THE CHURCH IN ROME
IN THE FIRST CENTURY
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The Church in Rome in the First Century
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MCMXCIX
THE BAMPTON LECTURES
FOR 1913
THE CHURCH IN ROME
IN THE FIRST CENTURY
AN EXAMINATION OF VARIOUS CONTROVERTED QUESTIONS
RELATING TO ITS HISTORY, CHRONOLOGY, LITERATURE AND
TRADITIONS
EIGHT LECTURES
PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
IN THE YEAR 1913
ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, M.A.
CANON OF SALISBURY
BY
GEORGE EDMUNDSON, M.A.
LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE,
VICAR OF ST. SAVIOUR, UPPER CHELSEA
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA
1913
[A11 rights reserved]
CAROLO BULLER HEBERDEN
D.C.L.
AUL. REG. ET COLL. AEN. NAS. PRINCIPALI
ACAD. OXON. VICECANCELLARIO
AMICITIAE PROBATAE
TESTIMONIUM
D. D. D.
OLIM PER DECENNIUM COLLEGA
EXTRACT
FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
OF THE LATE
REV. JOHN BAMPTON
CANON OF SALISBURY
‘. . . I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, Masters, and
Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and
singular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes
hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall take and receive
all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations,
and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of
eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said
University and to be performed in the manner following:
‘I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a Lecturer
be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room
adjoining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and
two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year
following, at St. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month
in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term.
‘Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be
preached upon either of the following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute
all heretics and schismatics—upon the divine authority of the holy
Scriptures—upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to
the faith and practice of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and
Saviour testis Christ —upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost—upon the Articles of
the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.
‘Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall
be always printed, within two months after they are preached; and one copy
shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of
every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and one copy to
be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be
paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the
Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled
to the revenue, before they are printed.
‘Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to preach the
Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at
least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same
person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice.'
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS
LECTURE I |
Character of the theme—The Rome of Claudius and of
Nero—Intercourse—Population—Slavery—The ‘Freedman' Class—Alien admixture—The
Jewish Colony and its history—Its privileges and characteristics—Judaism
attractive—Proselytes and ‘God-fearers'—The Synagogues—Soil prepared for
Christianity—The Laureolus—The Jews expelled by Claudius—Aquila and Prisca at
Corinth—Their antecedents and position—Their close intercourse with St. Paul—St.
Paul at Ephesus—His Journey to Greece—He writes to the Roman Church from
Corinth—The Epistle to the Romans: an Apologia—St. Paul's proposed visit to
Rome—Three groups of Roman Christians addressed—The impelling motive of the
Epistle—The Judaeo-Christians at Rome—The Salutations of Chap. xvi.
1-23—Genuineness of the passage—Criticism dealt with—The Church in the house
of Prisca and Aquila—Was this Ecclesia Domestica existent before 57 A.D.?—The
Apostles Andronicus and Junias—The households of Aristobulus and Narcissus—The
auto-biographic passage Chap. xv. 14-29—‘Another man's foundation'—Was the other man St. Peter? |
1–29 |
LECTURE II |
---|
The Lukan authorship of the Acts—Fragmentary character of the narrative—The Acts
written before 62 A.D.—The closing verses of the Acts—The Day of Pentecost—The
sojourning Romans—The Twelve at Jerusalem—The Hellenists and St.
Stephen—Consequences of St. Stephen's martyrdom—Activity of St. Peter —The
vision at Joppa—Conversion of Cornelius—Missionaries at Antioch—Barnabas sent to
Antioch—He seeks Saul—The name Christiani—Herod Agrippa persecutes the
Church—St. Peter escapes from prison—St. James and the Brethren—Value of
tradition—Oral tradition—Early Christian written records—Their
destruction—Apocryphal ‘Acts'—Criteria of authenticity—Evidence for St.
Peter's martyrdom at Rome—‘Ascension of Isaiah'—Clement of
Rome—Ignatius—Dionysius
of Corinth—Irenaeus—The Episcopal lists—Eusebius of
Caesarea—Jerome—The Petrine tradition universally accepted in East and West
alike—Archaeological evidence—Portraits—Sepulchral
inscriptions—Mosaics—Frescoes—The Petrine ‘legends' based on fact—The
Preaching of Peter—Local memories—St. Peter at Rome—The envoy of the
Twelve—Precedents of Samaria and Antioch—Analogy of circumstances |
30–58 |
LECTURE III |
St. Peter encounters Simon Magus at Rome—Eusebius on the story of Simon
Magus—His visit to Rome in Claudius' reign, and success—Weighty evidence of
Justin Martyr, of Irenaeus and Hippolytus—The theories of Baur and Lipsius
untenable—Vogue of Oriental cults and teachers at Rome—John Mark Peter's
interpreter—Origin of St. Mark's Gospel—Its date—Jerome's version of the Petrine
tradition—His sources of information—Relations with Pope Damasus—The Hieronymian
tradition and that of the Liberian Catalogue—The differences between
them—Chronological difficulties and discrepancies—Attempted solution—The
Antiochean narrative [ Acts xi. and xii.] examined—Barnabas and Paul bear alms to
Jerusalem, 46 A.D.—They meet Peter on his return from Rome—Peter makes Antioch
the missionary centre of his work, 47–54 A.D.—Peter with Barnabas at Corinth, 54
A.D.—Testimony of the First Epistle to the Corinthians—Accession of Nero—Peter
and Barnabas journey to Italy—Evidence of Bamabas' missionary activity in Rome
and North Italy—No rivalry between St. Peter and St. Paul at Corinth—Paul's
delay in visiting Rome due to Peter's presence there, 54–56 A.D.—First
organisation of the Roman Church—The trial of Julia Pomponia Graecina—Inscription
in the crypt of Lucina |
59–86 |
LECTURE IV |
St. Paul's visit to Jerusalem, Pentecost, 57 A.D., and captivity at
Caesarea—Character of the administration of Felix—Accuracy and trustworthiness
of the Lukan narrative—St. Paul's financial resources—Indulgent treatment of St.
Paul by Felix—Influence of Drusilla—Recall of Felix—Elymas or Etoimos—Attitude
of Festus—St. Paul's appeal to Caesar—His motives in appealing —St. Paul's
journey from Puteoli to Rome—He is delivered in charge to the Stratopedarch—The
favours accorded to him—St. Paul invites the Jewish leaders to meet him—His
interviews with the chiefs of the Synagogues—The Apostle's appeal to the Jews is
fruitless—The Epistles of the First Captivity—The earlier group—Colossians,
Ephesians, Philemon—Their tone cheerful—Release expected—Many friends surround
the Apostle—Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, at Alexandria—His visit to Rome and mission to
Colossae—The Epistle to the Philippians—Changed situation—Friends absent—Issue
of trial in doubt but Paul hopeful—The letter of a friend to friends—Discords
at Philippi—The ‘true yoke-fellow'—Clement—Caesar's household—St. Paul is set
at liberty—Probable course of the trial |
87–114 |
LECTURE V |
A High-Priestly embassy in Rome—Growth of hostility between Jew and
Christian—The Christians accused of anarchism and secret crimes—St. Peter's last
visit to Rome in 63 A.D.—The First Epistle of St. Peter—Its genuineness—The
Epistle written at Rome—Its literary indebtedness to other New Testament
writings—St. Peter acquainted with the Epistles to the Romans and Ephesians—Mark
and Silvanus with Peter at Rome—The great fire of July 19, 64 A.D.—Rumour
attributes the fire to Nero—Steps taken by Nero to efface the rumour—The
Pisonian conspiracy and its suppression—The charges brought against the
Christians—The Tacitean account of their sufferings—Character of the Neronian
persecution—The personal act of Nero—Tigellinus, the active agent of Nero's
cruelty—The Christians not implicated in the burning of Rome—Origin of the
charge of incendiarism—Apocalyptic utterances—Tigellinus and Apollonius of Tyana: a parallel—Atheism, Thyestean feasts, Oedipodean intercourse—Hatred of the
human race, ‘Institutum Neronianum'—‘Crimina adhaerentia Nomini'—Christian
contemporary evidence—The spectacle in the Vatican Gardens —The arrest of the
great multitude, end of April, 65 A.D.—Comparison of evidence from Tacitus,
Suetonius and Orosius fixes the date—Persecution in the Provinces |
115–144 |
LECTURE VI |
Deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome—Their tombs piously preserved—They were
not martyred on the same day—Manner of their deaths—How the mistake as to a
common date arose —Statement of Prudentius—The ‘Quo Vadis?' story examined —St.
Peter's crucifixion in the early summer of 65 A.D.—The Epistle to the
Hebrews—Addressed to Judaeo-Christians at Rome—Internal and external evidence
for this—The Epistle never received as Pauline in Rome or the West—Tertullian
names Barnabas as the author—Barnabas well qualified to write this Epistle—Sent
to Rome, as an eirenicon—The personal references support the Barnabean
hypothesis—The Pastoral Epistles—St. Paul's second imprisonment at Rome—His
sense of desertion—His death, 67 A.D.—The Apocalypse written in 70
A.D.—Statements of Irenaeus and Origen considered—Eusebius' use of his authorities—Evidence of Victorinus and Jerome—The book reflects contemporary
history—Neronian Persecution—Events of 69 A.D.—Burning of the Capitol—Domitian
in power, Jan. to June, 70 A.D.—Nerva Consul, 71 A.D.—Temple of Jerusalem still
standing—The Number of the Beast—Nero Caesar—The Apocalypse, a Neronian
document—Nero is Anti-Christ—The Nero legend—Armageddon—Impressions of an
eye-witness—Earthquakes and convulsions of nature—The islands of Patmos
and Thera |
145–179 |
LECTURE VII |
The First Century Episcopal Succession at Rome—The Jewish Synagoge and the
Christian Ecclesia—The Official Ministry in the early Church—Duties and position
of episcopi—Pastors and Stewards with cure of souls—They form an inner
Presbyterate—Its president The Bishop—Apostles, Prophets, Teachers and their
functions—The Didache an untrustworthy authority for the First Century—The
genuine Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians—Not written in 96 A.D. but in
beginning of 70 A.D.—The recent examples of our own time—The Neronian
persecution fresh in memory—The sudden and successive troubles and calamities of
69 A.D.—Internal evidence of the Epistle to its early date—Church Organisation—Christology—New
Testament Quotations—The Daily Sacrifice at Jerusalem had not ceased—The
Corinthian dissensions—Predisposing circumstances, 66–68 A.D.—Reference to the
Phoenix—Episcopal succession—Apostolical regulations—The disturbers of the peace
at Corinth rebuked—Force of the word ἀρχαίαν—The bearers of the Epistle to
Corinth—No allusion to Clement as the writer—Authoritative position of Clement
in 96 A.D.—The Epistle belongs to an earlier time—Written by him as secretary to
the Presbyterate—Interesting inscription |
180–205 |
LECTURE VIII |
Attitude of the Flavian emperors to the Christians—A quarter of a century of
moderation—Titus personally hostile—‘The Shepherd' of Hernias: a Flavian
writing—Blunder of the Muratorian Fragmentist—The notice in the ‘Liberian
Catalogue'—The Muratorian and Liberian statements derived from a common
source—Hermas confused with the presbyter Pastor—Patristic testimony supports
the early date—Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian—Unity of ‘The
Shepherd'—It contains a real life story—Hermas a contemporary of Clement of
Rome—Harnack's views discussed—The book in three parts, but the period covered
by it short—Hermas' references to the Neronian persecution—To the organisation
of the Church—Its primitive character—Signs of an evolutionary
movement—Contentions about precedence—Growth of a Monarchical Episcopate—The persecution of
Domitian—In its origin fiscal—The didrachma tax—Many Christians of high position
suffer—Flavius Clemens put to death—His wife Flavia Domitilla banished—Flavius
Sabinus, father and son—Flavius Clemens the Consul and Clemens the bishop—A
third contemporary Clemens—M. Arrecinus Clemens is Consul 94 A.D.—He is put to
death by his relative Domitian—The two Flavia Dornitillas—The ‘Acts of Nereus
and Achilles'—Plautilla the sister of Clemens the Consul—Relationship between
the Flavian and Arrecinian families —Is Clement the bishop brother of Arrecinus
Clemens?—The death of M. Acilius Glabrio—The Acilian Crypt in the cemetery of Priscilla—Conclusion |
206–237 |
APPENDICES |
Note A. Chronological Statement |
239–241 |
Note B. Aquila and Prisca or Priscilla |
242–3 |
Note C. The Pudens Legend |
244–249 |
Note D. The Family Connexion of Clement the Bishop |
250–258 |
Note E. The Tombs of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul |
259–272 |
Note F. The Cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla |
273–282 |
Index |
283 |
Index of Scripture References |
295–6 |
THE CHURCH IN ROME
LECTURE I
Rom. i. 8: ‘First, I thank my God through
Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.'
The subject of these lectures is in one
sense a well-worn theme. The literature bearing upon the history of the Church in
Rome during the first century is enormous, and unfortunately in modem times the
prevailing note has been controversial. It has seemed as if it were impossible even
for those who have tried to write on the beginnings of Roman Christianity in the
impartial spirit of the scientific historian to free themselves from bias and prejudice.
This very fact, however, only proves that this has been and is a subject of profound
and indeed of absorbing interest, and it is so from whatever point of view we regard
it, the political, no less than the. ecclesiastical and religious. That interest
indeed, so far from diminishing, has been greatly stimulated and increased by the
archaeological researches and discoveries made in Rome and its immediate neighbourhood
during the past half-century. Year by year additions have been made to our knowledge,
and it is now generally admitted that the last word on many most important and critical
questions has not yet been spoken. Already many assertions once confidently made
have had to be modified or abandoned, opinions put forward with authority are constantly
being revised, and a careful study of avail-able evidence has convinced me that
there are grounds
for questioning seriously certain conclusions now generally received,
and at the same time for upholding the historical character of some ancient traditions
too hastily rejected.
The first point to grasp is the character of the spell exercised over the minds
of men by the very name of Rome during the period of the early Caesars. Rome in
the first century of our era occupied a position of influence unique in the annals
of history. It had become the magnetic centre of the civilised world, and it was
itself the most cosmopolitan of cities that have ever existed. The Rome of Claudius
and of Nero was the seat of an absolute and centralised Government, whose vast dominion
stretched from the shores of the Atlantic to the borders of Parthia, from Britain
to the Libyan deserts, over diverse lands and many races, all of them subdued after
centuries of conflict and of conquest by the Roman arms, but now forming a single
empire under an administrative system of unrivalled flexibility and strength, which
enforced obedience to law and the maintenance of peace without any unnecessary infringement
of local liberties or interference with national religious cults. One of the most
remarkable features of this great Empire was the freedom of intercourse that was
enjoyed, and the safety and rapidity with which travelling could be undertaken.
Never until quite modern times has any such ease and security of communication between
place and place been possible. And this not merely by those admirable military roads
which were one of the chief instruments for the maintenance of the Roman rule and
for the binding together of province with province and of the most distant frontiers
with the capital; the facilities for intercourse by water also were abundant and
were, except during the winter months, freely used. The Roman Empire, as a glance
at the map reveals, was—even at its zenith—essentially a Mediterranean power. Its
dominion consisted mainly of the fringe of territory encircling that sea. In the
midst stood the capital. The greatest cities of the Empire were ports, and Rome
itself, the chief
among them, was dependent upon sea-borne traffic for its daily food.'See
Sir W. Ramsay's Article in Hasting's Dict. vol. v. ‘Roads and Travel in N.T.
Times'; his Seven Churches, p. 15, and elsewhere in his writings. Friedlander,
Sittengeschichte Roms, ii. 3; Sanday and Headlam, Ep. to Rom. p. xxvi;
Merivale, St. Paul at Rome, p. 5; Miss C. Skeet, Travel in the First Century;
Renan, Hibbert Lectures, 1850, ‘The Influence of the Institutions, Thought,
and Culture of Rome on Christianity and the Development of the Catholic Church,'
Eng. tr., pp. 17–19.
At the beginning of the Christian era the population of the imperial city has
been estimated at not less than 1,300,000, of which more than one half were slaves.
The entire number of citizens owning private property was very small—a few thousands
only.'Cicero (De Officiis, ii. 21) speaks of the number as 2000 in
102 B.C.
Each of these possessed vast numbers of slaves,At the end of the Republic
and under the Empire it was not a rare thing to meet rich Romans possessing many
thousands. Under Augustus a simple freedman, C. Caecilius Isidorus, although he
had lost a considerable part of his fortune during the civil wars, still left at
his death 4116 slaves. Pliny, Historia Naturalis, xxxiii. 47.
who were trained to perform every kind of work, so that a considerable portion of
the free inhabitants found themselves without occupation or employment. In the time
of Julius CaesarSuetonius, Caesar, 41; Dion Cassius, xliii. 21.
no fewer than 320,000 were supported by the state, and though Augustus was able
to reduce this multitude of paupers to 200,000,Dion Cassius, lv, 10.
the number afterwards rapidly increased. This huge population was, as has been already
said, one of the most cosmopolitan that has ever been gathered together to form
one community. This was due in the first instance to the practice of selling prisoners
of war, and the inhabitants of captured cities, as slaves. The institution of slavery
therefore implied that in every wealthy household in Rome there was a great mixture
of races, and the custom of manumission on a large scale was continually admitting
batches of persons of foreign extraction to many privileges of citizenship. Thus
was formed the large and important class of freedmen (liberti) containing
men of culture and ability, who not only filled posts of
responsibility in their former masters' households but not seldom became
rich and rose to high official positions in the state. Freedmen indeed and the descendants
of freedmen played no small part in the history of the times with which we are dealing,
and Christianity found among them many of its early converts and most earnest workers.
But the freedmen and the slaves by no means comprised all the foreign population
of Rome at this epoch. The legionaries were recruited in all parts of the empire;
the Pretorian camp contained contingents drawn from distant frontier tribes. Traders,
travellers, adventurers of every kind thronged to Rome—particularly from the East.
So did the preachers and teachers of many philosophies, cults, and modes of worship,
Greek, Egyptian, and Phrygian. The very language of ordinary everyday life in Rome
had become Greek, and the whole atmosphere of the great city was in no small measure
orientalised.Among the upper classes it had become the fashion to speak and
write Greek; for trade purposes and among the lowest classes of mixed race a debased
Greek was used, as the language most generally understood. Juvenal, Sat.
iii. 60 ‘Non possum ferre, Quirites, Graecam urbem'; ibid.
62 ‘Jam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes.' Also 73–80.
Amongst this large alien element in the population the Jews formed one of the
most marked and important sections. Their position indeed was at once singular and
exclusive, for they had privileges accorded to none others. The originBerliner,
Abraham (Geschichte der Juden in Rom, one of the best monographs on the subject),
thinks that there must have been Jewish settlers in Rome before 63
B.C., or else it is difficult to account
for Cicero, when pleading for Flaccus in 59 B.C.,
affecting to be intimidated by the crowd of Jews thronging the Aurelian steps—‘multitudinem
Iudaeorum flagrantium nonnunquam in concionibus' (Cic. pro Flacco
xxviii.), and probably he was right. Cicero however was no doubt greatly exaggerating
his fear for his advocate's purpose. See Sanday and Headlam, Ep. to Rom.
p. xix.
of the Jewish colony at Rome may be traced back to 63
B.C., when Pompeius after the capture of
Jerusalem brought back a large number of prisoners, who were sold as slaves. But
the Jew, as a slave, was always difficult to deal with, through his obstinate adherence
to his ancestral faith
and peculiar customs, and so many of these slaves were speedily manumittedPhilo,
Leg. ad Caium, 568.
that they were able to form a community apart on the far side of the Tiber.The
Transtiberine ‘Ghetto,' which was first removed across the river in 1556.
Julius Caesar from motives of expediency showed especial favour to the Jews, and
his policy was continued by Augustus and, except for brief intervals, by his successors.
The privileges thus conferred were very great, and included liberty of worship,
freedom from military service and from certain taxes, the recognition of the Sabbath
as a day of rest, the right of living according to the customs of their forefathers,
and full jurisdiction over their own members.Schürer, Hist. of the Jewish
People in N.T. Times, 2nd Div., vol. ii. pp. 234, 259, 264. Josephus (Ant.
xiv.) gives a number of the edicts conferring these privileges. See also Suet.
Caesar, 42. The action of Julius Caesar was the more remarkable as he took
energetic steps to repress all collegia which were unable to prove ancient
prescriptive rights and liberty of association generally. Consult also Harnack,
Expansion of Christianity, vol. i. pp. 5–10, 350–371; Fouard, S. Pierre,
c. xiv. ‘Les Juifs de Rome'; Renan, Hibbert Lectures, Eng. tr., pp. 45–55.
Once in the reign of TiberiusJosephus (Ant. xviii. 5) tells us that
the anger of Tiberius was aroused by the complaint of Saturninus, a friend of the
emperor, that his wife Fulvia, who was a proselyte, had been induced to give money
for the service of the Temple at Jerusalem under false pretences. Suetonius (Vit.
Tib. 36) writes: ‘Iudaeorum iuventutes per speciem sacramenti
in provincias gravioris caeli distribuit, reliquos gentis eiusdem vel similia sectantes
urbe summovit, sub poena perpetuae servitutis nisi obtemperassent.' Tacitus
(Ann. ii. 85) confirms the account of Josephus about the sending of this
body of Jews to Sardinia and characteristically remarks ‘si ob gravitatem
caeli interiissent; vile damnum.' The action of Tiberius was confined to
the Jews of Rome. the worshippers of Jahveh and of Isis fell under the heavy
displeasure of the emperor; some were punished, others expelled from the city, and
the consuls were ordered to enlist 4000 Jews for military service in the malarious
climate of Sardinia, 19 A.D. The determination
of Caligula to set up a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem aroused a storm
of opposition, which would undoubtedly have brought a fierce persecution upon the
Jews but for the assassination of the tyrant (41
A.D.), before his design was carried into effect.Much may
be learnt about the position of the Jews in the Empire and of Caligula's disposition
towards them in Philo's Legatio ad Caium, in which he gives an account of
the reception by the emperor of a deputation from the Jews of Alexandria headed
by himself.
Claudius, however, on his accession at once renewed all the old privileges, and
took steps to allay the fanatical passions stirred up by the action of his half-insane
predecessor. From this time forward the Jews were never compelled to take part in
Caesar-worship.Tacitus, Hist. v. 5 ‘Non regibus haec
adulatio, non Caesaribus honor.' To them alone of all the peoples
of the empire was this concession made.
This Jewish colony in Rome seems from the descriptions of contemporary writers
to have had the same characteristics as the Jewish colonies in European cities throughout
the Middle Ages, and indeed much as we see them to-day. A large proportion of these
Roman Jews were very poor, living in rags and squalor, making a precarious livelihood
as hawkers, pedlars, and dealers in second-hand goods. Above these were then, as
now, the moneylenders, larger traders, and shopkeepers, and at the head the wealthy
financiers, and in the days of Tiberius and his successors many members of the Herodian
family made Rome their home and lived on terms of close intimacy with the Imperial
circle.For the Herodian family at Rome see Josephus, Ant. xviii. 5,
6. It is a curious fact that the Jewish race, while hated and despised by
the people of Rome, should have been endowed with so many immunities by the Emperors,
and above all that its exclusive religion and ceremonial rites should have possessed
such an attraction as undoubtedly they did possess, and should have drawn so many
adherents from all classes.Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, i. 7–11;
Schürer, 2 Div. ii. 220–242; Allard, Hist. de Perséc. c. i. sec. 1; Hardy,
Studies in Roman Hist. pp. 14–28; Workman, Persecutions in Early Church,
pp. 108–115. The truth is that the privileges, as I have said before, were
granted from motives of pure expediency. The Jewish race was numerous, it had settlements
in practically every important city in the empire, and it was financially indispensable.
The number of Jews in Rome in 5 B.C.
has been estimated at 10,000; in Egypt, 1,000,000; in Palestine, 700,000; in the
whole Roman Empire (out of a total population of fifty-four to sixty millions) four
to four and a half millions.
As 4000 adult males were actually sent to Sardinia in 19
A.D. it may safely be said that a quarter
of a century later, allowing for the natural growth of population, for fresh batches
of slaves receiving manumission, and for immigration from outside, the total Jewish
settlement in Rome would not be less than 30,000 and might reach 50,000.
Everywhere the Jew however held aloof from his Gentile neighbours, and his absolute
refusal to mingle with them and to share their life could only be met either by
coercion or by favoured treatment. To the wise statesmanship of the dictator Julius
the latter course commended itself, and the permanence of the policy he adopted
is sufficient proof of its prescience. The attractiveness of Judaism, as a religious
cult, is more difficult to explain. It had neither the mysticism nor the sensuousness
of the worship of Isis or of Cybele. Yet although the Jew was hated and scorned,
his religion became to a surprising degree the mode in Rome, especially among ladies
of the patrician houses. The number of actual proselytes of Gentile origin was large,
and still larger the number of those whom St. Luke in the Acts styles ‘God-fearers'These
people, described in the Acts and elsewhere as σεβόμενοι
(or φοβούμενοι)
τὸν Θεόν or simply as
σεβόμεηοι, were by Schürer, in the 1st ed.
of his Geschichte d. Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, described
as being ‘the Proselytes of the Gate' of the Talmud. He followed the commonly received
opinion. He has however since then, by a careful study of inscriptions, been led
to change his opinion. In his 4th ed. 1909 (iii. 173 ff.) he is able to show that
the term ‘proselyte of the gate' was not used until a much later period than that
with which we are dealing, and that the real meaning is that given above, heathen
who had partially adopted Judaism, but without becoming proselytes. See Kirsopp
Lake, Early Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 37–39.
(σεβόμενοι τὸν Θεόν), i.e. people who
adopted the Jewish monotheism, attended the
synagogueThe synagogues in Rome were each separately organised
and independent. The entire body of Jews of the capital were not allowed, as at
Alexandria, to form a state within a state, self-administered with an Alabarch at
their head. The names of seven synagogues have been discovered in the inscriptions
of the ancient Jewish cemeteries: (1) Αὐγουστησέων,
(2) Ἀγριππησίων, (3) Bolumni, (4)
Καμπησίων, (5)
Σιβουρησίων, (6)
Ἀιβρέων, (7)
Ἐλαίας. The first two were probably the synagogues of the households of Augustus
and Agrippa. The fourth and fifth belong to Jewish settlements on the outskirts
of the Campus Martius and in the crowded Suburra. The third may have been built
by some one of the name of Volumnus, or have been associated with him in some unknown
way. The seventh, the synagogue of the Olive Tree, may have suggested the simile
of Rom. xi. 17–24. The sixth inscription does not seem to have
referred to any special synagogue but to have been a generic term, ‘a synagogue
of the Hebrews (or Jews).' In addition to settlements in the Suburra and near the
Campus Martius, the discovery of two ancient Jewish cemeteries on the Appian Way,
one of them close to the Porta Capena, bears evidence to yet another Jewish colony
at this point, not inconsiderable in numbers. The Transtiberine, however, was always
by far the largest of the Jewish quarters. See Schürer, 2 Div., ii. 247–249; Fouard,
S. Pierre, pp. 316–322; Garrucci, Cimetero degli antichi Ebrei in Roma,
and Marucchi, Elements d'Archéologie Chrétienne, vol. ii. pp. 208–226, 259–274.
services, and observed the Sabbath and certain portions of the ceremonial law. These
‘God-fearers,' in every place where Jewish communities were to be found, formed
a fringe round the Synagogue of bodies of men and women, who, in this age of religious
electicism, without altogether abandoning their connexion with Paganism, had become
semi-Jews.
In a city such as the Rome we have been describing it is not difficult to see
a seed-plot ready prepared for the planting of a new religion like Christianity,
oriental in its origin, an outgrowth of Judaism, akin in so many points to the Mystery-Religions
of Egypt and Asia Minor then so much in vogue, and bearing, as it did, in its ethical
teaching so striking a resemblance to the moral code of the Stoics. That the message
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in some primitive form reached the banks of the Tiber
very early there is, as I shall show later, good reason to believe, but of the when
or how we know nothing directly. The converts at first would be almost certainly
few in number and drawn from the humbler class of Jews.For the chronology
of these Lectures see Note A of the Appendix. The new sect, if
it were noticed at all by the authorities, would be regarded with contemptuous
indifference as a variety of Judaism, and therefore sheltered by the privileges
which Judaism, as a religio licita, enjoyed.Tertullian
(Apol. xxi.) says that the Church until the time of Nero's persecution grew
up under the shadow of the synagogue: ‘quasi sub umbraculo religionis
insignissimae certe licitae.'
The only possible allusion in the first decade after the Crucifixion to the existence
in Rome of a knowledge of Christian teaching is contained in a passage of Suetonius'
‘Life of Caligula,' in which he tells of the performance before the Emperor of a
play in which a certain Laureolus, who gives his name to the piece, is crucified
upon the stage. Might there not be here a cruel parody upon the central theme of
Christian preaching? Probably not, though such an exhibition is at any rate thoroughly
illustrative of the spirit of mockery with which the idea of a crucified Saviour
would be received.Suet. Calig. 57. See also for later notices of Laureolus,
Jos. Ant. xix. 18; Martial, Spect. 7; Tertullian, Valent. 14.
