretched out their necks, they were slaughtered, and their bodies were exposed to beasts and birds.

Divine vengeance immediately followed Carpasius. As he returned from the slaughter of the saints and sacrificed to the idol like a victor, he was seized by a demon. Blaspheming his own gods and unwillingly preaching the Christians, he was suffocated a little later.

Seeing this, his wife Marmenia and her daughter Lucina approached the priests Fortunatus and Justinus and were baptized. They honorably buried Saint Urban, who had been beheaded with his companions in the year of the Lord 230.

§ XX: Saints Quiricus and Julitta; Ypolitus, Berillus, and Ulpian

The history of Saints Quiricus and his mother Julitta is placed among the apocryphal writings in Distinction 15, “The Holy Roman Church,” and will therefore be abridged.

Julitta, the mother of Quiricus, was born at Yconio. Fleeing persecution, she went to Tharsum, where she was induced to sacrifice to the gods. Placed in the contest, she was sorrowful over her little son Quiricus. Finally, when his mother disclosed him, the little child Quiricus was presented to the governor.

Although the governor admonished him with threats and flatteries to deny Christ, Quiricus regarded the flatterer just as he regarded the man who threatened him. In eloquent speech he professed himself a Christian and could not be torn from this profession.

The governor said to him: “I wish you to disclose to me who has been your teacher in this doctrine.”

Quiricus answered: “I marvel at your foolishness, governor. You see so very tender an age in me, and one less suited to learning knowledge, yet you ask who taught me divine wisdom.”

Filled with fury at this, the governor ordered the little child beaten most severely. But with his eyes and hands raised to heaven, he gave thanks to God. He said to the executioners, “I am a Christian.” As often as he uttered the voice of this pious confession, so often the strength of his body was restored. His mother also strengthened her son with pious affection.

After many torments they were shut in prison and converted many people, all of whom were beheaded. After them, the mother and son were also beheaded. Their bodies were cut limb from limb and scattered so that they could not be buried, but an angel gathered them and Christians buried them.

Jerome says in On Illustrious Men that Bishop Ypolitus, who wrote an account of Easter and a canon of the times down to the first year of Emperor Alexander, devised a cycle of sixteen years and gave Eusebius the occasion to compose a nineteen-year cycle concerning the same Easter. He is regarded as illustrious. He wrote several commentaries on certain books of Holy Scripture.

Berillus, a bishop in Arabia, governed the Church for some time but at last fell into a heresy asserting that Christ had not existed before Mary, namely with respect to his divinity. Corrected by Origen through letters, he gave him thanks.

Ulpian the jurist, a counselor of Alexander, was also regarded as most illustrious according to Eusebius in the Chronicles.

[Running head: Seventh Title.]

§ XXI: Origene [read: Origen] and His Teaching

There were differing opinions among the ancient doctors concerning Origene [read: Origen], who lived in those times, and his teaching. Some said that he was a heretic, while others praised him and excused him from the errors found in his books, namely by saying that his rivals and falsifiers inserted them into the books and that he himself did not hold such opinions.

Jerome says of him as follows in On Illustrious Men: “Origen, who is also called Adamantius, was left poor at about seventeen years of age with six brothers and a widowed mother when, in the tenth year of Severus Pertinax, a persecution was stirred against the Christians and his father Leonides was crowned with martyrdom.

“Remaining at Alexandria when the Church was dispersed, he flourished there for many years and afterward taught at Caesarea and other places. He was held in the highest honor by Philip, who was the first Christian emperor.

“Learning the Hebrew language, he gathered the versions of the Old Testament made by the Seventy, Aquila of Pontus, Theodotion, and Symmachus, together with a fifth, sixth, and seventh version, and comparuit [read: comparauit, compared them] with the other versions.

“He learned dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, music, grammar, rhetoric, and the schools of all the philosophers, so that he might have the followers of secular letters as students and, under the occasion of secular literature, instruct them in the faith of Christ.

“He lived until Gallus Volusianus emperor [read: until Gallus and Volusianus, emperors] and died at Tyri [read: Tyre] in the sixty-ninth year of his life.” Thus Jerome.

It is said in Martin’s chronicle that after the apostles Origenes [read: Origen] flourished above everyone in the Church of God in knowledge, eloquence, and life. He had seven young men and the same number of young women who wrote down from his mouth material for various books. He wrote so much that blessed Jerome relates that he had read seven thousand volumes produced by him.

There was a proverb about him that as his life was, so was his teaching. He never lay upon a bed, never put on shoes, never ate meat, and never drank wine, as is read in the Ecclesiastical History.

As Eusebius relates, when Origen as a boy heard that his father was to be beheaded in martyrdom, he was so disposed by the fervor of faith that he wished to join his father and become a martyr with him. But so that his mother would not be deprived of him, she secretly took away his clothes during the night. In the morning, because he could not find them, he was held back.

So that he might be able to preach everywhere without suspicion of evil, even privately and among women, he caused himself to be made a eunuch. Some praised this deed, while others detested it.

Haymo, however, in the book called The Memory of Ecclesiastical Matters, as Vincent reports in the Historical Mirror, says as follows after many praises of Origen:

“I cannot sufficiently marvel that so illustrious a man, who so openly opposed heretics, fell into so notorious a heresy and error: namely, that he explained the seraph in Isaiah, Chapter Six, as the Holy Spirit; that in another place he wrote about the repentance of the devil; that he wrote about the absolution of the reprobate after a thousand years; and that he wrote many other things opposed to the orthodox faith, especially when he possessed a most abstinent and chaste life and so splendid a teaching.

“For my part, with the faith of the Fathers preserved, I would say of him that he did not write these things at all, but that heretics, in order maliciously to darken his splendid name, devised and wrote them and placed his name in their titles. Or, if he did write them, he did not establish them as his judgment but discussed them as an opinion.

“For, as he himself says, he learned the teachings of the philosophers and heretics so that he would not be less skilled in refuting them if he were ignorant of their doctrines. Perhaps, when in certain places he touched upon their errors in his writing, he was falsely accused of saying them on his own authority.

“Even if, as some hold, he wrote those heresies as his own judgment, one should feel great compassion for a man of so learned a mind, who supplied so great an abundance of learning. Of him the Fathers said: ‘Where he wrote well, no one wrote better.’

“I think that whatever Origen stated in error and wrote against the orthodox faith happened to him because in his excessive devotion to reading he embraced the philosophers. For he had touched upon and fully mastered the school of Plato and pittagore [read: Pythagoras], together with the volumes of the Stoic cheremonis [read: Chaeremon] and Cornutus and those of the other philosophers.

“Perhaps because he lingered too much among them and drank too long from Babilonis [read: Babylon’s] golden cup, he was in a certain way compelled to pour some of its dregs into Holy Scripture. Ecclesiastical men must therefore take great and diligent care not to devote themselves too much to philosophical studies, lest, when they have become drunk from their empty cups and swollen with proud ideas, they be recalled with greater difficulty to the humility of Christ after drawing back their foot, and assent more slowly to the faith once they have been taught contrary things.

“In saying this we do not condemn students of the arts or the arts themselves, for they are themselves read not without profit in order to unravel profound questions of theology and examine their arguments. Theology herself is mistress of the arts, and the others serve her as attendants.” Thus Haymo.

In the Decrees, Distinction 15, “The Holy Roman Church,” where Gelasius sets out the books approved by the Church, those rejected, and also those that are apocryphal, only those of Origen’s books that Jerome approves are approved. The others are condemned together with their author.

Eusebius is also reproved there in his Ecclesiastical History because he commended Origen too highly. In Cause 24, Question 3, the penultimate canon, where the heresies that arose in the Church are described, the heresy of Origen and his followers is included. They say that souls sinned at the beginning of the world, fell from heaven to earth according to the diversity of their sins, merited different bodies, and that the world was created for this reason.

Although a little book entitled On Origen’s Repentance, sent by him to Fabian, bishop of the city, is found, in which he laments his errors, and which Vincent includes in Book Twelve, Chapter Fourteen of the Historical Mirror, that book is nevertheless placed among the apocryphal writings in the aforementioned canon “The Holy Roman Church”; that is, its truth is doubtful.

In Cause 24, Question 2, the canon “Certainly,” it is said that Origen was anathematized after his death because of heresy. Jerome likewise says of him to pamachium [read: Pammachius]: “Origen held an evil opinion concerning the Son and a worse one concerning the Holy Spirit. He impiously advanced the fall of souls from heaven, denied the true resurrection of the flesh, and asserted that after many ages there would be one restoration of all things.” Saint Epiphanius also declares him a heretic.

Concerning true repentance and the cause of its failure, Adamantius, who according to Jerome is Origen himself, says as follows upon Leviticus. This is also found in On Penance, Distinction 3, the canon “Among These, First”:

“Not to sin belongs to God alone; to correct oneself belongs to the wise. But you will rarely find one who corrects himself. Confession of sin is rare, and repentance is rare. Nature and shame resist, because all flesh is liable to guilt.

“Whoever is ashamed to confess sin, while considering present things more than future things, Moses—who is a figure of God—wishes to find a soul empty of sin. But an irrational impulse comes first.”

[Running head: Chapter Seven, Folio 231.]

“The flame of a most rapid movement feeds upon the soul and burns away its innocence. Present things outweigh future things: pleasant things outweigh serious things, joyful things outweigh sorrowful things, and hasty things outweigh slower things. Swift iniquity suggests an opportunity to do harm. Slow and delaying virtue judges what is honorable before it begins; iniquity rushes everything headlong.