In Mayor's Juvenal, vol. ii. p. 40, the following note appears to Sat.
viii. 167: ‘Laureolum Schol. In ipso mimo Laureolo figitur crux
unde vera cruce dignus est Lentulus, qui tanto detestabilior est quanto melius gestum
imitatus est scenicum. . . . Hic Lentulus nobilis fuit et suscepit servi personam
in agendo mimo.'
There is evidence, however, in the pages of the same historian, Suetonius, that
almost exactly a decade after the aforesaid production of the Laureolus Christianity
in Rome had already become a force sufficiently potent to draw down upon it the
fanatical antagonism of the Jews. Tumults and disorders seem to have arisen in the
Jewish quarter of the city in 50 A.D. of
such a threatening character as to force the Government, in spite of its favourable
inclination to the Jews, to take strong action. This appears to me to be nothing
more than a fair interpretation of Suetonius' words—‘the Jews who were continually
rioting at the instigation of Chrestus he (Claudius) expelled from Rome.'Suet.
Claudius, 25 ‘Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes
Roma expulit.' To write Chrestus for Christus was quite
natural to a Latin historian, for Chrestus was a name in use at Rome
as extant inscriptions show,CIL. vi. 10233. The following
inscription, which I came across, seemed to me specially interesting from the collocation
of the names Chrestus and Paula. ‘P. Ælius Chrestus et Cornelia
Paula hoc scalare adplicitum huic sepulchro quod emerunt a fisco agente Agathonico
proc [-uratore] Augustorum nostrorum quod habet scriptura infra scripta. Gentiano
et Basso cons. vii Kal. April.' Date, 211
A.D.
and both Tertullian and LactantiusTert. Apol. 3: ‘Sed
ut cum perperam Chrestianos pronuntiatur a vobis, nam nec nominis certa est notitia
penes vos'; Lact. Inst. Divin. iv. 17: ‘Sed exponenda
huius nominis [Christi] ratio est propter ignorantium errorem, qui eum immutata
litera Chrestum solent dicere.' Compare the title Le Roy très Chréstien
of the French Kings.
tell us that in their time the common pronunciation was “Chrestus' and ‘Chrestianos'
for ‘Christus' and ‘Christianos.' The French word ‘chrétien' is to this day a living
proof that this mode of spelling still survives. Dion CassiusDion Cassius,
lx. 6: τούς τε Ἰουδαίους, πλεονάσαντας αὖθις χαλεπῶς
ἂν ἄνευ ταραχῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου σφῶν τῆς πόλεως εἰρχθῆναι, οὐκ ἐξήλασε μέν, τῷ δὲ
δὴ πατρίῳ νόμῳ βίῳ χρωμένους, ἐκέλευσε μὴ συναθροίζεσθαι. τάς τε ἑταιρείας ἐπαναχθείσας
ὑπὸ τοῦ Γαίου διέλυσε. informs us that the edict of expulsion, owing
to the disturbance that it caused, was only partially carried out, but that the
synagogues were closed and the clubs licensed by Caligula dissolved. Among the Jews
that were expelled were no doubt the chief leaders of the contending factions. Among
these were Aquila and Priscilla or Prisca, of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles
that in consequence of Claudius' edict of banishment they had left Rome and taken
up their abode at Corinth, and were there brought into personal contact with St.
Paul, when in the summer of 51 A.D. he first
visited that city.
The intercourse which thus began was destined to be long-continued and intimate,
and it was through this intercourse (such at least is my firm persuasion) that that
eager desire to visit Rome, to which the Apostle gives such strong expression in
his Epistle to the Romans some five or six years later, was first fanned into flame.
Not without purpose did St. Luke, who never wastes words, give such an elaborate
description of this husband and wife upon their first entry on the stage of his
history. ‘Having departed from Athens' we read Acts,
xviii. 1. ‘Paul came to Corinth and having
met a certain Jew, by name Aquila, a PontianI.e. a native
of the Roman Province of Pontus.
by birth, who had lately come from Italy, and Priscilla his wife, in consequence
of the decree of Claudius that all the Jews should depart from Rome, betook himself
to them, and because they were of the same trade he abode with them and wrought
at his craft, for they were tentmakers by trade.' Here undoubtedly St. Luke intended
in the first place to give the reason for the strong bond of sympathy which at once
sprang up between these two Asiatic Jews and fellow craftsmen. The description of
Aquila as a Jew does not mean that he was not a Christian. Had he and his wife required
to be converted and baptised, it is almost impossible that so important a fact should
not here have been mentioned. Compare the notice about Apollos,
Acts xviii. 24-27, The Jews who were actually exiled by Claudius
were no doubt the leaders of the contending factions, Aquila and Prisca having been
in 50 A.D. as afterwards among the foremost
of the Christian congregation. In the eyes of the Roman authorities, as has already
been pointed out, Christianity was as yet simply a Jewish sect. The emphatic statement
that Aquila was a Jew applies, as the context shows, not to his religion but to
his race, and the separate mention of Priscilla without that epithet may be taken
to imply, firstly, that she was not Jewish but Roman, and secondly that she was
to play an independent role in the furtherance of St. Paul's missionary work. Never
indeed in the New Testament is the one name mentioned without the other, and in
four out of the six places in which they occur the name of Prisca or Priscilla stands
first.For further details about Prisca and Aquila see Appendix, Note B. It
is noteworthy that St. Paul according to the authority of the best authenticated
readings always calls the wife Prisca, while St. Luke names her Priscilla. Both
writers, except in one case, I Cor. xvi. 19, place the name
of the wife first. St. Luke is wont to use the diminutive forms of names, which
were usual in conversation, i.e. Priscilla, Silas, Sopatros; St. Paul the
forms Prisca, Silvanus, Sosipatros. See Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp.
267–8.
From this fact the deduction has been made, and in my opinion rightly, that Prisca
was of
more honourable position by birth than her husband, and that she possessed
private means which she freely used in furthering the cause of the Gospel.Plumptre,
Biblical Studies, p. 417; Hort, Romans and Philippians, pp. 12–14;
Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 253 f., 267 f.; Zahn, Intr. to N.T.
i. 263, etc. etc.
I have spoken, not without good reason, of this intercourse which began in 51
A.D. at Corinth, as being long-continued
and intimate. During the whole of his eighteen months' sojourn in that city St.
Paul lived under their roof, and when he sailed from Cenchraea for Ephesus in the
early spring of 53 A.D. Aquila and Prisca
accompanied him. At Ephesus they took up their abode, Acts,
xviii. 11 and 18, 19. and at once set about active missionary
work, while awaiting the Apostle's return some six months later. During this interval
it was by their instrumentality that the eloquent and learned Apollos was instructed
in the full Christian faith, and probably it was by their advice that he entered
upon, what we know to have been, his fruitful ministry at Corinth. Acts,
xviii. 24-27. Throughout the two years and a quarter Acts,
xix. 10. that St. Paul made Ephesus the centre of his labours,
Aquila and Prisca resided there. Probably their house was as before the Apostle's
home; in any case we know that it was a meeting-place in which the faithful gathered
for worship, for in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, I Cor.
xvi. 19. which was written from Ephesus some time in the autumn
of 55 A.D., St. Paul sends the salutations
of Aquila and Priscilla and ‘of the Church that is in their house.' From these
his close friends and fellow-workers, with whom he was for some five or six years
in constant communication, St. Paul would therefore have ample opportunities for
learning much about the condition of the Church in Rome, and this not only from
Aquila and Prisca themselves but from other exiles and the many travellers and traders
from the capital whom he must have met at their house, and who would bring with
them the latest news as to the state of things in the Imperial City. Among other
things would
come the glad tidings of the accession of the young and popular Nero
in the place of Claudius, and of the happy prospects that his reign promised, a
promise that was justified so long as the boy emperor was content in his public
administration to place himself under the guidance of his wise counsellors Seneca
and Burrhus.For the good government of the Empire during the first
five years of Nero's reign, known in history as the quinquennium of Nero, see Henderson's
Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero. What is certain is that St. Paul at the close of his two years' ministry
at Ephesus began to look ahead and to plan fresh schemes of missionary activity.
His first task was to journey through Macedonia to Corinth, where his presence was
called for and needed; his next to pay another visit after a long absence to Jerusalem,
but ‘fter I have been there,' he said, ‘I must see Rome.'Acts, xix, 21.
His departure from
Ephesus was more hurried than he expected, for in the riots raised by Demetrius
and his fellow-craftsmen against the Christians and the Jews with whom as usual
they were confounded,Acts, xix. 33-4.
Paul seems to have narrowly escaped from the violence of
the angry throng, and to have succeeded in doing so only through the self-sacrificing
courage of Aquila and Prisca,Rom. xvi. 34: Ἀσπάσασθε Πρίσκαν καί Ἀκύλαν τοὺς συνεργούς μου ἐν
Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, οἵτινες ὑπὲρ τῆς ψυχῆς μου τὸν ἑαυτῶν τράχηλον ὑπέθηκαν. Comp. 2 Cor. i. 8. The
group of MSS. D, E, F, G, add παῤ οἷς καί ψενίζομαα, pointing to the tradition
in the Western Church that St. Paul lived at Ephesus in the house of Aquila and
Prisca.
who risked their own lives in order to save his.
It had been Paul's intention to remain at Ephesus till Pentecost, but this serious
tumult compelledActs, xix. 31. him to leave much earlier in the year 56
A.D., and at the same time and for the same
reasons his friends Aquila and Prisca may have taken the opportunity to start on
their return journey to Rome, the edict of banishment having now been allowed to
lapse by the conciliatory policy of Nero's advisers. The friendly Asiarchs, who
warned Paul not to adventure
himself into the theatre, would indeed feel it their duty, as soon
as the riot was appeased, for the sake of the peace of the city to insist that both
Paul and his protectors Aquila and Prisca should quit Ephesus for a time. Paul himself
carried out his plan of journeying by way of Troas and Philippi to Corinth, where
he passed the three winter months of 56–57 A.D.
The project of a visit to Rome, so long cherished, so often hindered, now began
to assume a concrete shape in his mind, and the result was the writing, almost certainly
in the early spring of the year 57 A.D.,
of the Epistle to the Romans. Now this great epistle stands in the forefront of
the Pauline writings chiefly as a theological treatise, but apart from its theology
it has other claims, as an historical document of the highest evidential value,
deserving from the Church historian's point of view the closest and most attentive
study.
In the first place then this Epistle bears upon its face the clearest testimony
to the existence in 57 A.D. of a distinguished
and well-established Christian Church in Rome, a Church already of some standing
and in which the Gentile element predominated. The mere fact that the Apostle, at
a time when many cares pressed heavily upon him,2 Cor. ii. 4, 5, 13;
iv. 8-11; xi. 27-28;
xii. 10, 20-21; Acts, xx. 19-25.
took the pains to write this elaborate
and carefully reasoned statement of his doctrinal teaching to a body of Christians
that he had never visited, is evidence to the very important place they occupied
in his thoughts. His words, ‘I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that
your faith2 Rom. i. 8: ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν = your profession
of Christianity.
is proclaimed in all the world,' may be somewhat hyperbolic, but they
mean at any rate that the Roman Church was well known and highly spoken of in all
the various Christian communities with which St. Paul was acquainted. And the impression
these words convey is emphasised by the Apostle's later declaration affirming even
in stronger terms his personal assent to this widely received estimate of the character
of Roman Christianity, for no language could be
more explicit than this—‘I am persuaded, my brethren, I myself also
concerning you, that even of yourselves'—i.e. without any extraneous help derived
from such an epistle as I am sending to you—‘you are full of goodness, filled with
all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.'Rom. xv. 14: Πέπεισμαι δέ, ἀδελφοί μου, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ περὶ ὑμῶν, ὅτι καὶ
αὐτοὶ μεστοί ἐστε ἀγαθωσύνης, πεπληρωμένοι πάσης γνώσεως, δυνάμενοι καὶ ἀλλήλους
νουθετεῖν. Notice the
emphatic position of καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγώ. Compare xvi. 19:
ἡ γὰρ ὑμῶν ὑπακοὴ εἰς πάντας ἀφίκετο.
Such a declaration implies
a conviction based upon trustworthy evidence, otherwise his readers would be the
first to perceive that here was only high-flown language covering an empty compliment.
Such an utterance from a man and a writer like St. Paul presupposes an already existing
acquaintance with a considerable number of Roman Christians, whose goodness, knowledge,
and sound judgment he has tested and learnt to appreciate. Indeed it is not too
much to say that Paul in writing this epistle is somewhat oppressed by a sense that
those whom he is addressing—for a reason, which will appear presently—may possibly
think that they have no special need either of his instruction or of his admonition.
His epistle is an apologia for venturing to be so bold as to propose to pay a visit
to Rome, even though that visit should be no more than a brief pause in the course
of a journey farther west.Rom. xv. 24.
He evidently had in his mind the fear that in Rome he
had, as a preparatory step, to fight down disparaging rumours concerning himself,
his teaching, and his office, and that he might be regarded as an intruder. If he
had found it necessary even in Corinth, a Church which he himself had planted, and
where even now he was writing, to defend strenuously his Apostolic claims and
doctrine,2 Cor. x. 12-18; xii. 11-13; and elsewhere.
how much more in Rome among Christians of old standing, in whose conversion he had
had no hand. So in the Introductory Salutation St. Paul sets forth his credentials.
He is no mere ordinary apostle, a man commissioned by the Twelve or by some particular
Church to go forth to some limited field of missionary work. His
Apostleship differed from that of their own Junias and Andronicus,Rom. xvi. 7.
whom later he describes as ‘apostles of note,' differed—perhaps it is implied—even
from that of so eminent a man as Barnabas,There are grounds, as will appear in the sequel, for believing
that Barnabas had already visited Rome.
in that he [Paul] like the Twelve had
been chosen out and set apartRom. i. 1: κλητὸς ἀπὸστολος, ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ.
for the preaching of the Gospel by the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself—chosen and set apart for preaching the Gospel among all nations and
bringing them to the obedience of the faith.Rom. i. 5: δἰ οὗ [Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ
τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν] ἐλάβομεν χάριν καὶ
ἀποστολὴν εἰς ὑπακοὴν πίστεως ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν.
And though the Gospel has already
been preached in Rome and with such success that the faith of the Roman Christians
is spoken of everywhere in terms of praise, yet Rome too lies within the bounds
of his commission, and so he has many times planned, though hitherto always hindered,
to come to them that he might have some fruit amongst them also. Indeed he calls
God to witness that he had prayed continually that he might be prospered on his
way to visit them, that he might be able to impart to them some spiritual gift for
their confirmation. Immediately, however, adding lest he should offend their susceptibilities
by any assumption of superiority—‘that is that while I am amongst you we may be
jointly strengthened by the mutual faith of you and me.'Rom. i. 12: τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν συνπαρακληθῆναι ἐν ὑμῖν
διὰ τῆς ἐν ἀλλήλοις πιστέως ὑμῶν τε καὶ ἐμοῦ. See Zahn, Int. to N.T. pp. 355-8, 369. Kirsopp
Lake, Early Epist. of St. Paul, pp. 378-9.
But if the note of apologia
can be discerned here in the introductory verses, it comes out much more strongly
in what may be styled the body of the epistle. The difficulties of interpretation
theologically of the Apostle's reasoning and arguments, in that grand series of
chapters which end with chapter xi., lie outside my province. Those difficulties,
admittedly very great, are caused in no small degree by our ignorance of the circumstances,
of the persons, parties, questions, and situation generally with which St. Paul
was
dealing. We lack in fact the historical background. It is my present object to try
to trace out from the materials, which the epistle itself supplies in definite even
though in parts but in faint outline, such features of that background as are discernible
through the mist of ages. Leaving on one side for the present the extremely important
autobiographical passage in chapter xv., also the valuable testimony as to the
composition of the Roman Church furnished by the list of salutations in chapter
xvi., which require special and separate treatment, we can, I think, make certain
well-grounded assertions concerning the three distinct groups of persons whom St.
Paul had in his thoughts as he wrote this epistle. These three groups are (1) a
body of Jewish Christians, (2) a larger body of converted Gentiles, (3) the mass
of unbelieving Jews. St. Paul leaves in no doubt that the third group comprised
the vast majority of the Roman Jews, including practically the whole of official
Israel. And what is more, as yet these rabbis, elders, and rulers of the Synagogues
were not so much actively hostile to the preaching of Christianity as simply deaf,
contemptuously indifferent. Those of Group No. 1, the Jewish Christians, were relatively
small in number, but though small they were divided into two very distinct sections
or parties. One of these sections consisted of Jews like Aquila and others mentioned
in the salutations, who were Paul's friends and fellow-workers; the other, an extremely
influential and energetic section of Judaeo-Christians, Jews rather than Christians,
who, like the Judaisers who are brought before us in the Epistle to the Galatians
and elsewhere, were bitterly opposed to St. Paul, disputed his Apostolic authority,
traduced and misrepresented his teaching, and denounced him as a renegade from the
faith of his fathers. The Gentiles of the second group formed the chief element
in. the Roman Church. Of these no doubt a certain number had been converted straight
from heathendom, but the assumption which runs through the epistle, that they were
familiar with the Jewish Scriptures in the Septuagint version, and with the Jewish
ceremonial law, would
seem to point to their being largely drawn from the class of Greek-speaking
‘God-fearers,' which, as I have already stated, in all the chief towns of the Empire,
and conspicuously in Rome, formed a fringe round the synagogue. If it be asked,
what was the impelling motive which led to the writing of this epistle, and which
dictated the order and character of the arguments, the answer surely is not far
to seek. St. Paul had made up his mind after many hesitations to visit Rome, but
from information that had come to him he was not altogether happy about the reception
he would meet. To the Christian community of the imperial city as a whole he was
a stranger, and as I have said, he was aware that there was a Judaising faction
there busy at their usual task of stirring up enmity against him. His own words
(Rom. iii. 8), ‘as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say,
let us do evil that good may come,' are a proof that he had been informed that his
great doctrine of Justification by Faith had been seized upon by these adversaries
to represent him as an antinomian. He therefore felt it to be incumbent upon him
to answer at once and in advance these Judaistic attacks by a full exposition of
his teaching on the subject of Justification by Faith, and at the same time he desired
to make clear what was his real attitude towards many disputed questions concerning
Judaism and the observance of the Mosaic Law, and the relation between Jew and Gentile
in the Church of Christ.
If this be granted then a flood of light is immediately
thrown on the interpretation and import of that central portion of this epistle,
which begins with the words (Rom. ii. 17)—‘but if thou bearest the name . . .
of Jew and possessest a law to rest upon'—up to the end of chapter xi. It is unmistakably
addressed to Jews.Rom. ii. 17–29; iii. 1, 2; iv. 1. That this body of Judaeo-Christians
were still active in Rome, and doing their utmost at a later time to counteract
St. Paul's influence and oppose his teaching, see Phil. i. 15, 16; iii. 1-6. It
was to these same Jews that chap. xiv. 1–23 appears to have been addressed. The
extreme particularity about meats and rigid asceticism were characteristic of the
party of the circumcision. See Zahn, Int. to N.T. pp. 366-7. Not
to the strict orthodox Jews of the Synagogues, who in their haughty aloofness would
not be likely either to see or to read the Apostle's arguments. The Jews addressed
were men who had indeed accepted Jesus as the Jewish Messiah but who perhaps only
the more obstinately for that very reason clung to their Judaism, and hated the
thought of losing any of those exclusive religious privileges, as Israelites, which
were their pride and boast. The doors of the Christian Church, as they conceived
it, might be open to Gentiles, but only if they would consent to be circumcised
and to conform to the ordinances of the Mosaic Law.
But though in form he is addressing
himself to Jews, Paul's thoughts are all the time directed to his Gentile readers,
and it is for their sake and for their edification quite as much as for the persuasion
of his Jewish fellow-countrymen that he step by step leads up to the establishment
of the fundamental principles of the Gospel that he preached. This is made quite
clear by his own words (chap. xi. 13–14): ‘For it is to you the Gentiles that I
am speaking. Nay, more,So Sanday and Headlam give the force of the μὲν οὖν in this verse.
Commentary on Romans, p. 324.
in so far as I am the Gentiles' Apostle I make-the-most-ofLit. glorify.
my ministry; if by any means I may stir to jealousy my own flesh and might save
some.'On St. Paul's attitude towards Jewish Christianity and Judaism
see the extremely interesting section of Harnack's Neue Untersuchungen sur Apostelgeschichte,
1911 (Eng. tr. by Rev. J. R. Wilkinson in Crown Theol. Lib.), pp. 28–47. Of the
evidence supplied by that section of the Epistle to the Romans from which these
words are taken, Harnack writes: ‘Der Grosse Abschnitt—c. 9–11—ist aus der Feder
eines Juden geflossen der mit allen Fasern seiner Seele an seinem Volke hängt' (p. 31).
And again concerning the simile of the olive-tree in c. xi.: ‘Man beachte wohl,
das (gläubige) Israel κατὰ σάρκα ist and bleibt “der güte Ölbaum” (gegenüber
dem wilden Ölbaum der Heiden); jeder Israelit ist ein “naturlicher Zweig” dieses
guten Ölbaums, wenn er auch unter Umständen abgehauen werden muss, and er d.h. das
gläubige Israel κατὰ σάρκα ist die Wurzel an deren Safte and Fettigkeit die eingepropften
wilden Schösslinge teilnehmen und die sie trägt' (p. 32). See also the quotation
from Herzog in note. I have already pointed out the possibility that the name of
one of the Roman synagogues ‘The Olive Tree' may have suggested this simile to
St. Paul.
The lengthy list of salutations to be found in the first
twenty-three verses of chapter xvi. is a passage of great and peculiar
interest historically, for it enables us to form some estimate, not conjecturally
but positively, concerning the social and racial composition of the Roman Christian
community at this time. It also gives indirectly an indication of the close relations
of intercourse subsisting between the Churches of the chief cities of the Mediterranean
coast. The very fact of its historical importance has however caused doubts to be
raised by certain critics of the hypercritical school whether the passage is really
an integral part of the Epistle to the Romans. Its Pauline authorship is not assailed,
but attempts have been made to show that the list where it stands has (wholly or
in part) been displaced and that it should be attached to some hypothetical epistle
addressed at some unknown time to another Church, most probably to that of Ephesus.
It must suffice here to say that I accept without hesitation the whole of this sixteenth
chapter as an original and authentic portion of the Epistle to the Romans on the
following grounds. First, to quote the words of Professor Kirsopp Lake, one of the
most recent advocates of the Ephesian hypothesis, ‘There is no trace of any external
evidence for doubting that this section has always belonged to the epistle.'Kirsopp Lake, The Early Epistles of St. Paul, their motive and origin, p. 325 ff. This
then is admitted, and it counts heavily. Secondly, all the names, some of them rare
and uncommon names, contained in the list of salutations have been discovered in
the inscriptions found in the colurnbaria and cemeteries of Rome, of a date contemporary
or nearly contemporary with the date of the epistle: an evidence in favour of authenticity,
which, if not absolutely conclusive, is at least remarkably convincing.Sanday and Headlam, Ep. to Romans, pp. xciii–xcv; Lightfoot, Ep. to Philippians, see dissertation
on Caesar's Household, pp. 169–176. The arguments
in favour of the anti-Roman hypothesis are of a purely a priori character, and there
are only two of them, it seems to me, of weight sufficient to deserve consideration.
The first is the difficulty of imagining that Paul could possibly
have been acquainted with the names of so many members of a Church he had never
visited, and still more that he should have been able in quite a large proportion
of cases to add personal details. With this argument I have already dealt in part.
Besides the information which he must have acquired from Aquila and Prisca during
those four years they spent together at Corinth and Ephesus, he would be brought
into contact at those two great centres of Mediterranean traffic with a constant
stream of travellers and traders from Rome. Among these would be Christians, whose
first thought would be to find their way to the friendly house of their banished
fellow-citizens. Criticism here, as in many other instances, has gone astray from
its failure to recognise the great facilities for intercourse in Apostolic times,
especially between cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the freedom with
which those facilities were used. The travels of Apollonius of Tyana as told by
Philostratus are a good instance in point, for Apollonius was a contemporary of
St. Paul. The Apostle did not draw up, we may be sure, this unusually long list
of salutations without an object. Diffident, as he seems to have been, of the welcome
he would receive upon his visit to Rome, may we not regard these salutations as
in some sense a tactful act of diplomacy? He wished to remind those who are mentioned
that he bore them in his remembrance and affection, and at the same time to bespeak,
as it were, their good offices with their brethren for the time when he actually
came amongst them.Zahn (Int. to N.T. i. 388) says: ‘Who does not
see that all these personal references are due to Paul's desire to make the Church
feel that it is not such a stranger to him as it seems, and at the same time are
indications of an effort on his part to bring himself into closer touch with the
Church where as yet he was really a stranger?' That Paul himself could not have made out such a list with its
many details without assistance is possibly true, but that assistance was at his
very side, as his words were being written down. Very interesting, as a mark of
the genuineness of this passage, is the sudden interpolation, in the midst of the
Pauline phrases, of a salutation
from another hand, ‘I, Tertius, the scribe of this epistle, salute
you.' Rom. xvi. 22.In
the first-century Cemetery of Priscilla close to the mausoleum of the noble family
of the Acilii there may be seen to-day a Greek inscription in red (a proof of its
very early date):
ΤΕΡΤΙΑΔΕΛΦΕ
ΕΥΨΥΧΙΟΥΔΙC
ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟC
The Tertius here mentioned
is probably not St. Paul's amanuensis, but there is no reason why he should not
be. It is interesting that a well-authenticated tradition places the tombs of Aquila
and Prisca in the vicinity of this inscription. Horace Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie
Chrétienne, ii. 419. See also i. 104.
Tertius was then a Roman Christian, and he had doubtless been chosen by
Paul on this occasion to act as his amanuensis, for this very reason.
The second argument relied upon by the critics is at first sight more plausible. Paul in writing
his First Epistle to the Corinthians from Ephesus sends salutations from Aquila
and Prisca and the Church in their house, adding according to one group of authorities
the words ‘with whom also I am a guest.'παῤ οἷς καὶ ξενίζομαι. D, F, lat, goth, Bede. Nothing could be more natural, and the
inference seems to follow that when previously the Apostle was a guest in their
house at Corinth, there likewise that house was a meeting-place for a Christian
congregation. About a year and a quarter after this Paul, writing from Corinth to
the Romans, again sends salutations to these same fellow-workers (Aquila and Prisca),
and then after a eulogistic reference to their having risked their lives to save
his, and thanking them not only in his own name but in that of all the Churches
of the Gentiles, he proceeds to salute ‘the Church that is in their house.' Now
to the critics with whom I am dealing it appears very improbable that if Aquila
and Prisca had only returned to Rome so recently there could have been already a
Church in their house with the existence of which St. Paul could have been sufficiently
acquainted to deem it worthy of a special salutation. It is pointed out, moreover,
that in his Second Epistle to Timothy (an epistle, by the by, not accepted by these
same critics as Paul's or contemporary) Paul sends salutations
from Rome to Prisca and Aquila apparently at Ephesus, and the suggestion
is put forward that during the decade which intervened between the first and last
of these salutations the home of this husband and wife had always been at Ephesus.
This being so, this section of the sixteenth chapter of the Romans cannot belong
to the epistle in which we find it.
It might be thought a sufficient answer to this
allegation that external authority in its favour is confessedly nonexistent—to say
nothing of the fact that tradition with no uncertain voice connects the names of Prisca and Aquila with definite localities in Rome.The Church of St. Prisca and the Cemetery of Priscilla. See Appendix, Special Note B. But quite apart from this there
is no real difficulty in accepting the usual interpretation of the salutation.
When
the Apostle parted at Ephesus with the faithful companions and fellow-workers who
had been so long of such service to him, one may be quite sure it would not be without
full knowledge on both sides of their future intentions and plans. On his reaching
Corinth a whole twelve-month at least must have passed, ample time for news to have
come, by some of those using the highway of traffic across the isthmus, that Aquila
and Prisca were again settled at Rome and carrying on their work there on the same
lines as at Corinth and Ephesus. There is nothing whatever impossible in this, nothing
certainly to afford the slightest pretext for the rejection of a well-authenticated
text. Personally however I do not believe that there is any necessity for entering
upon the consideration of what I venture to call ‘time-table calculations.' There
is nothing in St. Paul's words to warrant us in assuming that this ‘Church in the
house' of Aquila and Prisca was new to Roman Christianity. The banishment decreed
by Claudius was according to Dion Cassius most leniently carried out and would not
involve the confiscation of property.Relegatio, not deportatio. Dion Cassius, lx. 6. It is one of those minute points that are
often so significant,
that St. Paul speaks of the house at Ephesus as that of Aquila and
Prisca, of the house at Rome as that of Prisca and Aquila. If Prisca were, as is
commonly supposed, when they were resident at Rome the more important person of
the two spouses, and the owner of property, then the unusual inversion of the names
is explicable. But at Ephesus where they were strangers the house would naturally
be described as that of Aquila and Prisca, the husband's name standing first in
order of precedence.See Zahn, Int. to N.T. p. 390, for a useful comment on the movements of Aquila and Prisca.
Since Aquila and Prisca were expelled, it must have been,
as I have already said, because they were recognised leaders of that faction of
‘Chrestus' of which Suetonius speaks. May one not be justified then in the assumption
that the readiness of the exiles at Corinth and at Ephesus to offer hospitality
and a room for worship in their house was but the continuation of their previous
practice at their Roman home before their banishment? But if the Church in their
house was thus in existence before 50 A.D.,
it is scarcely likely that the owners in their enforced absence would forbid its
use. It would but lessen their sense of separation, if they were thus able to be
of continued service to their poorer Christian brethren in Rome. Such a supposition
of course involves certain assumptions about the state of the Church in Rome in
50 A.D., but I hope to be able to show that
it is a reasonable assumption, and consistent alike with the positive and traditional
data that we possess.See Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie Chrétienne, iii. p. 180 ff and 364 ff. The Epistle to the Romans is itself a proof that Christianity
was firmly established in the metropolis some time before 57
A.D.; there must therefore before that date
have been houses where the faithful met. Tradition mentions only two such places
of assembly—the house of Prisca and Aquila and the house of Pudens. The localities
are still supposed to be marked by the very ancient Churches of St. Prisca and St.
Pudenziana.
Granting then that this list of salutations is addressed to
the Roman community, let us glance very briefly at its general features. A study
of the names enables us to draw the conclusion that the Roman Christians mainly
belonged to the class of Greek-speaking freedmen and slaves.They would consist of people of every nationality,
but among those converted to Christianity probably a large proportion were Orientals
by race. Certain of these are
addressed by the Apostle as kinsmen (συγγενεῖς), and it is safe to assume that these
were Jewish fellow-countrymen.Compare Rom. ix. 3: ηὐχόμην γὰρ ἀνάθεμα εἶναι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ἀπὸ τοῦ χριστοῦ
ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου, τῶν συγγενῶν μου κατὰ σάρκα, οἵτινές εἰσιν Ἰσραηλῖται. It is possible that some others not so designated
may have been Jews, but the probability is the other way. The evidence already adduced
points clearly to a hostility to Paul among the Judaeo-Christians at Rome, which
would naturally exclude them from receiving friendly greetings. Two names in this
group deserve special mention. ‘Salute Andronicus and Junias my kinsmen and my
fellow-prisoners, who are men of mark among the apostles, who also were in Christ
before me'ἀσπάσασθε Ἀνδρόνικον καὶ Ἰουνιᾶν τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου καὶ συναιχμαλώτους μου,
οἵτινές εἰσιν ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ. It is possible that
Ἰουνίαν might be feminine = Junia, but it is generally
taken as masculine, Junias an abbreviation for Junianus. is the remarkable language of the seventh verse. When and where these
two had been Paul's fellow-prisoners we know not. Paul in his Second Epistle to
the Corinthians—only a few months before—had spoken of frequent imprisonments2 Cor. xi. 23: ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως.
of which we know nothing. The very fact that he describes Andronicus and Junias
as ‘men of mark among the apostles' makes it probable that he had encountered
them in his journeys, for the term ‘apostle' at this early period seems to have
been applied generally to delegates sent out with a commission by some Church for
some special field of missionary work, and to have carried with it as a necessary
qualification the possession of charismatic gifts.See Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, i. 398–412; Lightfoot,
Epistle to Galatians, p. 93; Kirsopp Lake, Early Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 108–110.
Comp. 2 Cor. viii. 23: ἀπόστολοι ἐκκλησιῶν. But a still greater distinction
is conferred on these two by
Paul's admission that ‘they were in Christ before me,' words which
imply that their conversion dated back at least as far as the days of St. Stephen's
activity. Possibly they belonged to that ‘Synagogue of the Libertines'Acts, vi. 9. Andronicus and Junias may, of course, have been among the ‘strangers
of Rome, Jews and Proselytes,' who were converted on the Great Day of Pentecost. in which
Stephen argued, and afterwards became, a little later, the first preachers of the
Gospel at Rome. Very interesting are the salutations to the households of Aristobulus and Narcissus. These would all be freedmen or slaves. Aristobulus may well
have been that grandson of Herod the Great who is described by JosephusJosephus, Ant. xx. 1. 2; Bell. Iud. ii. 11. 6. as making
his permanent home at Rome. This is borne out by the salutation to ‘Herodion my
kinsman' intervening between those of the two households. The name suggests a member
of the family to which Aristobulus belonged. Narcissus can scarcely be any other
than the freedman and favourite of Claudius. He had been put to death some three
years before this epistle was written, but his slaves and dependents, though they
would after his execution be incorporated in the Imperial household, might still
retain the distinctive name of Narcissiani.Lightfoot, Epistle to Philippians, Dissertation on Caesar's Household, p. 169; Sanday and Headlam, Romans, pp. 405–6. It is possible that Aristobulus may
have been dead in 57 A.D., and have bequeathed
his slaves to the emperor. If so, both these groups would form part of that vast
body of freedmen and slaves known as Caesar's Household, to which St. Paul refers
writing from Rome to the Philippians: ‘all the Saints salute you, specially they
of Caesar's Household.'
How vast a number composed the imperial household may be
gathered from the statement of Lanciani (‘Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries,'
p. 130) that in two columbaria of the servants and freedmen of Augustus and Livia
the remains of no fewer than 6000 persons have been found. The two groups of names
in verses 14-15 seem to indicate that they were members of two smaller households
belonging to private persons.Lanciani (p. 132) says that in certain columbaria on the Esquiline at least 370 members of the household of Statilius Taurus
are buried. The expression ‘all the Churches of
Christ salute you' (v. 16) is unique in the New Testament, and when taken in connexion
with the language of this epistle elsewhere upon the high repute of the Roman Church
may be held (to quote the words of Dr. Hort) to signify that that Church was already
‘an object of love and respect to Jewish and Gentile Churches alike.'Sanday and Headlam, Romans, pp. 128–9; Hort, Romans and Ephesians, i. 52.
And now we
come to a consideration of the all-important autobiographic passage in the fifteenth
chapter,Rom. xv. 14-29. which contains, if rightly interpreted, an explanation at once of St.
Paul's attitude of deference to the Roman Church and the widespread esteem in which,
as he declares, it was held by its sister Churches. This passage may be regarded
as an expansion of the earlier autobiographic section with which the epistle opens.
The object and the tone are the same, only here the Apostle enters more into detail.
After recounting how ‘from Jerusalem and round about even to Illyricum I have fully
carried the Gospel of Christ, but in doing so making it my pride-and-carev. 20 φιλοτιμούμενον = (lit.) priding myself, or endeavouring
earnestly. to preach
not where Christ was named lest I should build upon another man's foundation,' Paul
proceeds ‘wherefore also I was hindered many timesδιὸ καὶ ἐνεκοπτόμην τὰ πολλὰ τοῦ ἐλθεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς. τὰ πολλὰ seems
to be the equivalent of the πολλάκις of i. 13 = the many times to which I have already
referred: ‘οὐ θέλω δὲ ὑμῠς ἀγνοεῖν, ἀδελφοί, ὅτι πολλάκις προεθέμην
ἐλθεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς καὶ ἐκωλύθην ἄχρι τοῦ δεῦρο.' from coming to you. But now
having no more place in these regions and having had these many years a keen-longingἐπιποθίαν.
to come to you, whenever I journey to Spain [I will come to you]These words are omitted in the best MSS., but are necessary to complete the sense. for I hope to
see you, as I am journeying through, and to be sent forward on my way thitherward
by you after I have first in some measure
enjoyed-my-fill of your company.' The meaning of this statement, though
the language and sequence of thought are somewhat involved, is nevertheless, so
it seems to me, as plain and direct as it is possible to be. St. Paul had been hindered
hitherto from visiting Rome, because he had made it a cardinal principle of his
missionary life not to trespass in fields opened out by other men's labours, in
Churches whose foundations others had laid. May not this ordinance of limitation
imposed by the Apostle on himself afford the explanation of Acts xvi. 6-7, ‘And
they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the
Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia; and when they came over against Mysia, they
assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not'? If the
South Galatian theory be accepted (I myself accept it unreservedly), it is really
remarkable how small a portion of what is now known as Asia Minor was actually evangelised
by St. Paul.Bigg, Comment on 1 Peter, pp. 73-4. Even now he does not propose to come to Rome with any intention of
undertaking a prolonged spell of missionary work, but merely to pay a brief passing
visit on his journey further west, in order to make the acquaintance of the Roman
Christians, of whom he had heard so much, and to receive at their hands a friendly
and encouraging send-off when he leaves them for the scene of his new labours in
Spain. It has often been asked, why St. Paul, if he meant that another had preached
at Rome and been the founder of the Roman Church, did not mention his name? The
answer is a very simple one: he was not writing for the information of students
and critics of the twentieth century, but for the Roman Christians, who knew the
facts.
There had then been a founder of this great Church of world-wide fame with
whom Paul was well acquainted and into whose special sphere of successful preaching
he did not think it right to intrude. Who was he?Professor Kirsopp Lake in his Early Epistles of St. Paul, pp.
378-9, writes: ‘St. Paul clearly implies that the Roman Church was another
man's foundation, and that he had hitherto refused to
preach in such places where others had made a beginning: this was the reason why
he had never yet been to Rome. “Wherefore” he says “I was greatly hindered from
coming to you.” That “you” implies that the Church was someone else's foundation
and the “wherefore” explains that this was his reason for not coming. He then
goes on to explain why he now proposes to depart from his principle: there is now
“no place left for him in these districts,” i.e. from Jerusalem to Illyricum. Thus
with a proper exegesis the meaning of this passage is that the Church of Rome was
founded by some one else, and the question will always remain, why not St. Peter?'
A remarkable admission on the part of this writer. All tradition
answers with one voice the name of St. Peter. In the next lecture
I shall attempt to set forth the grounds on which this tradition rests, and to show
that its acceptance, so far from being inconsistent with those fragments of early
Christian history which have been preserved to us in the Acts and in the Epistles,
serves to complete and bind them together and to explain much that is otherwise
inexplicable in the rapid spread of Christianity in the three decades which followed
the Great Day of Pentecost.
LECTURE II
Romans, x. 14: ‘How shall they call on Him, in whom
they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher?'
The narrative of St. Luke in that earlier part of the Acts of the Apostles which
leads up and is introductory to the main theme of the work is obviously fragmentary.
The object of the writer however stands out clearly. He intended to give such an
account, step by step, of the beginnings of Christianity, as was necessary for a
full understanding of the life-work and missionary labours of St. Paul up to the
time of his captivity at Rome. Every episode appears to have been carefully selected
with a definite and precise purpose, and if the story, as told by him, seems at
times to be tantalisingly brief and scanty, even disjointed, we must remember that
those for whom it was written had access to oral sources of information from persons
who had witnessed or taken part in the events described, which would place each
episode in its proper setting and give to it its rightful significance. This we
cannot do now, but if we bear in mind that not only the facts recorded by Luke but
even his silences are suggestive, we may, I think, by the help of evidence gathered
in from various sources, from contemporary or nearly contemporary writings, from
the accumulated results of archaeological research, and from well-authenticated
tradition, be able to show that the spread of Christianity during the period covered
by the Acts was not by any means confined to the sphere of Paul's activity, nor
intended to be so confined, but that one most important field was reserved for the
Apostle who fills the foreground
of the Lucan narrative up to the year 42 A.D. and then, except for
a single brief appearance, is seen no more.
It is, of course, evident from what I have said that I am assuming that St. Luke
the physician, the travelling companion of St. Paul, was the author of the Acts
of the Apostles. I do so without feeling that such an assumption at the present
time requires defence. In these lectures it is my aim, as far as possible, to avoid
the mere collecting or comparing of other men's opinions, or the balancing of the
authority of one set of scholars against another. It is the results of personal
investigation into the history of the Church in Rome in the first century that I
am now specially desirous of bringing before you, not a recapitulation of what has
recently been written about that history. My own experience has taught me that the
only way to arrive at conclusions in historical questions satisfying to the historical
conscience is to study the original authorities for oneself with an independent
mind, using indeed all the light and all the suggestions that modern critical scholarship
can throw upon the many problems and difficulties that have to be solved, but never
accepting any of the so-called ‘results of criticism' without testing for oneself
with the greatest care and at first hand the grounds on which they are supposed
to rest.
The case for the Lucan authorship of the Third Gospel and of the Acts I consider
however to have been so thoroughly established by the remarkable series of works
published by Sir William M. RamsayThe Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170, 3rd ed. 1894;
St. Paul the Traveller
and Roman Citizen, 7th ed. 1903; A Historical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle
to the Galatians; The Cities of St. Paul; Luke the Physician and other Studies
in the History of Religion, 1908; The First Christian Century, 1911, etc. etc. and Dr. Adolf HarnackLukas, der Arzt, der Verfasser des dritten Evangeliums und der Apostelgeschichte,
1906; Sprüche and Reden Jesu. Die zweite Quelle des Matthäus and Lukas, 1907;
Die Apostelgeschichte, 1908; Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, etc., 1911.
All these volumes have been translated into English and published as vols. xx. xxiii.
xxvii. and xxxiii. of the Crown Theological Library. upon the subject, as
to have been placed, if not beyond the reach of controversy—for alas ! the spirit
of controversy is not
quickly laid—on a solid bedrock of reasoned and exhaustive argument
against which the waves of controversy will beat in vain. And not merely have they
proved the unity of authorship. They have shown that we have in St. Luke a cultured
writer possessed of literary power and historical grasp and well acquainted with
the details of Roman provincial administration and of the distinct characteristics,
geographical and political, of different localities, who in a considerable part
of his work speaks as an eyewitness, and who elsewhere uses first-hand evidence,
if at times with a certain freedom, yet always with honesty and intelligence. My
own conviction that the book of the Acts must have been written during St. Paul's
first captivity at Rome and completed before his release has long been firmly held,
but this conviction has been strengthened and deepened by the extraordinarily powerful
way in which Dr. HarnackNeue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte, pp. 63–81. In this volume Dr. Harnack
completes his defence of the date 62 A.D. for the Acts in favour of which he had
already argued in his Apostelgeschichte, 5 Excurs, 217–221. How strong was the case
he made out even in this earlier and more tentative argument may be judged by the
following extract from Neue Untersuchungen, p. 64: ‘Nicht auffallend aber konnte
es nur sein, dass andere sich durch die starken Argumente für die frühe Abfassung
der lukanischen Schriften als vollkommen überzeugt erklärten. Nicht nur Delbrück
hielt mir sofort vor, ich hätte mich in einer von mir selbst sicher entschiedenen
Frage mit unnötiger Zurückhaltung ausgedrückt, sondern auch Maurenbrecher erkannte
in meinen Beweisführungen die Lösung des chronologischen Problems. In seinem Werk
“Von Nazareth nach Golgatha” (1909) S. 22–30, gibt er die wichtigsten der von
mir geltend gemachten Beobachtungen für eine frühe Abfassungszeit der Acta zutreffend
und eindrucksvoll wieder and beschliesst seine Darlegung also: “Die Annahme (eines
späteren Ursprungs and geschichtlichen Wertlosigkeit der Lukasschriften) ist neuerdings
immermehr gefallen and schliesslich durch eine gründliche Untersuchung von Prof.
Harnack in allen Teilen gänzlich widerlegt and beseitigt worden. Viel mehr hat sich
nach jeder Richtung hin, wenn auch nicht die unbedingte Glaubwürdigkeit, so doch
das hohe Alter der Apostelgeschichte ergeben. Und wenn Prof. H. selbst nur zögernd
und erst nur in letzten Moment seiner Arbeit die Konsequenz seiner Ergebnisse auch
für die Datierung zog, so muss man doch sagen, dass nur in jener von ihm vorgeschlagenen
Weise so wohl der Schlusssatz der Acta wie die ganze Tenor des Buchs verständlich
wird, und dass daher schon um dieses äusseren Zeugnisses willen die Datierung auf
d. J. 62 als bewiesen und nicht nur als möglich zu gelten hat.”' has quite recently set forth in serried array the reasons
which
have slowly driven him to abandon his earlier prepossessions on this
question, and forced him (in spite of the knowledge that he was—to use his own words—‘creating
a revolution within the domain of criticism'Eine Revolution innerhaib der Kritik, p. 65. ) to fix on grounds alike
of external and of internal evidence the end of St. Paul's imprisonment as the date
when the Acts, in the form we now possess the book, was finished.
It is needless to say that the acceptance of such a conclusion has a very important
bearing on the subject of these lectures. For, if St. Luke wrote the Acts at Rome,
the work must have been written in the first instance for the Roman Christians,
but if so the question naturally arises, why should there be a total omission in
the book of any reference to the founding of the Church in Rome or to the names
of those who first preached the Gospel in that city? This is one of those silences
of St. Luke, of which I have spoken already as being suggestive. A comparison of
the last verses of the Third Gospel and of the Acts may help us to an answer.St. Luke, xxiv. 50-53; Acts, xxviii. 29-31. Had
the Gospel stood alone all commentators and critics would have asserted unanimously
that the Evangelist believed the Ascension of our Lord to have taken place on the
evening of the day of the Resurrection.Codex Bezae D and the first hand of the Sinaitic Codex א1 omit
καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν. The difficulty which these words raised was probably the reason
for their omission. But from the opening passage of the Acts
we learn that they would have been wrong, and that St. Luke in the conclusion of
his Gospel deliberately foreshortened the events of six weeks in this way, because
he intended to take up the thread of the story and fill in the details later. The.
similar foreshortening of the events of two years, which we find in Acts xxviii. 30-1, suggests
that St. Luke in writing this otherwise strangely puzzling and abrupt
ending to his narrative had already planned in his mind a third book, which should
supplement the Acts as the Acts had supplemented the Gospel, and that this book
would have begun by taking up the account of Peter's life-work, so sharply
broken off at his release from prison, and that a brief sketch would
have been given of the history of the Church in Rome previous to St. Paul's two
years'ministry during his captivity.
With this preface let us now turn to those introductory chapters of the Acts
in which St. Luke sketches for us the steps by which Christianity emerged from the
condition of a strictly Jewish sect to that of a universal religion intended for
all mankind. It will be seen that the enlargement of view, which is so clearly traced,
was very gradual; that it came from below rather than from above; from the subordinates,
to some extent from the rank and file, rather than from the acknowledged leaders.
On the Great Day of Pentecost when St. Luke so carefully enumerates the various
nationalities from which the great crowd of pilgrims was drawn, it should be noted
that St. Peter addresses them as ‘Men of Israel,' and his whole discourse is that
of a man concerned only with proving to an assembly of Jews that Jesus of Nazareth
was the promised Messiah of their sacred Scriptures. The passage is in fact a striking
testimony both to the wide extent of the Jewish Diaspora and to the fact of the
intense love and reverence for the Holy City and for the injunctions of the Mosaic
Law, which brought together such a throng of worshippers from far-distant regions,
including people speaking many different tongues, to this feast at Jerusalem. In
the list of those forming St. Peter's audience we find the names of six different
peoples and the inhabitants of nine different districts, and it is implied that
Jews from these various places had come up specially for the occasion—with one exception.
The phrase ‘the sojourning Romans, Jews as well as proselytes' seems capable of
only one interpretation, that St. Luke is here referring to a body of Roman Jews
and converts to Judaism, who were temporarily residing in Jerusalem, and whom it
may be permitted with considerable probability to identify with the ‘Synagogue
of the Libertines'An inscription at Pompeii contains the words ‘Synagoga Libertinorum,' Lanciani,
Pagan and Christian Rome, p. 310. mentioned
in Acts vi. 9. Among this body may have been numbered the Roman
Christians Junias and Andronicus, who were some quarter of a century later saluted
by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans ‘as men of mark among the Apostles and
who were in Christ before me.'
In his record of the period that follows St. Luke makes it quite clear that the
first organised Christian community was at Jerusalem, not in Galilee.A striking testimony to the authenticity of the Johannine account of our Lord's
ministry. Had our Lord's mission been confined to Galilee up to the last week of
His life, as the Synoptic narratives appear to suggest, it is almost inconceivable
that the home of the Christian Church should from the very first have been at Jerusalem. After the
day of Pentecost when certain of the multitude exclaimed ‘Are not all these that
speak Galilaeans?'—there is not a word in the Acts to indicate that the early
Church had any connexion with Galilee. The Twelve, whose authority, as being derived
directly from the Lord, no one called in question, made Jerusalem their headquarters
from this time forward, and from this centre carried on their mission work. But
that mission work was limited to. Jews. The Twelve, moreover, we are expressly told,
visited the Temple regularlySt. Luke, xxiv. 52, 53; Acts, ii. 46;
iii. 1; v. 12, 25, 42. and they seem to have conformed in every way to the
regulations of the Mosaic Law, and to have differed from the Jews amongst whom they
lived only in that they taught that the crucified Jesus, to whose Resurrection from
the Dead they bore personal testimony, had by His Resurrection proved Himself to
be the Messiah.Acts, ii. 32-36; iii. 14, 15, 20, 21, 26;
iv. 10, 33; v. 30-32, 42. Among the Twelve St. Peter on every occasion takes the lead and
is the spokesman of the rest, and occupies a position of undisputed pre-eminence.St. John is singled out on several occasions by name, as being second only
to St. Peter in influence and authority; see Acts, iii. 1; iv. 13;
viii. 14. Compare Gal. i. 18; ii. 9; also
St. John, xiii. 23-27; xviii. 15;
xx. 3-10; xxi. 20-24. Again the history of the Acts confirms the
account given in the Fourth Gospel.
In all that they did during these years, which immediately followed their Lord's
departure from them, it is scarcely possible that these personal disciples should
not have been
acting in strict accordance with their Master's last commands. Eventually
they were to go forth upon a wider mission to the nations, but for awhile—an ancient
tradition of considerable weight says definitely for twelve yearsCompare St. Luke, xxiv. 44–49; St. John, xiv. 26;
xvi. 13. —they were to
abide at Jerusalem, and restrict themselves to proclaiming in its simplest form
the message of the Gospel to the Palestinian Jews, meanwhile resting in the promise
that in the future whenever fresh calls should be made upon them they should receive
illumination and guidance from the Holy Spirit.Harnack (Const. and Law of the Church, p. 31) describes this as ‘a very old
and well-attested tradition.' Apollonius is stated by St. Jerome (De viris illust.)
‘to have learnt it from the ancients' and it is found in Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. 5.
Not until the sixth chapter of the Acts do we find any indication of a widening
of view. But here reading between the lines of the brief narrative one cannot but
feel something more than a suspicion that the movement of which the appointment
of the Seven was the outcome, and at the head of which St. Stephen placed himself,
was not one with which the Twelve were at the time in entire sympathy. The work
to which St. Stephen specially addressed himself was the preaching of the Gospel
to the members of those Synagogues which were set apart for the use of the Hellenistic
settlers and sojourners in Jerusalem, i.e. for Jews of foreign origin, speaking
a foreign tongue, and trained amidst Gentile associations. Those mentioned seem
to belong in order of importance to the chief Jewish Colonies of the Dispersion.
The first place, be it noted, is assigned to the Libertines or Roman freedmen, men
conspicuous probably alike for their wealth and their close connexion with the Imperial
City. Then come the Alexandrians, members of a Jewish settlement of ancient date
and high culture, in numbers exceeding probably the entire population of Palestine.Philo, In Flaccum and Leg. ad Caium. Philo describes the Jews at this time
as occupying entirely two out of the five districts of Alexandria, and says that
in Egypt their numbers amounted to 1,000,000. See also Josephus, cont. Apion. ii.
4; B.J. xii. 3. 2. And after
them the Cyrenians,Josephus, xiv. 7, Life, 76, B.J. vii. last chapter. In the revolt of the
Jews in the time of Trajan (116–117) the number of Jews who perished in the district
of Cyrene is given as 22,000, no doubt an exaggeration but pointing to a very large Jewish population. second only to the Alexandrians in number, and
like them thoroughly Hellenised. Lastly, mention is made of those of Cilicia and
Asia—traders no doubt connected by ties of family and business with those characteristically
Graeco-Asiatic cities, Tarsus and Ephesus. Among such a body of ‘Hellenists' the
message of the Gospel would naturally be interpreted in a larger and more universal
sense than in those stricter ‘Hebrew' circles to which as yet the Twelve had chiefly
directed their appeal.
What we do know is that St. Stephen's ardour and activity and the special character
of his teaching speedily aroused the intense enmity of the Jewish rulers. He was
seized, brought before the Sanhedrim, and without proper trial or condemnation in
a sudden outburst of fanatic fury stoned to death. It was the signal for a persecution
which scattered far and wide those who had attached them-selves to him and the doctrines
that he taught.Acts, vi. 8, vii. 54-60,
viii. 1–3.
But fierce though the persecution was, St. Luke expressly tells us, it did not
touch the Twelve. ‘They were all,' we read ‘scattered abroad, except the Apostles.'πάντες δὲ διεσπάρησαν κατὰ τὰς χώρας τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ Σαμαρείας πλὴν τῶν
ἀποστόλων.
Apparently at this time the accusers of Stephen did not regard the Twelve, and
the Judaeo-Christians who held with them, as men ‘speaking against this Holy Place
and trying to change the customs that Moses hath delivered unto us.' As yet they
(the original Apostles) seem not to have offended the susceptibilities of the High-Priestly
caste by any neglect in their outward observance of the rites and ceremonies of
the Jewish law. But tliis scattering abroad of the friends and disciples of Stephen
was to be, under God's providence, gradually productive of great results. It led
directly to the conversion of Saul the persecutor. It brought Philip, one of the
Seven, to Samaria, where many were converted by
his preaching. Such indeed was his success that for the first time
the Apostles broke through their rule of confining themselves to Jerusalem and its
neighbourhood, and Peter and John, the two leaders, were sent to take official charge
of the new field of missionary operations. And there at Samaria (mark the emphasis
Luke lays upon the incident) Peter was confronted with the man who, under the name
of Simon Magus, was according to tradition to exercise a large, perhaps a decisive,
influence upon his action at a critical point in his career.Acts, viii. 5-24.
Nor was this all. After an interval, probably of some three years,Comp. Acts ix. 26-31 with Gal. i. 18. we find that
persecution has for the time entirely ceased, and that already the Christian Church
is peacefully and firmly established throughout the whole of Judaea, Galilee and
Samaria,καθ᾽ ὅλης τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ Γαλιλείας καὶ Σαμαρείας. ix. 31. and Peter engaged on a tour of
visitation in all parts.ἐγένετο δὲ Πέτρον διερχόμενον διὰ πάντων. ix. 32.
Comp. xv. 41 and xviii. 23. Finally he reaches
Joppa and there takes up his abode for some time in the house, we are told, of one
Simon a tanner. Now this very fact, that the Apostle chose to reside with a man
whose trade in the eyes of strict orthodox Judaism was unclean, points to the advance
he had already made in casting himself loose from the fetters of Jewish prejudice.
The vision which sent him to Cornelius was probably the reflection of the doubts
and questionings which had been previously filling his thoughts and an answer to
his prayers.We are here in presence of one of those strange psychical
communications of which we have been learning so much in recent years. They are far more common
than most of us dream of, and come we know not how or whence. In the trance into which
Peter, exposed on the housetop to the full heat of the mid-day sun and faint for
lack of food, fell, just in proportion to the deadening of the ordinary senses
would be the sensitiveness of those faculties which lie below the threshold of
wake-a-day consciousness. First the spirit of the Centurion in his anxious search after truth
is moved to seek out Peter, as his guide and teacher; then the spirit of Peter,
while still unconsciously conscious of the approach of the messengers who were on
their way to seek him, receives the intimation, which is the response to his own
prayers. Men like Peter and John and Paul were in a manner far beyond the normal,
what we should now call ‘sensitives'; their spiritual faculties
attuned to constant and intimate intercourse with that Divine Spirit who, their Master had promised,
should in their hours of doubt and darkness be their guide and helper towards
light and truth. It was a preparation for
that which was to follow, for his visit to the Roman centurion was
not merely to teach him that the law which forbade intercourse between Jew and Gentile
was henceforth done away, but to open his eyes to the startling and all-important
fact that it was the revealed will of God that uncircumcised Gentiles should be
admitted to the full privileges of Christianity. The question how far such Gentiles
would have to conform to the Jewish law was indeed not yet settled, nor was it to
be settled without much prolonged and even embittered controversy in the years that
were to come. The collocation by St. Luke in juxtaposition of the defence of St.
PeterActs, xi. 1-18. to the brethren at Jerusalem for his action in regard to Cornelius, and
of the news reaching those same brethren that certain men from Cyprus and Cyrene,
on their own initiative, without sanction or authority from the Mother Church, were
preaching to the Greeks at Antioch and had converted a large number of them to the
faith,Acts, xi. 19-27. These men were of those Hellenist Christians who had been
driven from Jerusalem by the persecution which followed the death of Stephen. The
exiles, St. Luke tells, preached the word in Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch (and
no doubt in many other places), but at first to the Jews only. Then, after an interval
probably of five or six years, certain of them, who had meanwhile settled in Cyprus
and Cyrene, came to Antioch, and, finding that the Greeks were willing to listen
to their preaching, began with success a work of evangelisation among them. was clearly intentional. St. Peter's apologia was apparently somewhat grudgingly
accepted, for there is little of spontaneous enthusiasm about the words—‘and when
they had heard these things they held their peace and glorified God, saying “Then
also—ἄρα γε καὶ—to the Gentiles hath God granted repentance unto life.”'