“Repentance is therefore sluggish and ashamed, because it is restrained by the shame of the prudent. It attends only to future things, whose appearance is late and whose fruit comes more slowly. Meanwhile shamelessness runs ahead; repentance is excluded by hope in present things, and its disposition is burned and abolished.”

And below: “Therefore, whoever wishes to be cleansed should remove strange fire. Strange fire is lust, avarice, and every depraved desire. This fire burns but does not cleanse.

“If those in whom it exists offer sacraments in the sight of the Lord, whether by ministering or receiving them, heavenly fire consumes them—that is, the vengeance and punishment of God—just as it consumed Nadab and abiū [read: Abihu], the sons of Aaron.

“But let the person who wishes to be cleansed offer himself to that fire which burns guilt, not the human being. This fire dried the flowing blood of the woman with the hemorrhage. This fire dried the guilt of the thief. For it is a consuming fire, namely one that heals those who confess simply and purely.” Thus he speaks there.

Likewise, concerning avoiding and guarding against the company of women and preserving chastity, especially among clerics, he says as follows in a certain little book, as Vincent reports in Book Twelve of the Historical Mirror:

“Because some among us have fallen into disgrace through living with women, the Lord, reproving a wretched man [read: wretched me] with severity through a revelation because of your negligence, commanded that clerics should not dwell with women.

“Certainly, the man who strives to cross where he has seen another fall is exceedingly rash, and the man into whom fear is not struck when another perishes is exceedingly weak. But the person who becomes cautious because of the fall of others is prudent.

“That is an adverse confidence which knowingly entrusts its life to dangers, and that hope is slippery which hopes to be saved among the kindling of sin. It is impossible to be surrounded by flames and not burn. It is difficult for someone to drink poison and live, or to sleep upon a riverbank and not fall.

“In this matter it is expedient to fear well rather than to trust badly. It is more useful for a person to recognize himself as weak so that he may prove strong than to wish to appear strong outwardly and emerge weak.

“A person who does not see riches suffers fewer troubles from avarice. The person joined to a woman is subject to temptations, in whom there is nothing except what wounds the one who draws near. The form of a woman has become the sting of sin.

“How many and what great bishops, clerics, and laymen, after contests of victories, after great deeds, and after every marvelous sign they are known to have displayed, have suffered shipwreck with all these things when they wished to sail in a fragile ship! How many lions has delicate weakness subdued! Although she is worthless and wretched, she makes great men her prey.

“O how the disorderly proximity of a woman hurls! Sparks leap from coals; asps hiss diseases, and a moth proceeds from clothing.

“The person who guards the good of chastity inwardly with a laborious struggle but causes it to be defamed outwardly does so in vain. The one who does not fulfill before everyone what he professes brings blasphemy upon the religion he has adopted, lest Christianity be believed to be a deception.

“A woman’s glance, suddenly and unexpectedly encountered, casts arrows into another’s eyes. It is more tolerable to hear a basilisk hissing than a woman singing. Every unsuitable odalitas [read: sodalitas, companionship] with women is glue for sins and poisoned birdlime with which the devil hunts.

“As though to passing women, access should be offered in a somewhat fleeting manner [read: access to women should be offered in passing, in a somewhat fleeting manner]. But such is always the unbelief of human hardness that it does not believe, either by hearing these things or even by seeing, that others have perished unless it sees itself perish too.

“Why do we marvel if Adam was seduced through Eve? No examples of those who had died preceded him, but one command alone constrained him, whereas neither innumerable deaths nor infinite commands restrain us.

“Nevertheless, I tell you: chastity or virginity is the fortification of holiness, the conquest of infamy, the weakness of wantonness, the victory of the soul, the prey of the body, an abundance of glories, the captivity of crimes, the abolition of scandals, the peace of virtues, the overthrow of restless wars, the summit of purity, the prison of lust, the harbor of honor, the life of the spirit, the death of the flesh, the state of angelic quality, and the honeycomb of human substance.” Thus Origen.

As the same Vincent testifies in the place cited above, although Origen erred in many things, as has been said, because he nevertheless left many excellent and useful writings, the Church received certain of them—namely those that blessed Jerome does not reject, as is clear in Distinction 15, “The Holy Roman Church.”

He wrote many homilies on the Pentateuch; very many homilies on Joshua and the Book of Judges according to the moral sense; three books on the beginning of Job; many homilies on Psalms 36, 37, and 38; three books and two homilies on the beginning of the Song of Songs; nine homilies on the prophet Isaiah; fourteen homilies on Jeremiah; fourteen homilies on Ezekiel; twenty-six books on Matthew; thirty-eight homilies on Luke; one treatise on the beginning of John; and ten books on the Epistle to the Romans.

He also wrote the books per hyarchon [read: Peri Archon], in which his heresies are especially found. As Epiphanius says: “If many heresies have been cast out of the Church because of one or two words contrary to the faith, how much more will Origen be regarded among the heretics, who devised so many perversities against the faith of God and proved an enemy of the Church?”