On receiving information, therefore, about what was occurring at Antioch, it
was only natural that those at the head of the Church in Jerusalem should determine
to send to the Syrian capital one of their own body with instructions
to inquire personally into the truth of the reports that had reached
them, and to establish official control over a movement which seemed at first sight
to be revolutionary, and which was in fact a long step in advance towards a totally
new conception of the mission of Christianity in the world.
Joseph, surnamed Barnabas,
whom they selected as their emissary, was a man singularly well qualified for dealing
wisely and sympathetically with the new situation. He had been intimately associated
from the very first with the Jerusalem Church.His aunt Mary resided in Jerusalem, and her house appears to have been used as
a place of assembly (Acts, xii. 12); indeed there is a tradition that the upper
room of the Last Supper was in this house. Bamabas himself seems to have had property
in Jerusalem or its neighbourhood. Acts, iv. 37. He was at once a Levite and a Cypriote
Hellenist, and the surname which was given to him by the Apostles themselves tells
us that he was a man endowed with prophetic gifts for the exposition and interpretation
of Scripture.Bar-nabas = son of exhortation; Nabi = a prophet. The Greek form υἱὸς παρακλήσεως
may be illustrated by Acts xiii. 15, where Barnabas and Paul are asked by the rulers
of the Synagogue if they have any λόγος παρακλήσεως to address to the congregation.
Compare also παράκλητος =Comforter, Advocate, Helper, St. John, xiv. 16, 26. In
accordance with his surname we find that on his arrival at Antioch Barnabas παρακάλει πάντας.
In Acts xiii. 1 Barnabas is classed as ‘a prophet and teacher.' And he was to remain for some years, probably to the end of his
life, a mediator and reconciler between the opposing schools of thought and ideals
of Christianity associated later with the names of St. James and St. Paul. It is
noteworthy how large a part Barnabas, who had now gone to Antioch as the representative
of the Church at Jerusalem, took in preparing the way for him who was to be pre-eminently
the Apostle of the Gentiles. The two men may possibly have first become friends
in their youth, when Saul of Tarsus was studying at the feet of Gamaliel. In any
case when Saul, three years after his memorable conversion, came up to Jerusalem
to make the acquaintance of Peter, he found, perhaps not unnaturally, that the brethren
looked askance at the erstwhile persecutor, until Barnabas took him by the hand
and, as it were, stood
voucher for his good faith.Acts, ix. 25–27; Gal. i. 18-21. His reception, however, on this occasion
appears to have been so far discouraging that Saul withdrew for a considerable time
to his native place Tarsus. Thither Barnabas after a brief sojourn at Antioch now
went to seek in his retirement the man whom he knew to be specially well fitted
to act as his colleague at this juncture. His judgment and prevision were more than
justified. For a whole year, we read in the Acts, Barnabas and Saul taught with
such success that the assemblies of the faithful, whether of Jewish or Gentile origin,
met together harmoniously and in such numbersActs, xi. 26. This seems to be the force of the words
συναχθῆναι ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ. that even in this vast
city,The population of Antioch at this time was probably about half a million. Ottfried
Müller (Antiquitates Antiochenae) has collected all that can be learnt from ancient
sources about Antioch. of
mixed population, professing every known variety of religion, the new sect became
sufficiently large and well known to attract public attention. The scoffing nick-name,
Christiani, was now for the first time given to the disciples of Jesus by the pagan
Antiocheans—a term of shame and reproach, which soon was to become a title of glory.
While at Antioch under the leadership of Barnabas the preaching of the Gospel
was thus making rapid progress, events were taking place in Judaea of critical importance
for the future of the Church. The peace which the Christians in Palestine enjoyed
in the period preceding the conversion of Cornelius had been due, not to any increase
of good-will on the part of the Jewish rulers, but to the fact that thesewere too
much occupied at that time with their own serious troubles. The order given by the
Emperor Caligula to place his statue in the Holy of Holies had filled the whole
nation with horror and made them resolve rather to be massacred than allow such
a profanation of the Temple.Josephus (Ant. xviii. 8) and Philo (Leg. ad Caium) tell the whole story in
detail, and also the fruitless efforts made by Agrippa to induce the Emperor to abandon his intention. The assassination of
Caligula alone averted a general revolt. According to Josephus, Herod
Agrippa, who was then in Rome, played a very important part in securing the peaceful
accession of Claudius, who rewarded him for his services by bestowing upon him,
in addition to Galilee, Peraea and the territory beyond the Jordan with which he
had been invested by Caligula, also Judaea, Samaria and Abilene, making his kingdom
thus equal in extent to that of his grandfather Herod the Great.Jos. Ant. xix. 4, 5; B.J. ii. 11. H. Lehmann, Claudius und seine
Zeit (Leipzig, 1877), 118–121, 161–164. Milman, Hist. of the Jews, ii.
126–158. Claudius became
emperor, January 24, 41 A.D., and towards the end of that year King Agrippa went
to Palestine with the intention of using every means to ingratiate himself with
his new subjects. He was especially desirous of impressing them with his careful
observance of the Mosaic law and his zeal for the national religion, being to some
extent suspect through his long residence in Rome and alien descent.Jos. Ant. xix. 6. Jost (Geschichte des Judenthums, i. 420 ff.)
quotes many anecdotes from the Talmud of Agrippa's eagerness to give proof of his
orthodoxy and piety. See also Fouard, S. Pierre, pp. 207–212. Accordingly
having gone to Jerusalem to keep the first Passover after his accession, he resolved
to give a signal mark of his fervour as a defender of the faith, by the summary
execution of James the son of Zebedee. Possibly he was the only one of the Christian
leaders on whom for the moment he could lay hands. But finding his action had pleased
the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also, and, as the days of unleavened bread
had already begun, he placed the Apostle in prison under the strictest guard with
the intention of bringing him forth before the people as soon as the Passover was
over.St. Luke, xii. 1–18. The story of his escape as told by St. Luke, which ends so abruptly, has
every internal mark of having been derived directly from the maid-servant Rhoda,
whose name is otherwise so unnecessarily mentioned. We learn from this graphic
narrative that the house in Jerusalem where the disciples were
accustomed to hold their gatherings for prayer was that of Mary, the
mother of John Mark, and the aunt of Barnabas. It was to this house that the Apostle
naturally turned his steps, as soon as he found himself outside the prison gates,
but with no intention of remaining in so well known a spot. As he entered the room
with a movement of his hand he at once checked their cries of astonishment, briefly
told his tale, probably almost in the rapid words recorded, asked his hearers to
repeat it to James and the brethren, and then immediately, while it was still dark,
he went out to betake himself to a more secure hiding-place. And as the Apostle
disappears into the obscurity of the night, so does he, so far as his active career
is concerned, disappear henceforth from the pages of St. Luke's history.
There are difficulties in this brief account of the Herodian persecution of the
spring of 42 A.D. There is no hint that the Twelve were at Jerusalem at this critical
time. St. Peter himself does not seem to have been there when St. James was beheaded.
His parting words point to two conclusions: (1) that the other James, the Lord's
Brother, was already the recognised head of the Jerusalem community; and (2) that
the speaker had no expectation of being able to tell his tale to ‘James and the
brethren' in person. The explanation however lies to our hand, if we accept the
ancient and well-attested tradition of which I have already spoken, that the Lord
Jesus had bidden his Apostles to make Jerusalem the centre of their missionary activity
for twelve years, after which they were to disperse and go forth to preach to the
nations. Already before Herod Agrippa struck his blow the Twelve had begun to set
out each one to his allotted sphere of evangelisation, the care of the Mother Church
being confided to James, the Lord's Brother, assisted by a body of presbyters, of
whom he was one, but over whom he presided with something of monarchical authority.
It would be an anachronism to give him the Gentile title of Bishop, but in this
earliest constitution of the Jerusalem Church we have the model which other Churches
were to follow and out of which episcopacy grew.
But even if this be granted, it throws no light on the after-life of St. Peter.
For his after-life we have again to fall back mainly upon tradition, a tradition
already referred to by me at the close of my first lecture, which makes St. Peter
to have been the founder of the Church in Rome. St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans,
as I have shown, speaks of that Church as already in 57 A.D. long established and
of world-wide repute, into which as being built on another man's foundation he had
not thought it right to intrude.Supra, pp. 28–9. The question then arises, what grounds are there
for believing that the man to whom he refers was St. Peter?
Now there are traditions and traditions. First let it be premised that we are
not dealing here with a tradition handed down orally by illiterate people. Not that
oral tradition is to be neglected or despised. There is abundant evidence to show
with what accuracy historical traditions including long lists of names have been
handed down from generation to generation even among tribes unacquainted with writing.
After describing the pre-Hispanic civilisation in Peru, a recent writer remarks:
‘It is not surprising, in spite of the fact that no form of writing was known,
that the people capable of such political organisation had pre-served in traditional
form much of their early history. Feats of memory, which seem almost miraculous
to civilised races, who have become dependent on written records, have been chronicled
of several peoples below the Peruvians in the scale of culture. The nobility among
the Polynesians received regular instruction in their past history, and the chiefs
could repeat long genealogies, which had been faith-fully handed down from generation
to generation. Even among African races traditional records are not unknown, and
in one case a list of even one hundred chiefs, together with historical details,
has been recently obtained from a tribe in the heart of the Southern Belgian Congo.'Joyce, South American Archaeology, 1912, p. 76.
In the first century, however, in Rome and in all the chief centres
of population, where the early Christian Churches were established,
writing was familiarly employed by all classes. At one time it was assumed, with
an assurance that had absolutely no basis, that the events of early Christian history
could only have been known through oral transmission, that it was most unlikely
that anything was committed to writing at the time, and the idea that the separate
Churches kept any records of the appointment of their officers, or any statements
concerning the various vicissitudes of their fortunes, was dismissed as untenable.
‘There is a very strong body of opinion,' said Sir W. RamsayRamsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches, 1904, pp. 4, 5. about nine years
ago, ‘that the earliest Christians wrote little or nothing. It is supposed that
partly they were either unable to write or at least unused to the familiar employment
of writing for the purposes of ordinary life. Put aside that prejudice, and the
whole body of opinion, which maintains that the Christians at first did not set
down anything in writing about the life and death of Christ, strongly and widely
accepted as it is, dominating as a fundamental premise much of the discussion of
this whole subject in recent times, is devoid of any support. . . . One of the initial
presumptions, plausible in appearance and almost universally assumed and conceded,
is that there was no early registration of the great events in the beginning of
Christian history. This presumption we must set aside as a mere prejudice, contrary
to the whole spirit and character of that age and entirely improbable.' Such a presumption
has in fact been proved by recent discoveries to be in all probability quite erroneous,
and indeed there are strong grounds for making an assumption of a precisely opposite
character, i.e. that the chief Christian Churches did keep more or less regular
archives, which, like the bulk of ancient records, perished through fire or other
accidents,In sixteen years three great fires destroyed much of Rome and an enormous quantity
of documents, i.e. in 64, 69 and 80 A.D. There was a most destructive fire in the
reign of Commodus 191 A.D. Think of the meaning of the following facts: Rome was
taken and sacked by Alaric, 410 A.D.; by Genseric, 455 A.D.; by Ricimer, 472 A.D.
; by Vitiges, 537 A.D.; by Totila, 546 A.D. In 846 A.D. the Saracens plundered
Rome. See Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, pp. 147–9;
also The Destruction of Ancient Rome, p. 131. through the ruthless sacking of the city by barbarian conquerors, and
in the case of these
Christian archives by systematic destruction at the hands of the imperial
authorities, more especially during the persecution of Diocletian. But though the
documents themselves disappeared,Horace Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie Chrétienne, vol. i. xiv. writes thus:
‘Malheureusement les Actes [des Martyrs] authentiques ont presque tous disparu.
. . . L'Eglise romaine non possède aucun. Les actes de ces martyrs ont dû être détruits
pendant la grande persécution de Dioclétien; il est certain qu'à cette époque on
a brûlé les Archives de de 1'Eglise romaine; on a d'ailleurs agi de même en Afrique,
ainsi que nous 1'apprend S. Augustin.' Of the principal contemporary historians
of the period dealt with in these lectures—Fabius Rusticus, Cluvius Rufus, and Pliny
the Elder—not a single line has survived. A. Peter (Hist. Rom. frag. pp. 291–324)
gives a list of thirty-five historical writers upon the period from Caligula to
Hadrian (37–138) all of whose writings have perished. Of the works of Tacitus only
a portion have come down to us, and the Histories in a single MS. the memory of their contents would remain to
be worked up afresh into new narratives tinged with the opinions, beliefs and modes
of thought of the time at which they were written, and in such a setting as the
pious fancy of the compilers thought to be edifying, and in harmony with their subject.
What criteria then, it may be asked, have we for judging whether these later Acts
and Passions of Saints and Martyrs contain in the midst of apocryphal accretion
a real core of sound and trustworthy historical fact? A tradition before it can
be accepted as embodying authentic history should, I think, satisfy the following
conditions: (1) It must be concerned with an event or series of events that had
a great number of witnesses, and of witnesses who would have a strong motive to
record or bear in memory what they had seen. (2) The beginning of the tradition
should appear at a time not too remote from the facts it records, at a time, that
is to say, in which it should not be possible for the notices handed down by contemporaries
to be obscured. (3) Shortly after that time to which the beginning of the tradition
goes back there should appear in
the community to which it relates a firm and general persuasion of
its truth. (4) This persuasion should spread gradually until everywhere the facts
are accepted as true without any doubts being raised even by those who, had they
not been plainly true, would have desired to reject them.
Let us now apply these criteria to the Petrine tradition at Rome. That Peter
visited Rome between the years 62 A.D. and 65 A.D. and that he was put to death
there by crucifixion is admitted by everyone who studies the evidence in a fair
and reasonable spirit.Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, p. 125. This is not a tradition, it may rather be described as a
fact vouched for by contemporary or nearly contemporary evidence. On this point
no statement could be stronger than that of Professor Lanciani: ‘I write about
the monuments of Rome from a strictly archaeological point of view, avoiding questions
which pertain or are supposed to pertain to religious controversy. For the archaeologist,
the presence and execution of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond
a shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence.' It is now generally conceded that
the first epistle bearing the name of Peter was written from Rome. The ‘Apocalypse
of St. John' and the ‘Sibylline Oracles' show that Babylon was a common synonym
for Rome in the second half of the first century.In that portion of the fifth book of the Sibylline Oracles which was probably
written 71–74 A.D. the flight of Nero from Rome is thus described; v. 143
φεύξεται ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἄναξ φοβερὸς καὶ ἀναιδής.
The language of Clement of RomeClement Rom. 1 Cor. v.
in his Epistle to the Corinthians leaves no doubt—for it is the witness of a contemporary—that
Peter was martyred at Rome. ‘But leaving ancient examples let us come to the athletes
who were very near to our own times, let us take the illustrious examples of our
own generation. . . . Peter who through unjust jealousy endured not one or two but
many sufferings and so having borne witness—μαρτυρήσας—departed to the place
of glory that was his due.' The
statement in the apocalyptic ‘Ascension of Isaiah'See Clemen, ‘Die Himmelfahrt des Isaia, ein ältestes Zeugnis für das römische
Martyrium des Petrus' in Zeitsch. für Wissensch. Theologie, 1896. The discovery
among the papiri of Lord Amhurst of the Greek text of the Ascension makes the reference
clear. καὶ (τ)ῶν δώδεκα (εἷς) ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτοῦ
π(αραδ)οθήσεται. Grenfell, The Amhurst Papiri. Ascensio Isaiah, etc., 1900. —also the work
of a contemporary—that ‘a lawless king, the slayer of his mother, will persecute
the plant which the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved have planted. Of the Twelve one
will be delivered into his hands' can scarcely refer to another event than the
death of Peter at the time of the Neronian persecution. A comparison of St. John
xxi. 18, 19 with St. John xiii. 36, 37 and with 2 Peter i. 14 is evidence as to
the manner of that death. The question of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel or
of 2 Peter is immaterial, for the writers, whoever they were, belong to the first
century, and the testimony to the received belief of the Christian Church which
they give is authentic.
But a solitary brief visit to Rome after St. Paul had previously spent in that
city two years of fruitful work does not account for the position assigned by tradition
to St. Peter in relation to the Roman Church. Though the two names are on several
occasions coupled together, as joint founders of the Roman Church, in all the earliest
notices in which the two are named together the name of Peter stands first. Thus
Ignatius in his Epistle to the Romans written about 109 A.D. says: ‘I do not command
you like Peter and Paul; they were Apostles; I am a condemned criminal.'Ep. S. Ignatii ad Romanos, c. iv: οὐχ ὡς Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος διατάσσομαι
ὑμῖν· ἐκεῖνοι ἀπόστολοι, ἐγὼ κατάκριτος. Dionysius
of Corinth 171 A.D. writing to Soter bishop of RomeQuoted by Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 25: ταῦτα καὶ ὑμεῖς διὰ τῆς τοσαύτης
νουθεσίας τὴν ἀπὸ Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν γενηθεῖσαν Ῥωμαίων τε καὶ Κορινθίων
συνεκεράσατε. A comparison with the passage from the Ascension of Isaiah, from which a quotation
has already been made, is most interesting. ὁ βασιλεὺς οὗτος (Nero the matricide)
τὴν φυτείαν ἣν φυτεύσουσιν οἱ ἀπόστολοι
τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ διώξει καὶ τῶν δώδεκα εἷς ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτοῦ παραδοθήσεται. a speaks ‘of the plantation
by Peter and Paul that took place among the Romans and Corinthians.' Irenaeus a
few years later is filled with respect
for ‘the most great and ancient and universally known Church established at Rome
by the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, and also the faith declared to
men, which comes down to our own time through the succession of her bishops. For
unto this Church, on account of its more powerful lead, every Church, meaning the
faithful who are from everywhere, must needs resort; since in it that tradition
which is from the Apostles has been preserved by those who are from everywhere.
The Blessed Apostles, having founded and established the Church, entrusted the office
of the episcopate to Linus. Paul speaks of this Linus in his epistles to Timothy,
Anencletus succeeded him, and after Anencletus, in the third place from the Apostles,
Clement received the episcopate.' Now Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp,
and acquainted with others who had known St. John, and who in 177 A.D.
became bishop of Lyons, had spent some years in Rome. This passage was written,
as he tells us, in the time of Eleutherus, probably about 180 A.D.Irenaeus, Adv. Haereses, iii. 3; Eus. Hist. Eccl. v. 6.
Eusebius of Caesarea has left us two lists of the Roman bishops, one in his ‘Ecclesiastical History,'
the other in his ‘Chronicle.' The first is the list of
Irenaeus, the beginning of which has just been quoted. The second is derived from
the lost ‘Chronicle' of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, written about half a century
later. In the ‘Chronicle' St. Peter's episcopate at Rome is stated to have lasted
twenty-five years.Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 6, see also iv. 22. Hippolytus' Chronicle was written
during the first quarter of the third century and was undoubtedly used by Eusebius.
For an account of this learned and essentially Roman writer see Lightfoot's
Apostolic Fathers, part i. vol. ii. pp. 317–477. The original Greek of Eusebius' Chronicle
or Chronography is lost, but it survives in three translations, a Latin version
by Jerome, a Syriac and an Armenian. The Hieronymian and Syriac versions give twenty-five
years as the length of Peter's episcopate. On the other hand the Armenian has twenty
years, but Duchesne (Liber Pontificalis, p. v) says: ‘Ann. XX dans le texte arménien,
évidemment fautif.' The Armenian version has in fact many divergences from the Hieronymian,
but Lightfoot, who has discussed the matter very thoroughly (Apost. Fathers, part
i. vol. i. pp. 212–246), comes to the conclusion that these divergences are due
‘probably to the errors and caprice of transcribers' (p. 245). Duchesne, Mommsen,
and others hold the Latin Chronography, known as the Liber Generationis, to be a
translation from the Greek of Hippolytus' Chronicle dating from about 234 A.D.
In the ‘Ecclesiastical History' we read—‘under the
reign of Claudius by the benign and gracious providence of God, Peter
that great and powerful apostle, who by his courage took the lead of all the rest,
was conducted to Rome.' In other passages his martyrdom with that of Paul is represented
as taking place after Nero's persecution.Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 14—the whole of this passage will be considered later.
For the death: Hist. Eccl. ii. 25, iii. 1, 4. The interval between these two dates
would roughly be about twenty-five years. Now it is evident that these figures,
derived as they are from men like Irenaeus and Hippolytus, who had access to the
archives and traditions in Rome itself, cannot be dismissed as pure fiction. They
must have a basis of fact behind them. Eusebius tells us ‘that after the martyrdom
of Paul and Peter Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome.' Now
the date of this martyrdom was according to the received tradition the fourteenth
year of Nero or 67 A.D.; if then we deduct twenty-five years, we arrive at 42 A.D.,
which is precisely the date given for St. Peter's first visit to Rome by St. Jerome
in his work ‘De Viris Illustribus.' Remembering that Jerome was a translator of
the Eusebian Chronicle his words may be taken to embody a close acquaintance with
Eusebius' works, including his lost ‘Records of Ancient Martyrdoms,' and with the
sources that he used. Jerome writes as follows: ‘Simon Peter, prince of the Apostles,
after an episcopate of the Church at Antioch and preaching to the dispersion of
those of the circumcision, who had believed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia
and Bithynia, in the second year of Claudius goes to Rome to oppose Simon Magus,
and there for twenty-five years he held the sacerdotal chair until the last year
of Nero, that is the fourteenth.'Jerome, De Viris Illust. i. Jerome
must have had access to the Chronography of Julius Africanus, the Chronicle of Hippolytus,
the Memorials of Hegesippus, and other lost works. Now here amidst a certain confusion, which will
be dealt
with presently, a definite date is given for Peter's first arrival at Rome, and, be it
noted, it is the date of his escape from Herod Agrippa's persecution and his disappearance
from the narrative of the Acts.
This evidence of Jerome, it will be thus seen, rests upon that of Eusebius, and
that of the earlier authorities which that historian consulted. It has been said
that one of the conditions of the soundness of an historical tradition was the wideness
and unanimity of its reception. Now probably never was any tradition accepted so
universally, and without a single dissentient voice, as that which associates the
foundation and organisation of the Church of Rome with the name of St. Peter and
which speaks of his active connexion with that Church as extending over a period
of some twenty-five years.
It is needless to multiply references. In Egypt and in Africa, in the East and
in the West, no other place ever disputed with Rome the honour of being the see
of St. Peter; no other place ever claimed that he died there or that it possessed
his tomb. Most significant of all is the consensus of the Oriental, non-Greek-speaking,
Churches. A close examination of Armenian and Syrian MSS.,P. Martin, ‘S. Pierre, sa venue et son martyre à Rome,' Rev. des Questions
historiques, xiii. 5, xv. 5, xviii. 202. This writer gives an array of quotations
from Armenian and Syrian (Jacobite and Nestorian) authors from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. and in the case of
the latter both of Nestorian and Jacobite authorities, through several centuries,
has failed to discover a single writer who did not accept the Roman Petrine tradition.
No less striking is the local evidence (still existing) for a considerable residence
of St. Peter in Rome. ‘There is no doubt,' is the judgment of Lanciani, once more
to quote his well-known work ‘Pagan and Christian Rome' (p. 212), ‘that the likenesses
of St. Peter and St. Paul have been carefully preserved in Rome ever since their
lifetime, they are familiar to every one, even to school-children. These portraits
have come down to us by scores. They are
painted in the cubiculi of the Catacombs, engraved in gold leaf in
the so-called vetri cemeteriali, cast in bronze, hammered in silver or copper, and
designed in mosaic. The type never varies. St. Peter's face is full and strong with
short curly hair and beard, while St. Paul appears more wiry and thin, slightly
bald with a long pointed beard. The antiquity and the genuineness of both types
cannot be doubted.' Other noticeable facts are: (l) the appearance of the name
of Peter, both in Greek and Latin, among the inscriptions of the most ancient Christian
cemeteries, especially in the first-century catacomb of
Priscilla.The oldest parts of the Catacomb of Priscilla are regarded by De Rossi, Marucchi,
Lanciani and the best authorities as dating from the middle of the first century.
The most ancient inscriptions are in red and many in the Greek language. Among them
is one containing only the single word
. Another on the left side of the main gallery thus:—
a third:—
In this catacomb is the mausoleum of the Acilii Glabriones, the family of the
consul M. Acilius Glabrio, put to death by Domitian in 95 A.D. His own tomb has
been destroyed. According to the Liber Pontificalis Pope Leo IV, in the ninth century,
removed from this catacomb the bodies of Aquila and Priscilla, with others, into
the city to protect them from profanation at the hands of the Saracen invaders.
Marucchi, Archéologie Chédtienne, vol. ii. pp. 586 ff; Le Memorie degli Apostoli
Pietro e Paolo in Roma, p, 119, pp. 160–164. On p. 162 may be seen a copy of the
beautiful medallion containing the heads of SS. Peter and Paul found by Boldetti
in the first-century catacomb of Domitilla and now in the Museo Sacro delta Biblioteca
Vaticana.
The appearance
of this unusual name on these early Christian tombs can most easily be explained
by the supposition that either those who bore it or their parents had been baptised
by Peter. In any case it may be taken that his memory was held in
especial reverence by them. Again, on a large number of early Christian
sarcophagi now in the Lateran Museum the imprisonment of Peter by Herod Agrippa
and his release by the angel is represented. The French historian of the ‘Persecutions
of the first two Centuries,' Paul Allard,Allard, Hist. des Persécutions, vol. i. p. 15. was the first to point out that the frequency
with which this subject was chosen might be accounted for by the existence of a
traditional belief in a close connexion between this event and the first visit of
St. Peter to Rome. Orazio Marucchi, the learned and accomplished pupil and successor
of De Rossi, in his latest volume upon recent researches in the catacombs, commenting
upon this suggestion of Allard, adds that this scene is often united to others,
in which Moses and Peter appear as the representative founders of the Jewish and
Christian Churches with particular reference to the Church in Rome.Roma Sotterranea Christiana (nuova serie) Tom. I.: Monumenti del Cemitero di
Domitilla sulla Via Ardeatina descritti da Orazio Marucchi, 1911, p. 9.
In some representations may be seen the Lord handing to Peter a volume on which
is written Lex Domini, or
beneath which is the legend Dominus Legem Dat.Marucchi, Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro e Paolo in Roma, pp. 180–182. More remarkable still are those
in which Moses, with the well-known traits of St. Peter, strikes the rock out of
which flow the waters of cleansing through baptism in the name of Jesus Christ.G. B. de Rossi, Bullettino di Archeologia Christiana, 1868, p. 1 ff.; 1874,
p. 174; 1877, p. 77 ff.
In the Vatican museum this scene is depicted on two glasses. Behind the figure
striking the Rock is written the word ‘Petrus.' There is no doubt a reminiscence
here of St. Paul's words, 1 Cor. x. 4: ἔπινον γὰρ ἐκ
πνευματικῆς ἀκολουθούσης πέτρας· ἡ δὲ πέτρα ἦν ὁ Χριστός, and of the declaration of Christ:
Σὺ εἶ Πέτρος καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, St. Matt. xvi. 18.
Taken together all these authentic records of the impressions that had been left
upon the minds of the primitive Roman Church of a close personal connexion between
that Church and the Apostle Peter cannot be disregarded. They are existent to-day
to tell their own tale.
Once more the number of legends and the quantity of apocryphal literature that
grew up around the Petrine tradition are witnesses not merely to the hold that it
had upon popular regard but to its historical reality. Many of these legends, much
of this literature may in the main be evidently fictitious, but even in those which
are most clearly works of imagination, there is almost always a kernel of truth
overlaid with invention.‘Les Actes des Martyrs. Supplément aux Acta sincera de Dom Ruinart,' par Edmond
Le Blant. Mémoires de l'Institut Nat. de France, tom. xxx. part 2, p. 81: ‘Les
gentils, aux temps de Dioclétien, avaient recherché, pour les anéantir, les livres,
les écrits religieux des fidèles. Cette destruction, qui nous est attestée par
des procès-verbaux contemporains, fut rigoureusement poursuivi, et l'Eglise, après
la tourmente, dut pourvoir à la réfection de ses archives dévastées. Ce fut souvent
à l';aide de souvenirs de traditions orales, que l'on dut réconstituer alors nombre
d'Acta et de Passiones et souvent . . . ces rédactions nouvelles furent accommodées,
pour le détail, à la mode du temps où elles étaient faites'; p. 81: ‘Ces interpolations,
à mon avis, ne doivent donc ni déconcerter ni rébuter la critique. Sous la couche
des inventions, les traits originaux existent, et un grand nombre d'entre eux apparaissent
come à fleur de sol. Il les faut dégager patiemment,' p. 87. It is perfectly well known that most of these documents
have behind them other documents, which are now lost, but out of which those we
now possess have grown by gradual accretions and interpolations.G. B. de Rossi in an Archaeological Conference held at Rome, December 11,
1881, said: ‘Che nella formazione degli Atti dei martiri devono esser distinti
e considerati molti periodi successivi; it primo della relazione contemporanea
dei testimoni oculari; il secondo delle interpolazioni fatte al testo originale
fino dal seculo incerca quarto e forse prima: poi vengono le amplificazioni e parafrasi
composte dai retort nei secoli quinto e sesto: finalmente le abbreviazioni delle
prolisse parafrasi ad use delle Lectiones liturgicae, e le nuove forme di stile
date alle vecchie leggende dal seculo decimo in poi per opera di scrittori diversi,
i cui nome in parte conosciamo; i quali vollero togliere ogni oscurità e rossezza
al dettato e vestirlo di nuove fogge di lingua. In tutte queste trasformazioni naturalmente
si venne assai alterando l'indole genuina dei documenti; furono aggiunti prolissi
discorsi, circostanze meravigliose, leggende strane, ma generalmente rimase sempre
il fondo e la sostanza del primitivo discorso.' Bullettino di Arch. Chr. serie IV.
1882, p. 162. But it is not
impossible even now for sound and scholarly criticism to arrive with fair certainty
in many cases at the ultimate basis of fact on which the edifice of fiction rests.
One of these apocryphal documents we
have in a very early form—the Ebionite ‘Preaching of Peter'—which
was produced in the first decade of the second century; as a proof of its early
date it may be mentioned that it was used by Heracleon in Hadrian's time.Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. 5. 6. 15; Origen, tom. xiii., comment on St. John,
c. 17. It is from Origen we learn that the κήρυγμα was known to Heracleon. Clement
regards the work as genuine, but Origen doubted. The work
bears on the face of it testimony to the fact that Peter did labour and preach at
Rome, for it was written at a time when some of those who actually saw and heard
him may have been still alive, and there must have been numbers whose fathers were
grown-up men even in the time of Claudius. The traditions connected with the cemetery
‘ad Nymphas' where Peter baptised, with the primitive chair now in St. Peter's
Basilica, with the very ancient churches of St. Pudenziana, St. Prisca and St. Clement,
with the Quo Vadis? story, whatever their real historical value or lack of value,
undoubtedly stretch back long before the fifth and sixth centuries, when pilgrims
flocked to Rome with their ‘itineraries' in their hands, and they spring from
a general and deep-rooted belief in a long and active ministry of the Apostle in
the See that had become identified with his name.Carlo Macchi, La Critica Storica e l'origine della Chiesa Romana, 1903, p.
93: ‘Non tutte le memorie di S. Pietro in Roma hanno per se stesse il medesimo
valore. Altre sono d'indubitata autenticità; altre sono d'autenticità probabile,
altre per se stesse neppur di probabile. Ma quando anche si prescinda dai monumenti
per se stessi autorevoli, l'unione di tante memorie in Roma e nella sola Roma è
un fatto che non può spiegarsi, se non si ammetta quel che abbiamo già dimostrato
con argotnenti, i quali crediamo the non possano venir dispregiati da una critica
veramente sincera.'
Returning then once more to the undisputedly historical ground of St. Paul's
Epistle to the Romans, we find that in 57 A.D. there was in Rome a Christian community
not of yesterday, but of many years' standing: an important community, whose faith
and whose high repute were well known in all churches of the Empire with which the
writer was acquainted. Further that St. Paul himself for some years past had been
longing to visit this Rdman community,
but had been hindered from doing so by the restriction he had imposed
upon himself of not building on another man's foundation. If again the question
be repeated—Who was this man? with greater emphasis than before the same answer
must be returned—It cannot be any other than St. Peter.
But having arrived so far, we are confronted with certain difficulties that arise
in making this earlier ministry of St. Peter at Rome fit in with the New Testament
records relating to the same period. These difficulties will be dealt with in the
next lecture. To-day I shall confine myself to pointing out that the circumstances
which led to St. Peter's mission to Rome very soon after his escape from prison
in the second year of Claudius were strictly analogous to those described in the
earlier part of the present lecture, which led first to the mission of Peter accompanied
by John to Samaria, and then to that of Barnabas to Antioch.
The dispersion of the Hellenist disciples of St. Stephen, after the persecution
in which their brilliant leader died a martyr's death, was the direct cause of the
evangelisation first of Samaria and then some years later of Syrian Antioch. Philip,
like Stephen one of the Seven, preached in Samaria meeting with great success, and
there encountered a certain man, Simon by name, who gave himself out to be some
great one, and who had by his sorceries astonished and drawn to him great numbers
of the people. On the news of this state of affairs being brought to the Apostles
at Jerusalem, Peter and John were despatched in the name of the Twelve, to deal
with the situation authoritatively. The result for a time, according to the Acts,
was the triumph of St. Peter, Simon himself being baptised and seeking to be endowed
by the Apostle with a portion of his wonder-working spiritual gifts. And as with
Samaria so it was with Syrian Antioch. Men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who had been obliged
to fly from Jerusalem ‘upon the tribulation that arose about Stephen,' after preaching
in their own native regions found their way to Antioch, and preaching in that city
of mixed nationalities, not only to Jews but also to the Greeks, converted many.
This news again, that a Church was arising in the Syrian capital with
a considerable Gentile element in its midst, when it reached the Twelve at Jerusalem,
led to immediate action being taken. Barnabas was sent to exercise super-vision
over the new movement, and to see that a precedent of far-reaching consequences
should not be established with-out the knowledge and sanction of those in authority.
Events at Rome probably followed on precisely the same lines. Just as the men
of Cyprus and Cyrene in the face of persecution made their way back to their own
homes carrying with them the message of the Gospel, so would it be with some of
‘the sojourners of Rome' belonging to the Synagogue of the Libertines. They would
return to the capital inspired by the spirit and example of St. Stephen to form
there the first nucleus of a Christian community. As I have already suggested, St.
Paul's salutation to Andronicus and Junias seems to point to these two men as the
leaders of this first missionary band. Among those converted would be, as at Antioch,
both Jews and Gentiles.
Some time may well have elapsed before any news of these first small beginnings
of Christianity in Rome reached Jerusalem. Possibly St. Peter's intercourse with
Cornelius the centurion and his relatives and friends at Caesarea first made him
acquainted with the fact that the Gospel had obtained a foothold in the capital,
for the body of troops to which Cornelius belonged—the Cohors Italica—consisted
of volunteers from Italy.Cohors Italica. Vid. Gruter, Inscr. p. 434: ‘Cohors militum Italicorum voluntaria,
quae est in Syria.' From this source too he may in due course have learnt
that Simon Magus was in Rome, and that there as in Samaria previously he was proclaiming
himself ‘to be the Great Power of God' and was leading many astray by his magical
arts.
This information in any case, whether derived from Cornelius or from Roman Christians,
who came up for the feasts, would reach the Apostles about the time when their twelve
years' residence in Jerusalem was drawing to a close, and when, according to tradition,
they divided among
themselves separate spheres of missionary work abroad. To St. Peter,
as the recognised leader, it may well have been that the charge of the Christian
Church in the Imperial capital should have been assigned as the post of honour.
If so, it will be seen that the persecution of Herod Agrippa only hastened on a
journey already planned. After his imprisonment and escape St. Peter's first object
would be to place himself out of the reach of the persecutor and to set about his
voyage as quickly as possible. If so, his arrival at Rome would be in the early
summer of 42 A.D., the date given by St. Jerome.
LECTURE III
Rev. xvii. 18—The great city, which reigneth over the Kings of the earth.
In my previous lectures I have attempted to show from the internal evidence of
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans that there existed at Rome in 57 A.D. a Christian
Church of high repute and many years' standing, and that this Church had been founded
and built up by a man into the sphere of whose labours he [St. Paul] had been careful
not to intrude. Moreover though St. Paul does not mention the name of the man, circumstantial
evidence has been brought forward making a very strong prima facie case in favour
of the ancient tradition that he was none other than St. Peter.
To-day I propose to consider how far that tradition in the form in which it has
been handed down to us by Eusebius and JeromeEusebius, Hist. Eccl. book ii. cc. xiii, xiv, xv; Jerome, De Viris Illustribus.
The evidence of Eusebius, it must be remembered, was based upon a wide acquaintance
with earlier Christian literature and with a mass of official Church documents and
state papers, as well as local traditions now lost to us, and that Jerome had studied
Eusebius' works, and that he had access to the Eusebian sources. Eusebius for example
tells us that he was acquainted with the five books of the Commentaries of Hegesippus,
a Hebrew Christian who journeyed to Rome from the East expressly to learn what was
the true doctrine taught there (Hist. Eccl. iv. 22). It appears that when at Rome Hegesippus drew up a list of the Roman bishops. See Bright,
Introd. to Eusebius'
Eccl. History, pp. xxviii-xxix; Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Clement of Rome, i.
202–3; Lawlor, Eusebiana. is consistent with the facts of
the early Apostolic history contained in the Acts and the Pauline Epistles and fits
in with the chronological framework of that history.
EusebiusEusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 13. 14. tells us, on the authority of Justin Martyr (a passage
of whose ‘Apology'Justin, Apologia, i. 26. he quotes at length), that a certain Simon of the village
of Gitton in Samaria, whom nearly all the Samaritans worshipped, confessing him
to be the Supreme God, came to Rome in the reign of Claudius Caesar and having there
performed many magic rites was regarded as a god. After further describing, this
time on the authority of Irenaeus, the character of this man's teaching, as being
the fountain-head of all heresy, Eusebius proceeds to say that when in Judaea Simon
was convicted of his wickedness by the Apostle Peter, and later journeying from
the east to the west arrived at Rome and was there successful in bringing many to
believe in his pretensions. ‘Not for long, however,' adds the historian, ‘did his
success continue; for on his steps in this same reign of Claudius, the all-good
and most beneficent providence of God conducts the mighty and great one of the Apostles,
Peter, on account of his virtue the leader of all the rest, to Rome against so great
a corruption of life, who like some noble warrior of God armed with divine weapons,
brought the precious merchandise of the light that had been made manifest from the
east to those in the west, preaching the true light and the word that is the salvation
of souls, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God.'οὐ μὴν εἰς μακρὸν αὐτῷ ταῦτα προὐχώρει. Παρὰ πόδας γοῦν ἐπὶ τῆς αὐτῆς
Κλαυδίου βασιλείας, ἡ πανάγαθος καὶ φιλανθρωποτάτη τῶν ὅλων πρόνοια τὸν καρτερὸν
καὶ μέγαν τῶν ἀποστόλων, τὸν ἀρετῆς ἕνεκα τῶν λοιπῶν ἁπάντων προήγορον, Πέτρον,
ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ὡς ἐπὶ τηλικοῦτον λυμεῶνα βίου χειραγωγεῖ, ὃς οἷά τις γενναῖος Θεοῦ
στρατηγὸς τοῖς θείοις ὅπλοις φραξάμενος, τὴν πολυτίμητον ἐμπορίαν τοῦ νοητοῦ φωτὸς
ἐξ ἀνατολῶν τοῖς κατὰ δύσιν ἐκόμιζεν, φῶς αὐτὸ καὶ λόγον ψυχῶν σωτήριον, τὸ
κήρυγμα τῆς τῶν οὐρανῶν βασιλείας εὐαγγελιζόμενος. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 14.
It is not necessary here to enter into any detailed examination of the theories
of Christian BaurSee Baur's Kirchengeschichte der drei ersten Christl. Jahrhunderten; Paulus
der Apostel Jesu Christi; Die Christus Partei in Korinth &c. and his disciples of the Tübingen School or of the arguments
of Richard LipsiusLipsius, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, Quellen d. röm.
Petrus Sage and other works. in their attempt to prove that the Roman
Petrine legend was without foundation and that Simon Magus never had
any real existence, but was a lay figure concealing the personality of St. Paul;
for later research has shown that their conception of the course of early Christian
History is fundamentally false and it is becoming generally discredited. These distinguished
scholars indeed, while brushing aside the pseudo-Clementine literature with one
hand, as pure romance invented by Essene-Ebionite writers of the third and fourth
centuries, at the same time laid hold with the other hand on those very fictions,
on which the Clementine romance is built up, in order to erect thereon a romance
of their own equally unsubstantial, and no less inconsistent with the clear evidence
of the earlier authorities that we possess. Dr. Hort as long ago as 1884 in his
‘Lectures on the Clementine Recognitions' (pp. 130–1) declared—‘all these impossible
theories [of the Tübingen School] have no other real basis than the assumption that
Simon is only St. Paul in disguise. The true relations of the Syrian and Roman stories
are much simpler, according to what seems to me the most natural interpretation.
Simon at Rome was familiar in the second century; of Simon in conflict with Peter
in Syria, we hear nothing till the third century has well begun.'
Indeed with regard to this second century evidence, how is it possible to set
aside the statements of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus ? The evidence of Justin is of
great weight. He was himself born at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria in 103 A.D., a place
only a few miles distant from the native place of Simon Magus. His account of Simon's
earlier activity and great success in the neighbourhood of his own home must be
regarded as first-hand evidence, and it is in exact agreement with the other account
of that earlier activity which we have in the eighth chapter of the Acts, an account
which it is more than probable that St. Luke derived directly from that best of
all witnesses, Philip the Evangelist. I have already pointed out that the emphasis
with which St. Luke dwells upon this episode of the encounter between Peter and
Simon at Samaria suggests that he had in
his mind that later encounter at Rome, which would be fresh in the
memories of the first readers of the Acts.See p. 38. Be this as it may, Justin was himself
at Rome for some years between 150 and 160 A.D., and wrote his ‘Apology' to the
Emperor Antoninus Pius in that city. In writing a defence intended for the Imperial
eyes it may surely be taken for granted that Justin would not twice over have ventured
(for in a slightly different form in c. 56προεβάλλοντο ἄλλους Σίμωνα μὲν καὶ Μένανδρον ἀπὸ Σαμαρείας οἳ καὶ μαγικὰς
δυνάμεις ποιήσαντες πολλοὺς ἐξηπάτησαν καὶ ἔτι ἀπατωμένους ἔχουσι. καὶ γὰρ παῤ
ὑμῖν, ὡς προέφημεν, ἐν τῇ βασιλίδι Ῥώμῃ ἐπὶ Κλαυδίου Καίσαρος γενόμενος ὁ Σίμων
καὶ τὴν ἱερὰν σύγκλητον καὶ τὸν δῆμον Ῥωμαίων εἰς ποσοῦτο κατεπλήξατο ὡς θεὸς
νομισθῆναι, καὶ ἀνδριάντι, ὡς τοὺς ἄλλους παῤ ὑμῖν τιμωμένους θεούς, τιμηθῆναι.. Apol. 56. he repeats the statement from c. 26 already
quoted) to declare that the Magician Simon of Samaria visited Rome in the reign
of Claudius and that a statue was erected in his honour and that he was worshipped
as a god, unless it were well known that such had been the case. Yet a third time
in his ‘Dialogue with Trypho'Dial. cum Trypho. 126. Justin speaks of the Simonians as an existing
sect that took their name from the arch-heretic. Two points have been pressed against
the evidence of Justin. The first that he states that Simon ‘had been honoured
with a statue as a god in the river Tiber, (on an island) between the two bridges,
having the superscription in Latin Simoni Deo Sancto, which is, To Simon the Holy
God.' Now in this same island was found in the sixteenth century an inscription
to the Sabine God Semo Sancus, i.e. Semoni Sanco Deo Fidio. It is of course quite
possible that Justin saw this inscription, and being a Samaritan ignorant of Latin
mythology mistook this for an inscription referring to Simon Magus. It was a natural
mistake. That Justin was right in saying that a statue was erected to Simon and
worshipped is sustained, as will be seen, by other evidence. The other point is
that while Justin states that Simon was in Rome in the reign of Claudius he makes
no mention of his encounter with St. Peter. The only argument here is that most
treacherous and worthless of all arguments—the argumentum ex silentio.
Justin was not writing for our instruction, but was offering a defence of Christianity
to a Roman Emperor. If anyone has thought that the omission of Peter's name here
was an argument against his presence in Rome in the reign of Claudius, let him read
the summaries of Justin's pleading in the latest edition of the ‘Apologia' by
Mr. A. W. F. Blunt (Camb. Univ. Press, 1911), and he will see that neither in the
twenty-sixth nor in the fifty-sixth chapter was there any place for a reference
to Peter.
The evidence of Irenaeus, who was in Rome some ten or fifteen years after Justin,
is equally striking. Irenaeus writes at some length about Simon. He describes the
rudimentary gnosticism of his teaching, and, like Justin, he mentions the tradition
that an image was erected by Claudius Caesar to his honour in the figure of Jupiter,
which the people worshipped, and he speaks of him as the father of all heretics.Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. (Library of Ante-Nicene Fathers, tr. by Keble), p. 68;
Irenaeus speaks of the Simonians as an existing sect, i. 33.
Even these testimonies to the still living fame of Simon, as a religious leader
whose lofty pretensions and skilful charlatanry had made a deep impression at Rome
and elsewhere, do not stand alone. The discovery in the middle of the last century
of a MS. at Mount Athos containing a Iarge part of the ‘Philosophumena' or ‘Refutation
of all Heresies' by Hippolytus, the learned bishop of Portus, has thrown much fresh
light upon Simon and his teaching.Hippolytus, Philosophumenos, vi. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Hippolytus, who is described as a disciple of
Irenaeus,Photius speaks of him as a disciple of Irenaeus. spent at least twenty years of his life at or pear Rome and also travelled
widely. He devotes a long section of his sixth book, which was probably written
about 225 A.D., to an account of the heresy of which Simon was the author. Of the
man himself he writes thusPhilos. vi. 15. : ‘This Simon deceiving many by his sorceries in Samaria
was reproved by the Apostles and was laid under a curse, as it has been written
in the Acts. But he afterwards abjured the faith and attempted [these
practices]. And journeying as far as Rome he fell in with the Apostle, and to him,
deceiving many by his sorceries, Peter offered repeated opposition.' Here then is
another absolutely clear statement that Simon went to Rome and there encountered
St. Peter.
Frankly then the contention that Simon is merely Paul in disguise, Paul the heretic
in the eyes of all good Jews, whom the orthodox Peter is represented as triumphantly
pursuing from place to place, has not a shred of early evidence behind it, and must
be given up. Indeed Professor Kirsopp Lake in his recent work on the early epistles
of St. Paul does not express himself a whit too strongly, when he says ‘The figure
of a Judaizing St. Peter is a figment of the Tübingen critics with no basis in history.'Kirsopp Lake, Early Epistles of St. Paul, p. 116. See the Introduction to Dr. Bigg's First Epistle of St. Peter
(Int. Crit. Commentary), pp. 52–67.
So far indeed from Peter and Paul being bitterly opposed, there is every ground
for believing that they worked at Rome during their latter years in the closest
harmony. The First Epistle of Peter is saturated with Pauline thoughts and language,
and its amanuensis was Silvanus, the companion of Paul on his second missionary
journey. St. Paul twice mentions Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, as
being with him during his first imprisonment, and writing to Timothy immediately
before his death shows anxiety to have him at his side, because ‘he is profitable
to me in the ministry.'2 Tim. iv. 11. Whatever misunderstandings concerning their attitude towards
Judaism or divergences in practice there may have been between the two great Apostles
in early days, it is evident that they have been greatly exaggerated. It was rather
on questions of expediency than of principle that they differed, and the experience
of years spent in earnest work had long before the end drawn them together into
the friendliest co-operation.
The appearance of Simon Magus at Rome followed by Simon Peter, so far from being
an extraordinary or even an
unusual event, is one in complete accord with all that we know from
non-Christian sources of the way in which during the reigns of Claudius and of Nero
religious teachers, preachers, and wonder-workers from the East found their way
to Rome. Oriental cults, especially the worship of Cybele and of Isis, were all
the vogue. Judaism had great attractions for the Roman upper classes. Priests, magicians,
soothsayers, astrologers crowded the capital and found a ready welcome. Claudius,
we are told, was so struck by ‘the progress of foreign superstitions' that he
thought it an act of sound political conservatism to re-establish the haruspices.Renan, Hibbert Lectures, p. 54. See Lehmann, Claudius und seine Zeit, p. 326:
‘Widersetzte er (Claudius) sich energisch, wiewohl erfolglos der mystischen Richtung
der Zeit, welche sich namentlich in der Vorliebe für Superstitions peregrinae kundgab.'
Harnack makes the statement in his ‘Expansion of Christianity' that ‘the majority
of the Christians with whose travels we are acquainted made [Rome] their goal,'
and he admits that there are no real grounds for doubting that Simon Magus did so.Harnack, Expansion of Christianity (Eng. tr.), i. 463.
Of prominent Christians who were in Rome in the time of St. Peter's and St. Paul's
ministry, Timothy, Apollos, Silas, Titus, Epaphras, Aristarchus, Mark and Luke
are mentioned in the salutations of extant epistles, and in all probability the
names of John and of Barnabas should be added to the list. The travels and experiences
of Apollonius of Tyana are most instructive (even when full allowance has been made
for the element of romance introduced by his biographer Philostratus), for he was
an exact contemporary of the Apostles, and a kind of second Simon Magus. His vast
journeys, which extended from the Ganges to the Pillars of Hercules, are a proof
of the facilities with which such wonder-working teachers of philosophy and religion
made their way from place to place, and the honour and respect with which they were
generally received. Apollonius was in Rome in 65 and 66 A.D.Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana, iv. 35–41; Justin, Irenaeus and Hegesippus
were all Eastern Christians who came to Rome. Also the Jews, Josephus and Philo.
Of St. Peter's first Roman visit and preaching early tradition has handed down
few details; a series, however, of witnesses affirm that Mark accompanied the Apostle
to Rome and there wrote his Gospel. Both Irenaeus and John the Presbyter, as reported
by Papias, speak of Mark as Peter's ‘interpreter,'The testimony of Irenaeus (Cont. Haer. iii. i. 1) will be found in Eusebius Hist.
Eccl. v. 8; that of Papias, 39. See Chapman, Journ. of Theol. Stud. July 1905,
p. 563 ff.; Harnack, Neue Untersuchungen zur Apost. Geschichte, pp. 88–93; Macchi,
Critica Storica e 1'origine della Chiesa Romana, pp. 25–29. as do later writers. That
Peter should have chosen John Mark to go with him is quite what one might expect
from the narrative of the Acts, for Peter was clearly on terms of the closest intimacy
with Mary, the mother of Mark and the aunt of Barnabas, whose house was a centre
of reunion for the Christians of Jerusalem. There is no reason for thinking that
this was the first time that Mark had acted as the Apostle's companion and interpreter
; his services would ‘be profitable to the ministry' in Palestine, scarcely less
than in Rome, and the suggestion that he was a catechist to whom the instruction
of the Apostle's Greek-speaking converts in the elements of the Gospel story was
entrusted, is both plausible and probable.See The Composition of the Four Gospels by Rev, A. Wright, ch. iii, ‘St. Mark
a Catechist.' His surname, Marcus, may be taken as
indicating that his family had some Roman connexion; he may have been, like Paul
and Silas, a Roman citizen. Eusebius relates that as a consequence of Peter's preaching
‘the power of Simon was soon extinguished and destroyed together with the man,'
but that the Apostle's hearers were not content with listening but once ‘to the
unwritten doctrine of the Divine Message, but they persisted in supplicating Mark,
who was Peter's companion and whose Gospel is extant, that he should leave them
also in writing a memorial of the doctrine that had been orally delivered. Nor did
they cease their entreaties until they had prevailed with the man, and in this way
that writing which is called the Gospel according to Mark is due to them. And they
say that when the Apostle through the
revelation of the Spirit knew what was done he was pleased with the
zeal of the men and gave authority for the writing to be read publicly in the churches.'Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. xv.: παρακλήσεσι δὲ παντοίαις Μάρκου, οὗ τὸ
Εὐαγγελίον φέρεται, ἀκόλουθον ὄντα Πέτρου λιπαρῆσαι, ὡς ἂν καὶ διὰ γραφῆς
ὑπόμνημα τῆς διὰ λόγου παραδοθείσης αὐτοῖς καταλείψοι διδασκαλίας, μὴ πρότερόν τε
ἀνεῖναι, ἢ κατεργάσασθαι τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ ταύτῃ αἰτίους γενέσθαι τῆς τοῦ λεγομένου
κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίου γραφῆς. Γνόντα δὲ τὸ πραχθὲν φασὶ τὸν ἀπόστολον,
ἀποκαλύψαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ πνεύματος,
ἡσθῆναι τῇ τῶν ἀνδρῶν προθυμίᾳ, κύρωσαί τε τὴν
γραφὴν εἰς ἔντευξιν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις.
This, says Eusebius, is the account given by Clement [of Alexandria] in the sixth
book of his ‘Hypotyposeis' and that it is also corroborated by Papias the bishop
of Hierapolis. In other parts of his work Eusebius actually gives the quotations
to which he here refers, from which it appears that he has really combined more
than one passage of Clement in his statement.The clause above beginning φασὶ τὸν ἀπόστολον is Eusebius' own, derived not
from the Hypotyposeis book vii. quoted Eccl. Hist. vi. 14, but from some other source.
The words of Clement in the Hypotyposeis are remarkable—ὕπερ ἐπιγνόντα τὸν Πέτρον
προτρεπτικῶς μήτε κωλῦσαι μήτε προτρέψασθαι. Eusebius seems to have had in his
mind another passage of Clement from Adumb. in 1 Peter v. 13 (quoted by Harnack,
Neue Untersuchungen, p. 89)—‘Marcus, Petri sectator, praedicante Petro evangelium
palam Romae coram quibusdam Caesareanis equitibus et multa Christi testimonia proferente,
petitus ab eis, ut possent quae dicebantur memoriae commendare, scripsit ex his,
quae a Petro dicta sunt, evangelium quod secundum Marcum vocitatur.' The evidence of John, as recorded
by PapiasEusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 39. —‘that Mark being the interpreter of Peter wrote whatsoever he remembered
with great accuracy, but not in the order in which the things were said or done
by the Lord '—is interesting, for it seems to point to the Gospel in its present
form having been compiled from a set of separate lections intended for public exposition
and for catechetical instruction. Harnack has come to the conclusion that ‘internal
indications place no impediment in the way of assigning Mark at the latest to the
sixth decade of the first century.'Harnack, New Untersuchungen, p. 88. The difficulties in accepting the Gospel
of St. Mark, as we now possess it, as the common narrative source of St. Matthew
and St. Luke, appear to me well-nigh insuperable. But if we suppose that this Gospel
is a revised continuous narrative formed from a number of separate lections or instructions
written by Mark previously for the use of Greek-speaking converts in Judaea, the
difficulty is largely removed. If St. Luke had completed the Acts in 62 A.D., it
is highly probable that he composed his Gospel at Caesarea during St. Paul's captivity
under Felix. Such a set of catechetical instructions correspond almost exactly to
the type of διήγησις of which Luke speaks in his preface. He would find the Marcan
lections, embodying as they did the teaching of St. Peter, almost certainly in the
possession of such a leader among the Hellenist teachers as Philip the Evangelist,
who was residing at Caesarea at the same time as Luke. But it is fairly certain that Mark was
not at Rome during the sixth decade, and there can therefore be no
objection to accepting the voice of tradition, which makes the Gospel to have been
written for the use of St. Peter's Roman converts about the year 45 A.D.
The evidence of St. Jerome, as to the form of the Petrine tradition, which was
current in the Rome of Pope Damasus during the latter part of the fourth century,
now demands our most careful attention, for it is of great importance. His words
(to which I have already referred) are: ‘Simon Peter . . . prince of the Apostles,
after an episcopacy of the Antiochean Church, and after preaching to the dispersion
of those of the circumcision, who had believed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia
and Bithynia, in the second year of Claudius journeys to Rome to combat Simon Magus,
and there for twenty-five years he occupied the sacerdotal chair, until the last
year of Nero, that is the fourteenth.'Simon Petrus . . . princeps Apostolorum, post episcopatum Antiochensis ecclesiae
et praedicationem dispersionis eorum qui de circumcisione crediderant, in Ponto,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia et Bithynia, secundo Claudii anno ad expugnandum Simonem
Magum Romam pergit, ibique viginti quinque annis cathedram sacerdotalem tenuit,
usque ad ultimum annum Neronis, id est decimum quartum. De Viris Illust. i. The biographical notice of St. Peter, which
appears in the edition of the ‘Liber Pontificalis' published about 530 A.D., is,
as the Abbé Duchesne states,Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, i. 51, 119. borrowed from St. Jerome, and this notice has remained
as what may be justly styled the standard Roman tradition ever since. I have said
that this represents the form of that tradition as it obtained at Rome in the pontificate
of Damasus (366–384). Damasus has been well named the first Christian archaeologist.
Some of his many beautifully engraved inscriptions, embodying often
the results of personal research and investigation, above the tombs
of the martyrs in the catacombs and in the churches of Rome are still extant.Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie Chrétienne, 226–240; Lightfoot, Apostolic
Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 296. Tradition
connects the name of this Pope, coupled with that of Jerome, with the compilation
of the original ‘Liber Pontificalis,' as the forged letters prefixed to the work
testify. Indeed so long and to such an extent did this tradition survive that in
the thirteenth century and later we find the work designated as the ‘Chronica Damasi'
or ‘Damasus de Gestis Pontificum.'Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 304.
In any case Damasus did make the early history of the Roman Church his special study,
and Jerome was his secretary at the time of his death in 384. Nor was this all.
Jerome spent some time in his earlier life at Rome, as a student, and he has himself
left on record,‘Dum essem puer et liberalibus studiis erudirer, solebam cum caeteris eiusdem
aetatis et propositi, diebus dominicis sepulchra Apostolorum et martyrum circuire,
crebroque cryptas ingredi, quae in terrarum profunda defossae, ex utraque parte
ingredientium per parietes habent corpora sepultorum, et ita obscura sunt omnia,
ut propemodum illud propheticum compleatur: Descendant ad infernum viventes (Ps.
liv. 16); et raro desuper lumen admissum horrorem temperet tenebrarum, ut non tam
fenestram quam foramen demissi luminis putes et caeca nocte circumdatis illud Virgilianum
proponitur: “Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.”' Migne, P.L.
t. xxv. c. 375. In Ezeck. xii. 40. how at that time he visited the sepulchres of the Apostles and
martyrs in the catacombs, and it must be borne in mind that in those days there
were in existence very many tombs and inscriptions of the highest historical interest,
which have long since been destroyed, and that others were then accessible, which
have not yet been unearthed. Lastly in assaying the value of Jerome's evidence,
as to the received Petrine tradition in the pontificate of Damasus, it is a matter
of no small interest to know that he must have met at Rome in 382–84 and been the
companion at the Papal Court of Furius Dionysius Filocalus.Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie Chrétienne, i. 230, 235; De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea,
i. 118 ff, ii. 196 ff.; Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. pp. 64, 249. This man was the artist
who engraved the
Damasene inscriptions, so noted for the peculiar beauty and special
character of their calligraphy. He was the illuminator and probably the editor
of the Liberian or Filocalian Catalogue of the Roman Bishops, which was compiled
and edited in 354 A.D. and which was the basis of the later ‘Liber Pontificalis.'Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, i. 4; Lipsius, ‘Die Bischofslisten des Eusebius' in
‘Neue Studien zur Papstgeschichte,' Jahrb. f. Protest. Theol. vi. 233 ff.
1880; Mommsen, ‘Ueber den Chronographen vom Jahre 354' in Abhandlungen der Philol.
Hist. Classe d. K. Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1854; Lightfoot, Apost.
Fathers, part i. vol. i. ‘Early Roman Succession,' pp. 199–345; vol. ii. ‘Hippolytus
of Portus,' pp. 317–477.
With this Liberian catalogue it is impossible that Jerome should have been unacquainted,
and the differences between its form of the Petrine tradition and that given by
Jerome are of interest and will demand our consideration. What is, however, important
now to note is that Jerome, the later writer, in differing from the Liberian notice
of St. Peter must have done so intentionally.
The quotation given above from the ‘De Viris Illustribus' closely follows the
lines of the passage from the Chronicle of Eusebius about St. Peter, which in the
Hieronymian version is thus rendered—‘Peter the Apostle . . . when he had first
founded the Antiochean Church, sets out to Rome, where as bishop (episcopus) of
the same city he continues for twenty-five years preaching the Gospel. After Peter
Linus first held the Roman Church for eleven years.'‘Petrus Apostolus . . . cum primum Antiochenam Ecclesiam fundasset, Romam
proficiscitur, ubi Evangelium praedicans xxv annis eiusdem urbis Episcopus perseverat.
Post Petrum primus Romanam ecclesiam tenuit Linus annis xi.' See Schoene, Die Weltchronik
des Eusebius in ihrer Bearbeitung durch Hieronymus. The notice in the ‘De Viris
Illustribus' adds the detail, which appears later in the ‘Liber Pontificalis,'
that it was in the second year of Claudius that Peter arrived in Rome, and as Peter's
death is asserted to have taken place in the last year of Nero, the interval gives
exactly the twenty-five years of the so-called episcopacy, or, as in this case it
would be better rendered, overseership of the Roman Church. The Abbé Duchesne in
his monumental work on the ‘Liber
Pontificalis,' while stating that it is only after the time of Xystus
I (117–126) that there is sufficient uniformity in the catalogues to inspire confidence
in the figures given for the duration of the earlier episcopates, writes: ‘As
far as regards St. Peter the figure of his twenty-five years is as well attested
as the figures of the years of his successors after Xystus I. I have then believed
myself able to note it, but without indicating from what date one ought to count
it, for there are on this point grave incertitudes.'Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, ccxviii: ‘En ce qui regarde Saint Pierre le
chiffre de ses vingt-cinq années est aussi bien attesté que les chiffres d'années
de ses successeurs depuis Xystus Ier. J'ai donc cru pouvoir le noter, mais sans
indiquer, à partir de quelle date il faut le compter, car il y a, sur ce point,
de graves incertitudes.' With these grave incertitudes
let me now deal very briefly. The Eusebian History and Chronicle give lists of the
Roman bishops, and the Chronicle the lengths of their term-years, while the Liberian
or Filocalian Catalogue gives a list of bishops and their term-years, but (as I
have already said) with considerable divergences. Both are based on earlier authorities—the
Eusebian on the lists of Hegesippus and Irenaeus, i.e. on documents belonging to
the second half of the second century; the Liberian on a chronicler, most probably
Hippolytus, about fifty years later. Now both the Eusebian Chronicle and the Liberian
Catalogue give twenty-five years as the term of St. Peter's episcopacy, but they
differ as to the dates of its beginning and its end. We have already seen that the
Eusebian date-limits are from 42 A.D. to 67 A.D.; the Liberian, however, are from
30 A.D. to 55 A.D. The Liberian chronicler states that ‘after the Lord's Ascension
the most blessed Peter received the office of a bishop (episcopatum).'‘Post ascensum eius beatissimus Petrus episcopatum suscepit';
‘. . . Linus fuit temporibus Neronis, a consulatu Saturnini et Scipionis' (A.D. 56). He further
states that Linus succeeded him at Rome in 56 A.D. At first sight it may appear
that these two sets of dates are hopelessly inconsistent.See the authorities above quoted: Duchesne, Mommsen, Harnack, Lipsius, Lightfoot,
De Rossi, &c. That
this is not necessarily the case, I will now endeavour to show.
First, let me point out that the Liberian Chronicler's account of the whole of
the early history of the Roman episcopate is full of blunders; his errors are not
confined to his statement about St. Peter. By him Clement is reckoned as the second
bishop instead of the third, and Anencletus or Cletus is represented as two personsThe evidence for the order of succession (as given by Irenaeus and Hegesippus),
Peter, Linus, Anencletus (or Cletus), Clemens is very strong. Lightfoot's judgment
is—‘We have to reckon with three conflicting statements, as far as regards the
position of Clement in the Roman succession—a tradition, the Irenaean—a fiction,
the Clementine—and a blunder, the Liberian or perhaps the Hippolytean. Under these
circumstances we cannot hesitate for a moment in our verdict. Whether the value
of the tradition be great or small, it alone deserves to be considered. The sequence
therefore which commends itself for acceptance is Linus, Anencletus or Cletus, Clemens,
Euarestus' (Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 66).
instead of one. In the case of St. Peter the Chronicler apparently regards the
Ascension as being the date of the assumption of a general episcopate by the Apostle,
who after that date became undoubtedly the acknowledged leader of the Twelve. Moreover
St. Luke emphatically mentions sojourners from Rome, Jews and proselytes as being
present at the feast of Pentecost when by Peter's preaching 3000 converts were made.
But what about the other date, 56 A.D.? It will be my aim now to show that this
date also may be one of real historical significance in the life-work of St. Peter.
The Hieronymian-Eusebian version of the Petrine tradition is indeed, as it stands,
scarcely less in conflict with the Lukan history than is the Liberian. Jerome's
statement that before Peter went to Rome in 42 A.D. he had been bishop of the Church
at Antioch and had preached to the Jewish Diaspora in various provinces of Asia
Minor is obviously irreconcilable with the narrative in the Acts. The explanation
however of all these difficulties seems to me to lie in the hypothesis of a sojourn
of Peter at Rome about midway between the sojourn in the early part of Claudius
and the final sojourn towards the close of Nero's reign, which ended with his martyrdom.
I propose therefore to
examine the possibilities of such an hypothesis, and to see whether
any evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, exists to give it support.
The sequence of events as given in the Acts has been frequently misunderstood.
In the eleventh chapter, verses 19-20, St. Luke tells us of the rapid spread of
the Christian faith at Antioch through the efforts of evangelists from Cyprus and
Cyrene, men who had once been among the Hellenist disciples of Stephen at Jerusalem,
and further that in this company of the new converts were many Greeks as well as
Jews. He then proceeds to state that when news of this was brought to the Apostles
in Jerusalem, they resolved to send, in their name and as their representative,
Barnabas, as being at once a prominent member of the Church at Jerusalem and a Cypriote
by nationality, to take charge of this important new movement and to assume its
leader-ship. Barnabas was successful in his mission and having brought Saul from
Tarsus to help him in his task, by the joint efforts of these two men of special
gifts and earnest zeal the growth of the Church made such conspicuous progress as
to attract public notice and to gain for the new sect in the mouth of the multitude
that scoffing but distinctive nickname of Christiani which was to be in the coming
centuries a title of honour the profession of which would bring to thousands of
martyrs terrible sufferings and death.
Between verse 26 and verse 27, however, a certain interval elapsed. The phrase
‘now in these days'—as in the opening verse of the sixth chapter—is one of those
loose chronological expressions common to the Lukan writings, implying an uncertain
interval of time. In this case the statement that ‘certain prophets came down from
Jerusalem unto Antioch' may be taken to have suggested the insertion at this point
of the episode with which Chapter xii. opens: ‘Now about that time Herod the King
put forth his hands to afflict certain of the Church.' The departure of the prophets
for Antioch was in fact one of the results of the persecution of Herod, and as the
story of the persecution was essential to the writer's purpose he has interpolated
it here in the
midst of his Antiochean narrative, which is resumed at verse 25 of
this same twelfth chapter. One of these prophets, whose name Agabus is given, is
stated to have predicted the coming of a great famine over all the world, and such
was the belief inspired by his utterance that the Christian community of Antioch
determined to collect a contribution for the relief of the brethren that dwelt in
Judaea. Now the famine, which was, in accordance with Agabus' prophecy, of wide
extent throughout the Eastern portion of the Roman world,Sir W. M. Ramsay writes (St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 48–49): ‘The famine
appears to me to be singularly well attested considering the scantiness of evidence
for this period. Suetonius alludes to assiduae sterilitates causing famine prices
under Claudius, while Dion Cassius and Tacitus speak of two famines in Rome, and
famine in Rome implied dearth in the great corn-growing countries of the Mediterranean;
Eusebius mentions famine in Greece and an inscription perhaps refers to famine
in Asia Minor.' seems to have begun in
Judaea in the year 45 A.D. and to have reached its height in the following year.
According to JosephusAs to the famine in Judaea Josephus is full and explicit (Ant. iii. 15. 3;
xx. 2. 5 and 5. 2). The story of Queen Helena's munificence is told also
by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. ii. 12). Ramsay in a note on the date of the famine says
that Tiberius Alexander's entry into office cannot be fixed with absolute certainty:
‘July 45 A.D. is the earliest admissible date and
46 A.D. is far more probable' (St. Paul the Traveller, p. 68). In the article on
‘Chronology' in Hastings's
Dictionary of the Bible, Mr. C. H. Turner gives 46 A.D. as the date of the visit
of the Antiochean delegates. the famine took place when Tiberius Alexander was procurator
in Judaea, and his term of office did not begin before the latter part of 45 A.D.
As this same historian gives a circumstantial account of the relief brought personally
to Jerusalem by Queen Helena, mother of Izates, King of Adiabene in 45 A.D., and
of her remaining there some considerable time distributing corn that she imported
from Egypt and figs from Cyprus, it is evident that the dearth lasted for at least
two years. The probability is that the prophecy of Agabus was delivered some time
in 44 A.D. and that with the first reports of a failure of the crops being imminent
the fund in aid at Antioch was started. The raising of a sufficient sum by weekly
collections would take some time, and it is not likely that the delegates Barnabas
and Saul left Antioch until the spring of 46 A.D.
was sufficiently advanced for a voyage to one of the Palestinian ports
to be possible. The Feast of Pentecost would have been a very fitting time for the
arrival of men bringing alms to supply the needs of those suffering from the loss
of the harvest.
At this point let us carry our thoughts back to St. Peter, whom we left at Rome
with Mark, as his companion and interpreter. There exists no record to tell us what
was the duration of this his first sojourn in that city. At this critical stage
however of the development of the Christian Church the advice and guidance of so
trusted a leader must have been frequently needed both at Jerusalem and at Antioch,
The longest stay that St. Paul ever made in one place was at Ephesus, where he remained
for three years, and three years may be safely regarded as the extreme limit of
St. Peter's absence in these opening years of the reign of Claudius.Both the Latin (Hieronymian) and Syriac translation of Eusebius' Chronicle
make Peter to have gone to Rome in the second year of Claudius and to Antioch two
years later (ed. Schoene, p. 211). This two years may represent the time actually spent in Rome according to tradition. In any case
the news of the famine would be sure to hasten his departure, and if, as I myself
strongly hold, the second visit of Paul to Jerusalem in company with Barnabas, described
in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians,Gal. ii. 1–10. For an eminently fair and thorough examination of the arguments
for identifying the Galatian visit ‘after fourteen years' with (1) the visit of
Paul and Barnabas described in Acts xi and (2) with the visit to the Council described
in Acts xv, see Professor Kirsopp Lake, The Early Epistles of St. Paul, pp. 274–293.
Professor Lake after stating the case for the identification with (1) says ‘To
my mind it is extremely strong' (p. 281). Again after weighing the objections against
(1) and (2) he concludes ‘my own view is that the objections [against] placing
Gal. ii. at the time of the famine are much less serious, but I recognise that they
are real, and prevent one from claiming the right to feel quite certain on the subject'
(p. 293). It will be seen that, in the circumstances under which I suppose the
interview to have taken place, the case for the identification is much strengthened. be identical with their
mission from Antioch as the bearers of the relief fund, then in the spring of 46
A.D. they would find both Peter and Mark on their arrival already at Jerusalem.
The only other member of the
Twelve present in the Holy City at this juncture seems to have been
St. John, and no more suitable opportunity could have been afforded for a private
discussion of the situation raised by the admission into the Antiochean Church,
without any Jewish restrictions, of a large number of Gentile converts, and of an
understanding being arrived at upon the vital issues that were in question. The
five principal representatives of what may be styled the old, the moderate and the
new schools of Christian thought and opinion were now brought together by the discharge
of a common charitable duty, and the result was an agreement on general principles
and a working arrangement as to missionary spheres, which approved itself, if not
to the Judaistic extremists, to the recognised leaders Peter, John and James no
less than to Paul and Barnabas, as satisfactory.
The measure of Peter's satisfaction may be gathered from the fact that John Mark
accompanied the two delegates on their return to Antioch, probably in the spring
of 47, and that some months later, but before the period for sailing was over, Barnabas
and Saul set out on their missionary journey to Cyprus, taking Mark with them. Their
work in Cyprus, for they went through the whole island, would occupy them till the
spring, when they crossed to Perga in Pamphylia where Mark left them and returned
to Jerusalem. Many reasons have been suggested as the cause of this abandonment
at this time. It may have been due in part to dissatisfaction with Paul's methods
of teaching, more probably to a feeling that now the Cyprian mission was over it
was his duty to return once more to the side of his old leader in that new sphere
of work with Antioch as its centre which Peter had probably been, to Mark's knowledge,
for some time planning.It is a curious fact that Barnabas and Paul made no attempt to preach in Pamphylia
either on the outward or the return journey, nor is there any evidence to show that
Paul ever revisited that country. The idea suggests itself that Pamphylia may already
have become ‘another man's sphere.' Possibly Peter himself may have paused on his
voyage back from Rome to preach to the Jewish Diaspora scattered along the Southern
coast of Asia Minor. If so, Mark's refusal to proceed to Pamphylia would be explained
on this ground.
No tradition from early Christian times is stronger or more persistent than that
which asserts that before Peter entered upon his Roman ‘episcopate,' he for seven
years filled a similar office at Antioch.The Liber Pontificalis, both in its original form as restored by Duchesne and
in its later recension, gives seven years as the length of the Petrine episcopate
at Antioch. Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, i. 51, 118; also St. Gregory, Ep. vii. 40. Now if the so-called Roman episcopate
be taken to date strictly from the second year of Claudius, it is quite clear that
Peter did not spend seven years at Antioch previously. So it has come to pass that
even those who have been willing to accept the Roman visit of 42 A.D. as historical
have dismissed the Antiochean tradition as baseless fable. But in my opinion no
tradition of this character can have come into existence and held its ground as
this did without there being a genuine substratum of truth in it. The real difficulty
is the chronological one. Can this be overcome? I believe it may be. If Peter sojourned
at Rome a second time in the years 54–56 A.D., and I hope to show grounds for believing
that he may have done so, then there is no reason why the seven years that preceded
this (47–54 A.D.) should not have been years during which Peter made Antioch the
centre of his missionary work, a starting-point for journeys to Mesopotamia in the
east or even to Cappadocia and Pontus in the north, an abode from which visits to
the feasts at Jerusalem could be easily undertaken. It is certain that he was in
Antioch at the same time as Paul and Barnabas after the return of the latter from
their first missionary journey in the autumn of 49 A.D.Certain, that is, if the second visit of Paul to Jerusalem be identical with
that in Galatians ii, which I am now assuming. It cannot fail to strike anyone how
much more fittingly the dispute between Peter and Paul falls into its place with
this assumption, than if it be regarded as occurring after the Council of Jerusalem.
Indeed the difficulty of regarding this meeting as happening at this later time
just after the Apostolic decree had been drawn up is so overwhelmingly great that
some authorities, i.e. Harnack, Zahn, and Turner (Hastings's Dict.) have felt compelled
to suggest that the order of events has been inverted by St. Paul. See Kirsopp Lake,
Early Epistles of St. Paul, p. 294 ff. The account, which Paul
gives in the second chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, of the dispute he had
with Peter concerning the question of eating with the Gentiles, would
indeed lead one to think that the Apostle's stay at that time had been one of some
duration. As St. Luke from the thirteenth chapter of the Acts and onward confines
his narrative entirely to the missionary life of St. Paul, it is with gratitude
that we welcome these flashes of light from the autobiographical portions of the
Pauline epistles, which from time to time suddenly illumine the darkness of these
early decades of the first century, through which we are pain-fully striving to
grope our way, and, however evanescent, prove to us at any rate that for the moment
we are walking upon the right track. There is probably no epistle which is so rich
in passages of this kind as St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. It is generally
agreed that this epistle was written at Ephesus towards the end of St. Paul's stay
of three years in that city. Now the recent discovery of an inscription at DelphiSee Revue d'Histoire et de la Littérature Religieuses, Mars–Avril 1911: E. Ch.
Babut, p. 139 ff., describes the discovery by M. Ed. Bourget of four fragments of
a letter of Claudius to the city of Delphi. In the inscription, part of which is
obliterated or wanting, the twenty-sixth salutation of Claudius is mentioned and
Gallio is Proconsul. M. Babut shows that the date must lie between narrow limits.
Claudius had his twenty-seventh salutation on August 1, 52 A.D., and the twenty-sixth
salutation probably not before April or May of that year. Also consult Adolf Deissmann's
St. Paul (Eng. tr. 1912), where a facsimile of the inscription is given and the
Proconsulate of Gallio forms the subject of a special Appendix, p. 235 ff.
practically fixes the date of Gallio's proconsulship in Achaia as 52 A.D., and
with it the chronology of this part of St. Paul's life. The date of the First Epistle
to the Corinthians can therefore be given with something approaching to certainty.
It was written towards the end of the year 55 A.D. Now one of the chief objects
of this epistle was to reprove the Corinthians for their divisions and party spirit.
There was a party there which called itself by the name of Cephas. Again there is
a direct reference to the fact that Cephas was accompanied in his missionary journeys
by his wife.1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22;
ix. 5. What other explanation can be given of such statements than the obvious
one, that Peter had been paying a visit of such duration to Corinth
as to have created a following who boasted themselves distinctively,
as being the disciples of one whom they looked upon as a ‘super-eminent Apostle.'2 Cor. xii. 11: ὑστέρησα τῶν ὑπερλίαν ἀποστόλων.
Further a chance reference is made to Barnabas, as working for his maintenance,1 Cor. ix. 6.
a reference which would be meaningless unless the Corinthians were acquainted with
Barnabas personally and had seen him so working. That Peter was really regarded
in the second century as a founder of the Corinthian Church conjointly with Paul
is proved by the quotation, preserved by Eusebius, from a letter of Dionysius, bishop
of Corinth, to Soter, bishop of Rome, who speaks of ‘the plantation of Peter and
Paul at Rome and at Corinth. For they both together here in Corinth planted us and
taught alike; and both together in Italy taught alike, and then were martyred about
the same time.'Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25: ταῦτα καὶ ὑμεῖς διὰ τῆς τοσαύτης νουθεσίας
τὴν ἀπὸ Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν γενηθεῖσαν Ῥωμαίων τεκαὶ Κορινθίων συνεκεράσατε.
Καὶ γὰρ ἄμφω καὶ εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν Κόρινθον φυτεύσαντες ἡμᾶς, ὁμοίως
ἐδίδαξαν· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὁμόσε διδάξαντες, ἐμαρτύρησαν κατὰ τὸν
αὐτὸν καιρόν. See also Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23 and Kirsopp Lake, Early Epistles of St. Paul, p. 112.
These almost casual references preserved in the First Epistle to the Corinthians
relating to an event of much significance in the history of an important Church,
to which an eminent bishop of that Church bears witness as a recognised and established
tradition about a century later, bring before us in a startling way how widespread
were the activities of Peter and other members of the Apostolic band in those years
when the narrative of the Acts is dumb as to their very existence, and therefore
how little right we have to express ourselves dogmatically and without reservation
upon questions of first-century Christian history, of which our knowledge is so
utterly fragmentary, or to reject unceremoniously traditions which, if carefully
sifted, will generally be found to contain some precious bits of authentic historical
fact. The particular episode of Petrine history with which I am now dealing affords
an excellent illustration of these remarks.
Granted then that the natural interpretation of certain passages of the First
Epistle to the Corinthians implies that both Peter and Barnabas were in Corinth
and working there in the autumn of 54 A.D., it may well be asked is it not strange
that these two Apostolic men of all others should have thus gone apparently out
of their way to visit a Church so recently founded by the efforts of St. Paul, and
which should have been regarded as in his special charge ? The reply is that not
by a single word does St. Paul make any complaint on the subject. What then is the
explanation ? It is, I believe, that Peter on hearing of the death of Claudius on
October 13, 54 A.D., had thought the time opportune for revisiting his Roman converts
and had asked Barnabas to accompany him. They had stopped at Corinth simply as a
convenient halting-place, being the half-way house between Syria and Italy. And
now let us turn to tradition. There are many traditions which associate Barnabas
with Rome and Italy. The forms in which they have come down to us are, like most
of the fifth and sixth century Acts, Passions and Travels, full of chronological
errors and contain many impossibilities and contradictions due to the later inventions
and interpolations of hagiographers careless or ignorant of history and anxious
only to glorify the memory of the particular saint or martyr in whom for local or
other reasons they are interested. But as the learned French writer, Edmond le Blant,‘Les Actes des Martyrs.
Supplement aux Acta Sincera de Dom Ruinart' (part 2, p. 87).
who is a specialist on this subject, well says ‘These interpolations, in my opinion,
ought not either to disconcert or to repel criticism. Under a layer of invention
the original traits exist, and a great number of them appear on the very surface.
One must extricate them patiently.' The earliest reference to BarnabasThe traditions about Barnabas have been collected and fully treated by Braunsberger.
Der Apostel Barnabas. Sein Leben and der ihm beigelegte Brief. Mainz, 1876. See
also Harnack in the Theologische Literaturzeitung, 1876, No. 19, 487 ff. and Lipsius,
Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, 2er Band, 2e Hälfte, 270
ff. The chief document relating to Barnabas' work first at Rome then at Milan is
entitled Datiana historia Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ed. Biraghi, Milan 1848. Braunsberger's
conclusion is that the preaching of Barnabas in North Italy was ‘zwar nicht sicher,
aber sehr wahrscheinlich' (p. 83).
is that found in the ‘Clementine Recognitions.'Hort in his lectures on the Clementine Recognitions shows that this pseud-epigraphic
writing, and the Clementine Homilies, which closely resemble it, are two separate
Ebionite versions of a much earlier work known as the Circuits of Peter—Περίοδοι Πέτρορ.
See also Salmon's article in Smith and Wace's Dict. of Christian Biography.
The date of these versions is about the end of the third century, of the Περίοδοι
about a century earlier. Both had their origin in the East. This work, an Ebionite
romance of a much later age than Clement the supposed writer, is prefaced by an
account of Clement's early life at Rome. The author says that Clement was converted
by the preaching of Barnabas, who afterwards introduced him to St. Peter. The object
of the author of the ‘Recognitions' is to magnify the authority and orthodox
teaching of Peter, so that the introduction here of Barnabas, who is never mentioned
again, is purely gratuitous, and indeed inexplicable in such a narrative unless
the fact recorded were one based on a received and ancient tradition too well known
to be ignored. The mention of Barnabas' preaching has nothing to do with the story.
The insertion thus of this incident without cause in an Ebionite document of Eastern
origin strongly speaks for its authenticity. The traditions represent Barnabas as
having preceded PeterIn the Datiana historia the Barnabas story as told by the author, after relating
Barnabas' work with Paul at Antioch and the choice made of him and Paul as Apostles
to the Gentiles in the fourteenth year after Christ's Passion, and his first missionary
journey, and second visit to Cyprus after his separation from Paul, proceeds to
state that thereon—in the first year of Claudius, eight years after Christ's ascension—he
takes ship with some of his disciples for Rome—‘velut totius orbis dominam visere
cupiens,' where he, as the first Apostle, proclaims the Word of God and among others
converts Clement, afterwards the third successor of Peter in the Roman episcopate
(Lipsius, ii. 2, p. 311). Here it is obvious that the chronology contradicts itself.
It ought to be the first year of Claudius Nero, i.e. 55 A.D. If the eight years
be counted from Barnabas' appointment as an Apostle of the Gentiles, 47 A.D., we
arrive at the same date. as a preacher at Rome, and it is quite possible that he
may now have left Corinth some weeks or months before Peter followed him, and that
one of the first-fruits of his ministry in the Imperial City was the conversion of the man who
was to occupy so important a place in the history of the Church in
Rome during the latter half of the first century.A prima-facie case is made out for the authenticity of the tradition of Barnabas'
preaching in Rome and North Italy from the fact that it was so greatly in the interest
of the upholders of the Petrine origin of the Roman Church to suppress it; as Harnack
points out, its existence ‘musste dem römischen Bischofe höchst unbequem werden:
denn sie drohte die einzigartige Bedeutung des Petrus für das Abendland and die
einzigartige Stellung Roms im Abendlande zu gefärhrden.'—Literatur Zeitung, 1876.
No. 19, 488.
If certain passages of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians have suggested
that St. Peter visited Corinth in 54 A.D., certain other passages of the Epistle
to the Romans, sent by St. Paul from Corinth to its destination in the early spring
of 57 A.D., suggest no less strongly that he [Paul] had been recently hindered from
going to Rome by the presence in that Church of one who was its founder. And here
I would venture to say that we may rest assured that the principle ‘not to build
on another man's foundation'Rom. xv. 20. was an Apostolic and not merely a Pauline rule of
action. That Peter went to Corinth with any intention of interfering with Paul's
great work in that town, or of placing himself before the Corinthians as a rival
and superior to the Apostle of the Gentiles, is inconceivable. But just as Paul
proposed in Peter's absence to pay a passing visit to Rome on his way to Spain in
order that he might be refreshed by personal intercourse with those of whose faith
in Christ he had heard so much, and that he might in his turn be able to impart
to them some spiritual gift,Rom. i. 10-12, xv. 23, 24. so would Peter be anxious to break his voyage to Rome
at the Isthmus of Corinth, so as to make acquaintance during a brief sojourn with
a Christian community in whose first conversion and establishment as a Church his
own Roman disciples, Aquila and Prisca, had played so considerable a part.
Now St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans twice emphatically declares that though
he had for some time longed to visit Rome, he had been many times hindered, and
the cause is plainly stated, i.e. that it was his settled practice
not to trespass in another man's sphere of work. As I do not wish to
go over old ground, I shall assume that ‘the other man' here referred to is St.
Peter. But this being granted, the more often I read over these autobiographical
passages from this epistle the more thoroughly am I convinced that the writer is
not here simply alluding to so distant an event as the preaching of that Apostle
in the Imperial City in the early days of Claudius, but to Peter being actually
present at Rome in person at the times when otherwise he, Paul, might have been
able to carry out his wished-for visit. For such a friendly visit of short duration
need not, as I have already said, any more than the contemplated visit on the way
to Spain, have been regarded as a ‘building upon another man's foundation.' The
‘often-times' of c. i. 13 and the ‘many times' of c. xv. 22 are practically
confined within somewhat narrow limits. Paul after what he must have learned from
Aquila and Prisca would scarcely have thought of adventuring himself in Rome before
the death of Claudius. At that date be was in Ephesus, a city that was in direct
and constant communication with the capital, and during the next two years he might
have found several opportunities for undertaking a voyage to Rome: one, for instance,
when from Ephesus he paid that second visit to Corinth of which there is no record
in the Acts, but which is mentioned in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians.2 Cor. xii. 24 and xiii. 1. Another,
and a most tempting one, when his tried friends and fellow helpers, Aquila and Prisca,
returned home after the tumult. Yet a third when after leaving Ephesus he went to
Macedonia and then apparently followed the Via Egnatia to Illyricum before making
that third sojourn in Corinth, when he wrote the Epistle to the Romans. If he were
hindered from doing so, it was because precisely during this period Peter was himself
in Rome.
I now turn to the evidence of the Liberian or Filocalian Catalogue of 354 A.D.,
which has been traced back by those who speak with the highest authority upon the
subject to the lost Chronicle of Hippolytus, written about
234 or 235 A.D.See pp. 49, n. 2, 71, supra. The Liberian Catalogue makes several palpable blunders
in the early part of its list of the Roman bishops, as I have already said, but
the most curious is that which makes the twenty-five years of St. Peter's episcopate
to begin in 30 A.D. and to end in 55 A.D. Now this last date can scarcely be intended
as that of St. Peter's martyrdom, for the Chronicler goes on to say that he suffered
with St. Paul on June 29 in the reign of Nero, showing clearly his acquaintance
with the common tradition. But the fact that the names of the Consuls (in a corrupted
form) for the year 55 are correctly given is a piece of strong circumstantial evidence
that this date was one of special importance in the early history of the Roman Church.Petrus, ann. xxv. mens. uno, d. viiii. Fuit temporibus Tiberii Caesaris et Gai
et Tiberi Claudi et Neronis, a cons. Minuci [vinicii] et Longini [A.D. 30] usque
Nerine at Vero [Nerone et Vetere A.D. 55]. Passus autem cum Paulo die iii. Kal.
Iulias, cons. ss, imperante Nerone.
Linus, ann. xii. m. iiii, dies xii. Fuit temporibus Neronis, a consulatu Saturnini
et Scipionis [A.D. 56] usque Capitone et Rufo [A.D. 67]
(Light-foot, Apost. Fathers, I. i. p. 253).
The assertion that Linus at this time succeeded Peter as bishop supplies, I believe,
a clue by which to arrive at a solution of the difficulty. Later writers and the
‘Liber Pontificalis' itself mention both Linus and Anencletus as having been ordained
by Peter as bishops and as having exercised the duties of that office in his name
during his lifetime,Hic [Petrus] ordinavit duos episcopos, Linum et Cletum, qui praesentaliter
omne ministerium sacerdotale in urbe Roma populo vel supervenientium exhiberent; beatus autem Petrus ad orationem et
praedicationem, populum erudiens, vacabat. . . . Hic beatum Clementem episcopum conservavit,
eique cathedram vel ecclesiam omnem
disponendam commisit.—Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, i. 118. See evidence of Epiphanius
derived from Hegesippus, Lawlor, Eusebiana, p. 9. and there is likewise a tradition that Clement also was ordained
bishop by Peter in his lifetime. This is a quite possible representation of what
really took place. The date 55 A.D. occupied a permanent place in the records of
the Roman Church because at this date Peter personally gave to that Church its local
organisation by appointing out of the general body of presbyters an inner presbyteral
council entrusted with special pastoral duties of administration and overseership,
the members of which bore the name of episcopi, which as St. Peter
himself in his first epistle tells us was virtually the equivalent of pastores.
Not until after the death of St. Peter however did this administrative episcopal
body deem it necessary to select one of their number to succeed him as presiding
episcopus and chief pastor of the Church.
There is one event which should, I think, be connected with this visit of St.
Peter in 55 A.D., of considerable interest. It has generally been assumed that the
mass of the early Christians belonged to the lowest classes and that many of them
were slaves. This is no doubt to a certain extent true, but not by any means altogether
so. Aquila and Prisca may have belonged to the ‘freedman' class, but they were
well-to-do people, and it is probable that Prisca was Roman by birth and a person
of some position. Again after dismissing all that is worthless and utterly fictitious
in the account given of Clement's family and their adventures in the so-called Clementine
literature, that literature bears evidence that long after his death Clement was
given a place apart among the men of the sub-apostolic age not merely because he
was a disciple of St. Peter or the author of a well-known epistle, but because he
was connected by ties of relationship with the Imperial house. It seems unlikely
that Ebionite writers in Eastern lands should have gone out of their way to lay
stress on this relationship, unless it had some foundation in fact. To this matter
I shall return later.
The case of Julia Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror
of Britain, is exceedingly interesting. It is best told in the words of Tacitus—‘Pomponia
Graecina, a distinguished lady, wife of the Plautius who returned from
Britain with an ovation, was accused of some foreign superstition and handed over
to her husband's judicial decision. Following ancient precedent, he heard his wife's
cause in the presence of kinsfolk, involving, as it did, her legal status and character,
and he reported that she was innocent. This Pomponia lived a long life of unbroken
melancholy. After the murder of Julia, Drusus' daughter, by Messalina's intrigues,
for forty years she wore only the
attire of a mourner, with a heart ever sorrowful. For this, during
Claudius' reign, she escaped unpunished, and it was afterwards counted a glory to
her.'Pomponia Graecina, insignis femina, Plautio qui ovans se de Britanniis rettulit
nupta ac superstitionis externae rea, mariti·iudicio permissa; isque prisco instituto,
propinquis coram, de capite famaque coniugis cognovit et insontem nuntiavit. Longa
huic Pomponiae aetas et continua tristis fuit; nam post Iuliam Drusi filiam dolo
Messalinae interfectam per quadraginta annos non cultu nisi lugubri, non animo nisi
maesto egit; idque illi imperitante Claudio impune, mox ad gloriam vertit.—Tacitus,
Ann. xiii. 32. It had been long surmised that the ‘foreign superstition' of which this
lady was accused was the profession of Christianity. At that time Christianity was
still regarded by the Roman authorities as a mere sect of Judaism, and Judaism being
a religio licita Pomponia would be entitled to acquittal. Possibly public rumour
was already beginning to accuse the Christians, as distinguished from the Jews,
of indulging in impure and impious orgies, but if this were the ground of the accusation,
it would not be difficult to refute it. The discovery by the famous archaeologist
Giovanni Battista De Rossi in 1867, in the very ancient crypts of Lucina in the
catacomb of Callistus, of a Christian sepulchral inscription bearing the name, only
slightly injured, of a Pomponius Graecinus is a piece of testimony of considerable
weight. He may well have been a great-nephew of the Pomponia Graecina of Tacitus,
for De Rossi dates the inscription as belonging to the second half of the second
century. The conjecture then that Pomponia Graecina, who was not only a friend but
a relative of Julia and of the Claudian family, was a Christian convert is rendered
very probable. It is worthy of note that the death of Julia, when Pomponia's mourning
began, was in 43 A.D. during St. Peter's first visit to Rome, and that her trial
before the family tribunal occurred in 57 A.D. or about a year (according to the
hypothesis I have been endeavouring to sustain) after the second visit of the Apostle.
It may well have been her intercourse with him that led to this public notice being
taken of her addiction to a ‘foreign superstition.'
LECTURE IV
Acts xxviii. 15—Whom when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage.
The hope expressed by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans that he might, after
accomplishing his mission of alms-bearing to Jerusalem, be able shortly to pay a
passing visit to the Roman Christians on his way to Spain,Rom. xv. 24. was not to be
realised in the way that he proposed. The journey to Jerusalem was overshadowed
from the first by dark forebodings,Acts, xix. 22-24; xxi. 4, 11-14;
Rom. xv. 30, 31. and it proved disastrous for a lengthened
period to all his plans of active missionary work. It lies outside the scope of
these lectures to relate in detail all that happened to St. Paul between his
arrival at Jerusalem to keep the Pentecost feast of 57 A.D. and the early spring of 60 A.D.These dates can, now that the discovery of an inscription at Delphi makes it
practically certain that Gallio was proconsul in Achaia in 52 A.D., be regarded
as ascertained results. when at length he entered Rome as a prisoner. It is, however, necessary for a
right understanding of the character of St. Paul's captivity in the Imperial
Capital to consider with some care what St. Luke has to tell us about his
treatment by the Roman authorities during his earlier captivity in Caesarea.
There are few passages in ancient historical literatures more clearly the work
not merely of a contemporary writer but of an observant eye-witness than is the
narrative contained in the last seven chapters of the Acts. These chapters
abound in first-hand material for the history of the time, and incidentally are
valuable for the side-lights
that they throw upon many features of the Roman provincial administration
and legal procedure, and upon the state of Judaea in the years 57 to 59 A.D.
St. Paul here appears in an
historical setting, the truth-fulness of which we can estimate by a comparison
with the narrative of the period of Felix and Festus contained in Josephus'
writings, and in the less detailed but more pungent references of Tacitus. It
was the period when the great revolt was preparing. Probably there was no
provincial post that was more difficult and less desirable than that of
Procurator of Judaea. The celebrated character-sketch of Felix given by Tacitus,Tac. Hist. v. 9: ‘Antonius Felix per omnem saevitiam et libidinem ius regium servili
ingenio exercuit'; Ann. xii. 54: ‘Cuncta malefacta sibi impune ratus tanta potentia subnixo.'
‘in the practice of all kinds of lust and cruelty he exercised the power of a
king with the temper of a slave,' no less
than the fierce accusations brought against this Procurator by Josephus of cruelty, rapacity, and treachery,Josephus, Ant. xx. 8; Bell. Jud. ii. 13. are tinted with
prejudice and exaggeration. The judgment of Mr. Henderson, the historian
of Nero's Principate, is very different.Henderson, Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero, pp. 364–5.
‘Alike in Jerusalem and in the country generally Felix found a widespread turmoil
and insecurity alikeof person and of property. Bands of robbers were roaming up and down,
sweeping in adherents from every class of malcontent debtor and malefactor. The
sect of the Zealots, founded years before by one Judas of Galilee, were hardly
distinguishable from the Sicarii,
those robbers and murderers whose evil deeds load the page of Josephus, and both plagued the unhappy land,
as they disturbed the unfortunate Governor's peace. Felix acted vigorously.
Robber bands were dispersed yet always reappeared. Daily assassinations in
Jerusalem defied the Roman garrison. The mob was always the credulous prey of
any fanatic. One Jew from Egypt gathered thousands together on the Mount of
Olives promising them that the walls of the city shall fall at his bidding as
those of Jericho before Joshua's trumpets, and his adherents' excited belief,
stimulated by their lust and
hope of rapine and of
plunder, was only chilled by Felix' appearance at the head of Roman troops. The
mob was scattered, but the leader escaped. . . . Wherever Felix appears in the
history of these troubled years, we find him struggling with disorder, and
crushing, so far as he could with the small force at his disposal, both
brigandage in the country and rioting in the city. Difficult cases he duly
refers to Nero. Pending decision he will keep the peace firmly. There is no good
evidence to warrant the accusations of cruelty and lust so lightly brought
against him.' How accurately the Lukan narrative pictures this state of things.'‘The witness to Felix' or Festus' endeavours of the other contemporary writer,
St. Luke, is far more trustworthy. His Christianity secured to him a greater
neutrality in his attitude alike to Jew and to Roman, and his simple tale
of proceedings in which both were concerned is of the highest historical merit,
striking with at least one shaft of clear light into the enwrapping mist of
prejudice and hatred.'—Henderson, p. 363.
The strong Roman garrison in Fort Antonia keeping watch and
ward over the faction-torn city at the time of the Feast. The swoop of the
tribune Lysias to rescue Paul from the hands of the raging and howling crowd in
the Temple Courts. His mistake in thinking that his prisoner was ‘the
Egyptian.' The scene on the stairs and within the fort. The growing
respect of the officer as he notes that the man whom he had taken to be a leader
of banditti can speak Greek, then that he is, though a Jew by race, not merely
an inhabitant but a citizen of a famous Greek university city, and lastly, most
important of all, that he inherits from his father the privileges of Roman
citizenship. His own naive remark ‘with a great sum obtained I this citizenship'
only enhancing the superior position of the man who can reply ‘but I was
Roman born.'Acts xxi. 37-40; xxii. 22-30. Tarsus was an urbs libera. The scene in the
Sanhedrin is quite explicable when we read in Josephus, ‘about this time King
Agrippa gave the High-Priesthood to Ishmael, the son of Fabi. And now arose
discussions between the high priests and the leading men of the multitude of
Jerusalem . . . and when they met together, they cast reproachful words and
threw
stones at one another.'Josephus, Ant. xx. 8. 8. See also Milman, Hist. of the Jews, ii. 171–2. If Ananias were High Priest de facto,
while Ishmael was High Priest de jure,
the exclamation of Paul, ‘I wist not that he was High Priest,' was
not unjustifiable.Acts, xxiii. 5. Again the request of the chief priest to Lysias
that Paul should again appear before the Council, and the plot that was made
whereby forty assassins were bound together by an oath to waylay and murder him,
is quite in accordance with the evidence of Josephus, when he tells us that
precisely at this period ‘robbers went up with the greatest security to the
festivals and having their weapons concealed [under their garments] and mingling
themselves with the multitude, they slew both their own enemies and those whom
other men wanted them to kill for money.'Acts, xxiii. 12-22. Josephus, Ant. xx.
8. 5; Bell. Jud. ii. 13. 3.
The reticences of St. Luke upon many points on which we should like to have
fuller information are quite as remarkable as his accuracy. We would gladly know
more about the causes which secured for St. Paul such favoured and even
indulgent treatment for four or five years at the hands of the succession of
Roman officials with whom he was brought in contact.See Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 310–313; also pp. 30–37. How was it, one asks, that
he was able during the whole of this time to find sufficient means to meet the
heavy expenses that must have been thrown upon him? Had Paul been a mere
penniless Jewish preacher of a new superstition, an ordinary commonplace
enthusiast of no position or resources, it is practically certain that he would
not have received so much attention from Procurators like Felix and Festus, or
such courtesy as was shown by the tribune Claudius Lysias and the Centurion
Julius. At Fort Antonia he was allowed to receive visitors and to bid a
centurion conduct his nephew to the presence of his superior officer. Does this
visit of his nephew signify that some change had taken place in Paul's relations
with his family, that that family was
one of distinction and wealth, and that money had come to Paul possibly on the
death of his father? We do not know. We can only conjecture, but the fact
remains that in dealing with him the Roman authorities treated him as if he were
a person of some consequence.
The first mark of this was exhibited in the extraordinary precautions taken to
ensure Paul's safe convoy to Caesarea. Four hundred and seventy
troops—legionaries, horsemen, and light-armed auxiliaries—were sent to make a
swift night march to Antipatris, and then the horsemen continued the journey
apparently without a halt to Caesarea. The next was when Felix, after declining
to condemn Paul, when the High Priest in person with a deputation of the
Sanhedrin brought their threefold accusation against the Apostle by the mouth of
a trained advocate, not only deferred the trial indefinitely on the pretext that
he must wait until Claudius Lysias also could appear and give evidence, but he
ordered that Paul, while kept in charge, should be treated with indulgence, and
leave was given to any of his friends to minister unto him.The confinement of Paul both at Caesarea and Rome was not the severe confinement
of a prison, custodia publica,, but
the lighter one, custodia militaris,
where the prisoner was bound by a chain to an attendant guard. There were
however degrees of the custodia militaris
and the word here used for indulgence—ἄνεσις—is the same as is used by Josephus (Ant. xviii. 6–10),
where he describes how Caligula on his accession did not liberate Agrippa (Herod
Agrippa I) from custody (he had been put in chains by Tiberius) yet gave him
indulgence or relaxation—τήρησις μετὰ ἀνέσεως. The reason given by
St. Luke why Felix thus deferred the trial and treated Paul well was ‘that he
had more accurate knowledge concerning the Way,'Acts, xxiv. 22: ἀκριβέστερον εἰδὼσ τὰ περὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ. i.e. the
Christian religion, implying more accurate knowledge than to be deceived by the
prejudiced ex parte statements of the Jewish accusers. The explanation lies in the verse which
follows: ‘and after certain days Felix came with Drusilla his wife, who was a
Jewess, and heard him [Paul] concerning the faith in Christ.' And during the
long interval of two years that he kept him in captivity, ‘hoping,' says St.
Luke, ‘that money would be given him
of Paul, he sent for him the oftener and had
communion with him.'Acts, xxiv. 26:
ἐλπίζων ὅτι χρήματα δοθήσεται
ὑπὸ τοῦ Παύλου· διὸ καὶ
πυκνότερον
αὐτὸν μεταπεμπόμενος ὡμίλει
αὐτῷ.
Now these statements point to two things: first,
that Felix knew about Paul and Christianity from Drusilla, and, secondly, that
from what Drusilla told him he was sufficiently interested in the man and his
teaching to have repeated private interviews with him, and further that he
believed him to be possessed of sufficient means to offer him a bribe to secure
his release. No Roman governor, more especially a man of the type of Felix,
would have such consideration as all this implies for a commonplace prisoner. At
this time of political unrest and ferment in Judaea the Procurator's relations
with the Jewish leaders were sufficiently strained without his extending his
protection to a man against whom they displayed such fierce animosity. It would
not have been difficult for him to condemn Paul as a disturber of the peace, and
it was his interest to do so. At the same time he clearly was afraid to release
him, lest he should provoke one of those outbursts of Jewish fanaticism which
actually took place in Caesarea itself after St. Paul had been confined in the
barracks attached to Herod's palace for two years. The stern way in which in
this year 59 A.D. the Governor dealt with the Jewish
rioters led to a deputation of the principal Jewish inhabitants of Caesarea
going to Rome to accuse him for his misdeeds and harshness before Nero himself,
and finally to Felix' recall to Rome to answer the charges brought against him.Josephus, Ant. xx. 8—9:
Πορκίου δὲ Φήστου διαδόχου Φήλικι πεμφθέντος ὑπὸ
Νέρωνος, οἱ πρωτεύοντες τῶν κατὰ τὴν Καισάρειαν κατοικούντων Ἰουδαίων εἰς τὴν
Ῥώμην ἀναβαίνουσι Φήλικος κατηγοροῦ_τες· καὶ πάντως ἂν ἐδεδώκει τιμωρίαν τῶν εἰς
Ἰουδαίους ἀδικημάτων, εἰ μὴ πολλὰ αὐτὸν ὁ Νέρων τῷ ἀδελφῷ Πάλλαντι παρακαλέσαντι
συνεχώρησε, μάλιστα δὴ τότε διὰ τιμῆς ἔχων ἐκεῖνοι
It is perhaps no wonder that in such a crisis of his life the accused man, who
only narrowly escaped condemnation by the powerful influence of friends at
court, should have ‘desired,' as St. Luke tells us, ‘to gain favour with the
Jews by leaving Paul bound.'The reading of Cod. 137 is τὸν δὲ Παῦλον εἴασεν ἐν τηρήσει διὰ Δρυσίλλαν. There is a curious Western reading here,
which possibly records an ancient authentic
tradition that Felix left Paul in confinement ‘because of Drusilla.'There occurs in Josephus, Ant. xx. 7. 2, a passage in which he says: ‘When Felix was Governor of Judaea, he saw this
Drusilla and fell in love with her, for she did indeed exceed all other women in
beauty, and he sent to her a person whose name was Simon, one of his friends, a
Jew, born in Cyprus, who pretended to be a magician and endeavoured to persuade
her to leave her present husband and marry Felix.' As Drusilla had required her
first husband to become a Jewish proselyte and submit to circumcision, so it was
thought that her subsequent desertion of him for the Gentile, Felix, could only
have been brought about by magic arts. She was, however, at the time of her
marriage with Felix still a girl in her teens, and this Magian may have been the
instrument employed by the unscrupulous Felix to cajole her into an act which as
an Herodian princess must have been repugnant to her. But who was this Simon, a
Jew of Cyprus, who pretended to be a magician? Professor Rendel Harris in the
Expositor, v. pp. 190–4 (1902), identifies him with Elymas the Sorcerer of Acts xiii. 8. Now
Codex Bezae for Ἐλυμας reads Ἐτοιμας,
and this reading is confirmed by several other Western
authorities who read either ετοιμος or its equivalent ‘paratus.'
Ramsay adopts Ετοιμος as the correct name in St. Paul the
Traveller (p. 74). And there is the same uncertainty in the text of Josephus. The Ambrosian MS. A
has Ατομον for Σίμονα,
also the Epitome of Josephus at Vienna. Ετοικος and
Ατομος are, it may reasonably be assumed, different forms of this man's name. Was he
then one source of Felix' ‘more accurate knowledge' of Paul and The Way? As Drusilla was the sister of Agrippa II,
who had an official residence in Jerusalem and in whose hands was the
appointment of the High Priest, she may well have counselled her husband, for
her brother's sake even more than for his own, not to irritate Jewish fanaticism
by any act that might fan it in its present state of fever heat to yet further
deeds of violence.
Festus on his arrival was
confronted by a difficult and critical situation. But he was a firm and just
magistrate and was determined that the prisoner should despite the clamours of
the Jews have a fair trial in his presence. The principal charge brought against
Paul was the crime of majestas—the inciting of the Jewish communities
through the world to treason against Caesar. The other accusations—the being a
ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes and a profaner of the Temple—on the
other hand were, in the scornful words of the Procurator to King Agrippa, only
‘certain questions of their own superstition.'Acts, xxv. 19: ζητήματά τινα περὶ τῆς ἰδίας δεισιδαιμονίας.
The profanation of the Temple was also an offence
against Roman Law—Judaism being a religio licita. These charges, St.
Luke tells us, they failed to prove, and the Apostle no doubt hoped that the
Governor would pronounce judgment in his favour. But Festus, aware of the
excited state of Jewish feeling, was naturally anxious not at the very outset of
his official term to get himself into disfavour with these embittered
representatives of the dominant faction at Jerusalem, and he asked Paul whether
he would be willing to go up to that city, there to be judged by him. But the
Apostle was determined not thus to place himself in the midst of enemies
thirsting for his life and utterly unscrupulous about the means employed; he
was sick, too, of delay, and he no longer hesitated. ‘To the Jews I have done
no wrong, as thou well knowest,' he replied to the Governor (I am somewhat
paraphrasing the actual words as recorded), and ‘if I have committed any
offence against Caesar, I, as a Roman citizen, should be tried not at Jerusalem
but before Caesar's judgment seat. As you do not acquit me of treason, I claim
my right of appeal—ad Caesarem appello.'It is more than probable that St. Paul was acquainted with the Latin language.
The employment of Tertullus before Felix shows that the pleading was in Latin.
On this the Procurator, after a conference with his assessorsActs, xxv. 12: συλλαλήσας μετὰ τοῦ συμβουλίου. This body was composed of
consiliarii or assessores, in Greek πάρεδροι.
Suet. Tib. 33; Galba, 19; Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 16. 1. (consiliarii)
on the legal aspects of the case, quashed all further proceedings in Judaea,
‘Thou hast appealed to Caesar, to Caesar shalt thou go.'
I have dwelt at some length on the circumstances which brought about Paul's
visit to Rome, in order to make it clear that the charge against him was
political, not religious, the offence one of majestas,
not of preaching new doctrines subversive of the Jewish law. And it is
noteworthy that even in regard to the political charge both Festus and
King Agrippa were agreed that Paul had done nothing worthy of death or of bonds.
He had however appealed to Caesar, and so he obtained, not indeed his liberty,
but an escape from an irksome confinement in the midst of his deadly foes, and a
prospect of at length making acquaintance with that Church in Rome which he had
so many years been longing to visit. Whatever the risks, he would gladly face
them, for his deep faith assured him that he was going to Rome as God's
appointed instrument to do good work in Christ's Name amidst the thronging
population of that great world-centre of Imperial rule. Those words that came to
him, as on that first night of his incarceration in Fort Antonia he beheld in
mystic vision the Lord Jesus standing at his side—‘Be of good cheer, for as
thou hast testified concerning me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness even
at Rome'Acts, xxiii. 11. See Ramsay's article in the Expositor, March 1913:
‘Suggestions on the History and Letters of St. Paul,' pp. 269–76. —had, we may well believe, been his comfort and stay during
the whole of those two weary years spent to all appearance so uselessly in the
guard-rooms of Herod's palace at Caesarea. Now, at last, the opportunity had
come of bearing witness in the presence of Caesar him-self: an opportunity
embraced with his whole heart and soul, even though the witness should be that
witness which is crowned with the martyr's death.
The Apostle left Caesarea some time during the month of August, 59 A.D., only
after many hardships and life-anddeath perils to be shipwrecked in November on
the coast of Malta. Compelled with his companions in misfortune to winter on the
island, it was not until the end of February 60 A.D. that Paul landed at Puteoli, a centre of the corn traffic with Alexandria and
the chief commercial sea-port of Italy and Rome.Puteoli shared with Ostia the trade between Rome and the provinces, more
especially the corn supply. It was originally named Dicaearchia. Three years
after St. Paul, the historian Josephus (as he himself tells us) on his way to
Rome had experiences extraordinarily similar to those of the apostle. He writes: ‘I reached Rome after an extremely perilous voyage; for our ship, having
foundered mid-way in the Adriatic, we, to the number of about six hundred, had recourse to swimming and had already
remained the entire night in the water, when, at daybreak, a vessel from Cyrene
providentially hove in sight, and received on board myself and others, eighty in
all—more fortunate than our companions. Thus rescued from destruction, I landed at Dicaearchia, called by the Italians
Puteoli.' This passage is interesting, for here as in Acts xxvii. 27
we find the term ‘Adriatic' applied to the sea between Greece and Cyrenaica.
Comp. Strabo, ii. 123: Ἰόνιον πέλαγος, ὁ νῦν Ἀδρίας.
Also the number on board St. Paul's ship, 276, is seen not to be
excessive as compared with the 600 with whom Josephus voyaged. In this busy and prosperous place
thronged with seamen and traders of many nations the Apostle found a body of Christians who gave a
right brotherly welcome to him and his companions, Luke and Aristarchus, and entertained
them seven days. Of the origin of this Christian community the Acts tells us
nothing, but its presence here will occasion no surprise to those who have
followed the arguments of the previous lectures. It is but one proof more of the
early evangelisation of Rome and other towns in Italy.
From Puteoli the company of prisoners with their military guard journeyed along the Appian Way to Rome. But the news of the
approach of the Apostle had already reached the Christians of the capital, and two separate deputations came to greet
him, one as far as Appii Forum, one of the regular halting places on this
route, the other to Tres Tabernae still nearer
Rome.Appii Forum was 41, Tres Tabernae 23 miles from Rome. ‘Ab Appii Foro hora quarta: dederam aliam paullo ante Tribus
Tabernis.'—Cicero, ad Atticum, ii. 10. Probably among these delegates were a number of those whose names are so
affectionately mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, Ampliatus, Urbanus,
Stachys and the rest, and surely Aquila and Prisca, his old and tried friends.
St. Luke mentions no names, but his one brief statement of the effect of this
meeting upon the way-worn and much burdened Apostle is worth a whole volume. In
the midst of a strange and foreign land, a prisoner in bonds, Paul was feeling
perhaps, as was natural, somewhat lonely and depressed, but at the sight of his
friends his spirit revived. How expressive are the words ‘whom when Paul
saw, he thanked God and took courage.'Acts, xxviii. 15: οὓς
ἰδὼν ὁ Παῦλος εὐχαριστήσας
τῷ θεῷ ἔλαβεν θάρσος·
The Apostle after his
entrance into Rome was conducted by the centurion Julius to an officer who bore
the title of the Stratopedarch.It is generally admitted that the words ὁ ἑκατόνταρχος παρέδοκε τοὺς
δεσμίους τῷ στρατοπεδάρχῃ, though wanting in
A B, formed part of the original text. This centurion, in
whose charge St. Paul with his fellow-prisoners had been for the seven months
since they left Caesarea, is described in the Acts as being of the Augustan band
(σπεῖρα Σεβαστή) or as it probably should be more correctly
translated, of the Imperial Service Corps. That great authority, Dr.
Mommsen, has been able to give an explanation of the meaning of these unusual
terms, which affords one more example of the marked accuracy of St. Luke in his
references to Roman or local officials. Professor Ramsay has thus summarised
Mommsen's conclusions.Berlin. Akad. Sitzungsberichte, 1895, pp. 501 ff; Ramsay, St.
Paul the Traveller, pp. 315 and 347–8. ‘Augustus had reduced to a regular system the maintenance of communications
between the centre of control in Rome and the armies stationed in the great
frontier provinces. Legionary centurions, called commonly frumentarii,
went to and fro between Rome and the armies and were employed for numerous purposes between the
Emperor and his armies and provinces. They acted not only for commissariat
purposes (whence the name) but as couriers and for police purposes, and for
conducting prisoners. They all belonged to legions stationed in the provinces,
and were considered to be on detached duty when they went to Rome; and hence in
Rome they were “soldiers from abroad”—peregrini.
While in Rome they resided in a camp on the Coelian Hill called Castra Peregrinorum. In
this camp there were always a number of them present, changing from day to day, as some came and others went
away. This camp was under the command of the Princeps Peregrinorum, and it is clear that the Stratopedarch in Acts is the Greek
name for that officer.'
Julius in any case had now fulfilled his duty and handed
over his prisoners to his chief. But the exceptionally favoured treatment now
accorded to Paul by the Roman
authorities in the capital itself was even more remarkable than that which had
been shown to him in Judaea, and it may be added throughout his voyage. I have
already spoken of the behaviour of Felix to him as a proof that the Apostle was
regarded as a man of some distinction, and that at this period of his life he
was in no lack of means. This impression is deepened as the narrative of the
captivity proceeds. Festus and his assessors would not have been likely to have
troubled themselves to send to Caesar's judgment seat a poor and obscure man.
The courtesy of Julius to him and the privileged position he occupied during the
voyage must have been due in the first instance to instructions given by the
Governor. It can only have been by express permission that Luke and Aristarchus
were allowed to accompany the Apostle in the vessel, a most unusual thing.Ramsay quotes Pliny, Ep. iii. 16, as relating that when Paetus was brought a prisoner from Illyricum to
Rome his wife Arria, despite her entreaties, was not allowed to accompany him,
but he was permitted to take certain slaves to wait on him, and he raises the
question whether Luke and Aristarchus may not have voluntarily
accompanied Paul in the capacity of slaves.
And it was the same upon his arrival at Rome. From the very first the prisoner
‘was suffered to abide by himself with the soldier that guarded him,'
and to call together the chief of the Jews to meet him twice in the friend's
houseSt. Luke (Acts xxviii. 23) speaks of the place where St. Paul received the
Jewish leaders as ἡ ξενία, and appears to distinguish it from τὸ μίσθωμα,
the hired lodging in which he spent the next two years (Acts xxviii. 30).
ξενία suggests a room in a friend's house.
Comp. Philem. 22 and Acts xxi. 16. in which for a short time he remained, and then for
the whole of the next two years of his light captivity he lived in his own hired
house, receiving freely and without hindrance all who came in to him. Where this
friend's house or this hired dwelling was situated we have no hint, but it must
have been in the immediate neighbourhood of, perhaps even within, the extensive
barracks of the Praetorian Guard outside the Collin Gate, for this would be
necessary for the convenience of the change of the guards to whom he was
chained. The custodia militaris at its best was most
irksome, and as we learn from his epistles was felt to be so by the Apostle, but
he had at least the opportunity, which was so near to his heart, of being able
to have unrestricted intercourse with his Roman friends, and to preach the
Gospel to all who wished to hear him. This liberty, which, as we have seen, was
conceded at once after his arrival, can only have been due to the contents of
the official report—the literae dimissoriae
and relatio—sent by Festus concerning the prisoner, which would be handed by Julius to the
Stratopedarch and by him in his turn to Burrhus, who was in 60 A.D. still sole
Praetorian Prefect.The literae dimissoriae or apostoli
stated the simple fact of the claim made by the appellant. When the appeal was
made to the Emperor, the letter was called relatio.
The report thus sent included all the depositions necessary for the elucidation of the case. Buss,
Roman Law and the Hist. of the N.T. p. 399.
Usually there were two Praetorian Prefects, but since 52 A.D. Sextus Afranius Burrhus had held the sole command. His appointment was due to
Agrippina, who wished to have a man she could trust at the head of the
Praetorian Guard on the death of Claudius. He was a worthy, straightforward man,
who with Seneca exercised a great influence for good upon Nero during the first
five years of his reign, the quinquennium Neronis, which the Emperor Trajan is reported to have praised above any other
period in the reigns of his predecessors. Burrus was shortly after his
to fall into disfavour. He died in 62 A.D. Some said he was poisoned by the Emperor, and his death was followed by Seneca's
retirement. After Burrhus' death two Praetorian Prefects were appointed, one of them the notorious Sofonius Tigellinus, a cruel, venal, and
vicious man, who pandered to all Nero's lusts and extravagances.
Three days only had passed before St. Paul saw the leading men of the Jewish
synagogues gathered round him in the room where he was confined. So eager was he
to be at work again in his Master's business that he must have sent out the
invitations to the heads of the six or seven independent Jewish
congregations in Rome immediately after his arrival. Apostle of the Gentiles as
he was, he always adhered to his unbroken rule—to the Jew first. His words at
the opening of his Epistle to the Romans acquire added force in the new
situation in which he now found himself—‘as much as in me lies I am ready to
preach the Gospel to you also in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; for
it is the power of God unto salvation to
every one that believeth, to
the Jew first and also to the Greek.'Romans, i. 15, 16. These words were indeed
addressed to the Christians of Rome, but he knew well how small a number out of
the great Jewish population in that city had been converted to the Gospel, and
even at a distance the thought saddened him, and his heart yearned towards them,
the more so because he felt keenly the prejudice which his preaching to the
Gentiles had aroused against him in the minds of his countrymen further east.
There are few more touching passages in the writings of St. Paul, none which
reveal the innermost depth of his soul more fully than portions of the ninth and
tenth chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. No estimate of St. Paul is complete
which does not take account of these impassioned utterances: ‘I say the truth
in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Ghost,
that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I
myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to
the flesh. . . . Brethren, my heart's desire and my supplication to God is for
them that they may be saved.'Rom. ix. 1-3; x. 1. And now, as the chiefs of the Roman
synagogues stand around him, he endeavoured to persuade them that it was not for
anything that he had done against the Jewish people or contrary to the customs
of the fathers that he had been put upon his trial and compelled to appeal to
Caesar. On the contrary, he wished to make it clear to them that all the
proceedings against him were due to a misunderstanding, because—and in these
words lies the whole force of his apology—‘for the hope of Israel I am bound
with this chain.' The reply was a purely non-committal one. The Jews declared
that they had received from Judaea no letters concerning Paul, nor had any of
the brethren that came to Rome spoken harm of him. They were therefore quite
ready to hear what he had to say and appointed a day for a conference. But they
added, with a cold hostility which must have chilled any hopes he may have had
of the issue of his appeal, ‘as concerning this sect
it is known to us that
it is everywhere spoken against.'Acts, xxviii. 17-21. This declaration was no doubt
strictly correct, and is of great importance. It shows that already those
charges of ‘atheism,' immorality, and of abominable practices at their feasts,
which were shortly to be so freely brought against them, were being widely
accepted, and that the Jews them-selves were taking pains to dissociate Judaism
from any connexion with the new sectaries, whom they disowned. The period during
which the Christians were to find shelter beneath the privileges accorded by the
Imperial Government to the Jewish people and religion was well-nigh over. The
essential note of the Christianity preached by Paul was universalist, that of
the Judaism protected by Roman law was national and particularist: between the
two there could be no reconciliation. No wonder that when a body of Jewish
delegates more numerous apparently than the first gathered in the Apostle's
room, they remained unconvinced by his arguments. These chiefs of the Synagogues
were not of the stuff of which converts are easily made, and though St. Luke
says they reasoned among themselves and had clearly some difference of opinion,
yet of their generally unbending attitude the scathing words with which the
Apostle closed the interview are a proof that he regarded all his efforts as
thrown away and futile.The passage quoted Is. vi. 9, 10 is remarkable as having been spoken at
least twice by our Lord in regard to the Jewish reception of His message, St.
Matt. xiii. 14, St. Mark iv. 12, St. Luke viii. 10
and St. John xii. 40. St. Paul used it of Israel's rejection
of the Gospel in his Epistle to the Romans (Rom. xi. 8) as here. It was a repetition of what had happened at Antioch in Pisidia and elsewhere, and there his previous experiences cannot have given him
much encouragement that now, as a prisoner accused by the Jews of Jerusalem, he
would meet with more success. In any case his breach with official
Judaism in Rome seems to have been final. At this point the actual narrative of
the Acts ceases. The next two verses, which state that ‘he (Paul) abode two
whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in to him,
preaching the Kingdom
of God the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all
boldness, none forbidding him,'Acts, xxviii. 30, 31. Comp. St. Luke, xxiv. 50-53,
Acts, cc. i. and ii. Ramsay holds that, in the expression
τὸν πρῶτον λόγον trans. R.V. ‘the former treatise' with ‘the first' in the margin; St. Luke did
not use πρῶτον as an equivalent for
πρότερον If this were the case, ‘the first'
may be regarded as implying, in addition to a second treatise, also a third. Ramsay,
St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 27–28. See also his Article in Expositor,
March 1913, pp. 268–70, 281–4. are a kind of appendix. The brief summary of
events which it contains forms—as did the last verses of the Gospel with the
opening passage of the Acts—a bridge of connexion with another narrative, in
which the author intended to take up the story at the point where it is left,
i.e. the departure of the Jewish delegates, and continue it in a third treatise
in fuller detail.
This abrupt breaking off of the Lukan history at a most interesting point is
much to be regretted. We are not however left without information about St.
Paul's personal condition, his missionary activity, and his relations with the
outside world during the two years he spent in his hired house. Four epistles
were written by the Apostle during this period, containing a number of
references to his life and to the friends who were with him or helping him. Of
these a group of three, the Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon and the
circular epistle (commonly called) to the Ephesians,
were clearly dictated in rapid succession and were dispatched together, somewhere about the middle of the imprisonment. The fourth epistle, to
the Philippians, is later; internal evidence points to a date not long before
the final trial and release.
The tone of the group of three is on the whole cheerful and full of confidence.
The Apostle is surrounded by a number of his most trusted disciples and
fellow-workers. In each of these epistles he refers to his bonds, but in every
case not to complain, nay, rather to give added weight to his advice or his
pleading. To the Colossians he writes: ‘Pray for us that God may open unto us
a door for the Word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also
in bonds, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak,' while in a
corresponding passage of the circular epistle lie asks for the prayers and
supplications of his readers, ‘on my behalf that utterance may be given to me
in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the Gospel for
which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought
to speak'—passages which testify that his whole thoughts at this time were
directed to the opportunity—the door—which his position gave him for preaching
the Gospel in the very heart of the world's capital.Col. iv. 3; Eph. vi. 19, 20. Notice on the other hand
the force of the appeal with which the Epistle to the Colossians closes—‘the
salutation of me Paul with mine own hand. Remember my bonds,'Col. iv. 18; Philemon 8-13, 19, 22. or in
that most delightful passage from the beautiful epistle to Philemon, in which he
so tenderly and affectionately pleads with the master at Colossae to receive
back the slave Onesimus, who had run away from him and robbed him, but had now
been converted by Paul at Rome and so become Philemon's brother in the faith.
‘Wherefore, though I have all boldness in Christ to enjoin thee that which is
befitting, yet for love's sake I rather beseech, being such an one as Paul the
aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus: I beseech thee for my child,
Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds, Onesimus, who was aforetime
unprofitable to thee, but now is profitable to thee and to me; whom I have sent
back to thee in his own person, that is my very heart; whom I would fain have
kept with me, that in thy behalf he might minister to me in my bonds of the
Gospel.' A few verses further on the declaration ‘if he have wronged thee at
all or oweth thee ought, put that to my account: I Paul write it with mine own
hand, I will repay it' affords one more testimony to those already given that
the Apostle at this time did not lack means. One reason for St. Paul's
cheerfulness was, no doubt, that his release was approaching and not far
distant, otherwise he would not have concluded his letter
to Philemon with the words ‘Withal prepare for me a lodging: for I hope that
through your prayers I shall be granted unto you.' The other reason was that he
had at his side at this time a body of faithful friends,Aristarchus, Col. iv. 10, Philem. 23.
Luke, Col. iv. 14, Philem. 23. Epaphras, Col. i. 7,
iv. 12, Philem. 23. Timothy, Col. i. 1,
Philem, 1.
Tychicus, Col. iv. 7, 8, Eph. vi. 21, 22. Onesimus, Col. iv. 9,
Philem. 10. Mark, Col. iv. 10, Philem. 23. who were a comfort to
him. Aristarchus and Luke, who accompanied the Apostle on his voyage probably in
the capacity of slave-attendants, still continued their willing service.
Aristarchus is mentioned as ‘my fellow-prisoner,' Luke as ‘the beloved
physician.' Epaphras, a native of Colossae, one of those who had originally
carried the Gospel to that town, had arrived in Rome bringing news of the state
of the Church of which he was so prominent a member. He also is styled by the
Apostle ‘his fellow-prisoner,' and possibly all these three lived with him in
his hired house. Then, too, Tychicus of Ephesus had joined him in company with
Paul's specially loved disciple Timothy, whom we now find acting as his
amanuensis. In addition to these were Jesus surnamed
Justus, one of the few among the circumcision who had been a fellow-worker and a comfort to him, and Demas, of whom we know nothing, except
that he some years later deserted him.
One name remains which deserves a longer notice.
‘Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, saluteth you, touching whom ye received
injunctions, if he come unto you receive him,' the very phraseology of this
salutation sent by St. Paul to the Colossians suggests that more lies behind the
words than they actually express. Since Barnabas and Paul parted in anger at
Antioch in 50 A.D. because of Mark, and Paul chose Silas to be his fellow missionary, while
Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus, no mention is made of the latter in the
Acts at all nor in the pre-captivity epistles of Paul. What was he doing during
the interval, and how are we to account for this greeting being sent by Paul
from Rome in Mark's name in 61 A.D. to the Church at Colossae?
In studying the history of the Apostolic age it should always be remembered that
the character of our extant authorities only too often has caused a one-sided
and very warped view of the expansion of Christianity (during the period of
which we are treating) to be taken. The happy fact that St. Paul found a
sympathetic biographer in his disciple and companion St. Luke, and still more
the fact that, owing to his exceptional power and weight as a writer, a very
considerable collection of his letters have survived the general destruction of
early Christian literature, has led to a quite false estimate being formed of
the widespread and successful activity of other leading missionaries and
preachers of the Gospel. The influence they exerted and the large area covered
by their work have been too much overlooked and ignored. The late Professor Bigg
was one of the few who have shown a really comprehensive grasp of what actually
took place. In his admirable ‘Introduction to the First Epistle of St. Peter'
he has pointed out how small a portion of Asia Minor was ever visited by St.
Paul. He also suggests not only that many of the Churches in that part of the
Empire were planted at an early date but that the reason why St. Paul
deliberately refrained from entering Asia, Mysia and Bithynia on his second
missionary journey was that those provinces were already being evangelised by
others.Bigg, Internat. Commentary, Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, pp. 73–4. To say this is no disparagement to St. Paul, he would be the last to
wish to take credit for other men's labours, and he himself expressly states in
his Epistle to the Colossians that neither the Christians of that city nor those
of Laodicea had seen his face in the flesh!Col. ii. 1.
Now the emphatic mention by St. Paul in this epistle of Mark as Barnabas' cousin
(with the enigmatic parenthesis that follows) appears to me to be one of those
seemingly incidental notices, which, when placed in its right setting, is then
seen to be the central link in a chain of circumstantial evidence drawn from a
variety of sources. Once more I ask, therefore, What had been the history
of Mark since in
50 A.D. he sailed with Barnabas for Cyprus? According to one of the best authenticated
traditions of these early times he went to Alexandria and spent some years in
organising the Church in that great city and in evangelising the neighbouring
districts of Egypt.Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 16. 24. Also in the Hieronymian version of Eusebius'
Chronicle; Schöne, ii. 155; Lipsius, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten
und Apostellegenden, ii. 2nd half, p. 322 ff. Another tradition of a less trustworthy character, but
reasonably probable, relates that Barnabas himself went in the first instance
with Mark to Alexandria.Περίοδοι Βαρνάβα,
c. 26 (Tischendorf, p. 73). Mark is supposed to be the narrator.
ἐλθόντες δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν
[of the village Limnes in Cyprus] εὕρομεν πλοῖον Αἰγύπτιον καὶ ἀνελθόντες εἰς αὐτὸ κατήχθημεν ἐν
Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ κὰκεῖ ἔμεινα ἐγὼ διδάσκων τοὺς ἐχομένους ἀδελφούς . . . . . It is quite likely that this choice
by Barnabas of Egypt as the scene of Mark's missionary labours may have been
dictated by the fact that it lay outside the Pauline sphere of activity. Now
Eusebius tells us—and he had exceptional opportunities of obtaining accurate
information about the Alexandrian Church—that in the eighth year of Nero's reign
Annianus succeeded Mark the Evangelist in the administration of the Church in
Alexandria.Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 24. The date of Mark's leaving Egypt thus corresponds
with the date at which we find him in Paul's company at Rome, i.e. 61 A.D.
When he is introduced to us it is as one about to journey to Colossae with the
Apostle's commendation. But the question again naturally arises, why should he
from Alexandria have gone out of his way to Rome in order to visit Colossae,
what was his object? Those words of St. Paul—‘Mark, the cousin of Barnabas,
about whom ye received injunctions'—gives, I think, the answer. If Mark is thus
described to the Colossian Christians as ‘the cousin of Barnabas,' it follows
that Barnabas was well known in Colossae, and that the injunctions referred to
were Barnabas' injunctions, and, if so, that Barnabas himself had been with Paul
and had been one of those who had furnished him with information about the state
of the Asian Churches. The course of events, that the passage
suggests to me, is this. One of the objects of the Epistles to the Colossians
and Ephesians was to give comfort to the hearts of these Asian Christians, who
were afflicted by hearing of St. Paul's imprisonment at Rome. Barnabas, at
Colossae, on receiving the news had resolved to go to his old friend in this
crisis of his fate and at the same time revisit the scenes of his previous
labours in Rome and in Italy. He travelled by Alexandria to see Mark, and
finding that the work of organisation there was satisfactorily advanced, it was
agreed between them that Mark should seek a new field for his energies in Asia
Minor and that Barnabas should write to prepare the minds of the Colossians for his cousin's coming among them. Meanwhile, as Pauline influence was still
strong in the Asian cities—he first took Mark with him to Rome to effect a
reconciliation between him and Paul and secure a few words of commendation from
the Apostle, as a further credential to the former deserter. It has been pointed
out above that the traditional date of Mark's departure from Egypt synchronises
with the date at which we find him at Rome with St. Paul making ready shortly to
depart for Colossae. The presence of Barnabas at Rome at this time is vouched
for by the Gnostic Acts of Peter [Actus Petri Vercellenses],
which state that Barnabas accompanied Timothy, when the latter was sent a little
later by Paul to Macedonia as the bearer of the Epistle to the Philippians.The Actus Petri Vercellenses are portions of the
Περίοδοι Πέτρου which formed the basis of the
Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, found in the Latin Cod. Vercellensis. See Lipsius, vol. ii. 1st half, pp. 174 ff;
also vol. ii. 2nd half, p. 272. Speaking of the departure of Paul into Spain
the passage runs ‘praeterea quod non esset Romae Paulus neque Timotheus neque
Barnabas, quoniam in Macedoniam missi erant a Paulo.' The
same argument holds good here as in the case of the mention of Barnabas in the
opening of the ‘Clementine Recognitions'; his name would never have been
introduced in documents written expressly to exalt the position of St. Peter,
unless he had actually visited Italy and worked there. There are strong grounds
for believing that Timothy after carrying out his mission
to Philippi went on to Ephesus and made that town the centre of his ministerial
activity for some years. The Pastoral Epistles represent Timothy and Mark as
together a few years later in this same district. In a future lecture I shall
bring forward reasons of considerable weight for holding that the Epistle to the
Hebrews was written by Barnabas and sent by him to Rome from some place not far
from Ephesus, where he had been in touch with Timothy.Tim. i. 19, 20; vi. 12-14; 2 Tim. ii. 11; comp. Heb. xiii. 23. There is
much that is disputable in all this, but all critics who approach the subject
with an open mind must at least admit that a cumulative presumption has been
established in favour of the conclusion that Barnabas and Mark were together in
Italy and Rome in 61 A.D. and afterwards in Colossae.
At the time when the Epistle to the Philippians was written the circumstances
and surroundings of St. Paul had undergone a complete change. He had no longer
around him a group of trusted friends and companions. Only Timothy (whom in the
opening salutation we find as sharing with Paul the responsibility of joint
authorship of the epistle) is left of those mentioned in the earlier epistles,
the rest being probably dispersed on various missions. The situation is in fact
precisely similar to that described in the Second Epistle to Timothy, and
curiously it was at the time of his trial in each case that the Apostle has to
complain of being thus left alone.Phil. ii. 11; comp. 2 Tim. iv. 9-11. As on the occasion of his second trial he sorrowfully writes ‘only Luke is with
me,' so now of his intimate disciples there is only Timothy. Epaphroditus, the
bearer of a gift from the Church of Philippi to the Apostle, was indeed still in
Rome, having been detained by a sickness that had been well-nigh unto death, but
he was about to return as the bearer of the epistle, and such was the
unselfishness of St. Paul, moved as he was by the tenderest feelings of
gratitude and affection towards these Philippians, who had always from the very
first been the most liberal and helpful of all the Churches that he founded,
that he was ready to spare even Timothy from his side to go with Epaphroditus to
testify to the Apostle's deep sense that once again they had borne his needs in
kindly remembrance. He has ‘no one like-minded' with Timothy to fulfil this
office, and he promises that ‘as soon as I shall see how it will go with me'
he will send this beloved disciple, of whom he touchingly says ‘ye know the
proof of him, that as a child serveth a father, so he served with me in the furtherance of the Gospel.'Phil. ii. 19-30.
Those words, ‘as soon as I shall see how it will go with me,' tell their own
tale. St. Paul was no longer ‘in his own hired house' but in the Pretorian
camp, where he was in closer confinement while his case was being brought at
last before the Imperial Appeal Court. This alone can be the meaning of the
passage, ‘now I would have you know, brethren, that the things that are
happening to me have rather turned out unto the progress of the Gospel, so that
my bonds became manifest in Christ in the whole Praetorium and to all the rest;
and that most of the brethren in the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are
more abundantly bold to speak the Gospel without fear.'Phil. i. 12-15. See Lightfoot, Epist. to Philippians, pp. 97–102;
Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 356–360; Expositor, March 1913, pp. 277–80.
The publicity of the trial, in fact, and the opportunity that it gave the
Apostle in the course of his defence against the charges brought against him to
set forth the true nature of the faith that he preached had caused the message
of the Gospel to be known throughout the Imperial Court, the Praetorian Guards,
and generally in Rome. The whole tone of the epistle shows that so far all had
gone well, that the brethren
were filled with confidence that the issue would be favourable, and that Paul himself, although not free from serious anxiety and quite prepared
for death should it come, is full of hope that he will speedily be released and
be able once more to revisit his beloved Philippians.Phil. i. 19-25; also ii. 17 and 24.
This Epistle differs widely in character and contents
from those to the Colossians and Ephesians. In the latter
St. Paul was combating certain subtle forms of heretical belief of a gnostic
character which had been creeping in and making headway among the mixed Greek
and Oriental populations of a group of Asian Churches, to whom he him-self,
though well known by name and repute was, except at Ephesus itself, personally a
stranger. To Philippi he writes, as a Roman citizen to Roman citizens, as a
friend to dear friends, as an Apostle to a body of personal disciples who had
above all others shown him unceasing sympathy and kindness. His Epistle is
primarily a letter of thanks called forth by the gift of money that had been
sent to him by the hands of Epaphroditus.The supposition that Paul at this time was in no lack of financial resources is
fully borne out by the language of the passage in which be expresses his
gratitude to the Philippians for their kindly thought in providing for
his necessities. His words are quite plain on this point: ‘Not that I speak in
respect of want,' and again: ‘Not that I seek for the gift, but I seek for the
fruit that increaseth to your account. But I have all things and abound: I am
filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things that came from you. . . .' The whole passage is worth careful study.
Phil. iv. 10-20. Such a letter was bound to
be rich in personal references and allusions. I have already referred to those
which relate to the hopes and fears aroused by his pending trial. He had however
other troubles that worried him. Despite all he had endured and was enduring for
the Gospel's sake, it is clear that there was a Judaising faction among the
Roman Christians, who even now could not abate their opposition and spite
against the Apostle of the Gentiles. ‘Most of the brethren in the Lord,' he
writes, ‘being confident through my bonds, are more abundantly bold to speak
the word of God without fear. Some indeed preach Christ of envy and strife;
some also of good will; the one do it of love, knowing I am set for the defence
of the Gospel; but the other proclaim Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to raise up affliction for me in my bonds.
What then? Let but in every way, whether in pretence
or in truth, Christ be proclaimed; and therein I rejoice, yea, and will
rejoice.' Who they were of
whom he is here speaking is revealed in the later warning: ‘Beware of the dogs, beware of
the evil workers, beware of the concision; for we are the circumcision, who
worship by the spirit of God and glory in Jesus Christ and have no confidence in
the flesh.'Phil. i. 14-18; iii. 2, 3.
Among the Philippian Christians there had been discords, the opening of the fourth chapter pointing to the existence of acute dissensions
between two women, named Euodia and Syntyche, possibly deaconesses, and probably
each of them with a following. ‘I exhort Euodia and I exhort Syntyche,'' writes
the Apostle, the word exhort being repeated, as being addressed to each
separately, ‘to be of one mind in the Lord.' He then proceeds, ‘Yea, I beseech
thee also, true yokefellow, help them [to be reconciled]; seeing that they
laboured with me in the Gospel together with Clement also and my other
fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life.' These words have caused
much difficulty to commentators, and have been interpreted in many different
ways. To myself their meaning does not seem doubtful. The passage is a sudden
parenthesis and is addressed by St. Paul to Timothy, the man whose name
is coupled with his own at the beginning of the Epistle, and who was sitting at his side as his amanuensis. He was his yoke-fellow, since
he was sharing with him the duty and the burden at that very moment of a common
task. He commends him to the Philippians in the words ‘I have no man
like-minded, who will truly care for your state.' The word here descriptive of
the character of that care which Timothy alone could be trusted to give, be it
noted, is the same word which is used as the epithet qualifying the
‘yoke-fellow' of chapter iv. 3, a word which in the original Greek signifies
‘genuine.' This identity of epithet is of some evidential significance
in support of the identification of the yoke-fellow with Timothy, and it is strengthened
when we find that the Apostle again uses this same epithet in the opening
salutation of the First Epistle to Timothy,
where he addresses that disciple as ‘my true [or genuine] child in the faith.'Phil. iv. 3: γνήσιε σύνζυγε;
ii. 20: οὐδένα γὰρ ἔχω ἰσόψυχον, ὅστις
γνησίως τὰ περὶ ὑμῶν μεριμνήσει; 1 Tim. 1: Τιμοθέῳ
γνησίῳ τέκνῳ ἐν πίστει.
The appeal of St. Paul ‘to his true yoke-fellow' to strive to heal
the dissensions between the two women Euodia and Syntyche is accompanied by the
suggestion that he should secure the help of ‘Clement and the rest of my
fellow-workers' in the task of conciliation. Who this Clement was, we do not
know. Origen, Eusebius and others regard this passage as a reference to the
well-known Clement, who wrote in the name of the Roman Church an Epistle to the
Corinthians, but it is extremely doubtful whether they had any sound historical
authority for their statement. The name of Clement was not uncommon, and this
Clement may have been one of the leading Christians in Philippi. Nevertheless it
is not at all impossible that he may have been the Roman Clement. The title
‘fellow-worker'—σύνεργος—is
frequently used by St. Paul of those like Timothy, Titus, and others, sent
out by him on some mission as his delegates. Clement may have been thus sent to
Philippi by Paul. It will be observed that he alone is named, and this implies
that he stood apart from the rest as a person of some authority. The final
salutation is of some interest. ‘The brethren who are with me salute you'—the
brethren here being those of his companions, not inhabitants of Rome, who were
still at his side. ‘All the saints'—i.e. the body of Roman Christians—‘salute
you, but especially those of Caesar's household.' Why especially? Surely
because Paul was now during his trial confined in the barracks close to the
palace, and he had therefore special opportunities of intercourse at this time
with those members of the Roman Church who belonged to the vast Imperial
household—numbering many thousands of freedmen and slaves. This phrase and the
earlier one, ‘my bonds have become manifest in Christ in the whole Praetorium,'
supplement and partly explain one another. The spread of the Gospel among
Caesar's household was no
new thing. Already in his Epistle to the Romans St. Paul had sent his
salutations to those who were of the households of Aristobulus and of Narcissus.
These households had almost certainly even in 57 A.D. been incorporated in the household of the Emperor.Supra, p. 26.
Over the further progress and issue of the trial a veil falls. It was during the
early months of this year 62 A.D. that Burrhus died, and a little later Seneca retired from public life. Burrhus
had been sole Praetorian Prefect, but Nero now reverted to the usual custom of
appointing two. One of these, Sofonius Tigellinus, has left an infamous name as
a man who encouraged the cruel propensities of Nero and pandered to all his
vicious excesses. It is probable therefore that the trial of Paul took place
while Burrhus was still prefect, and that it may have been furthered by the
friendly offices of Seneca.The very remarkable coincidence in thought and phrase between the writings of Seneca and Paul led to a tradition arising of actual intercourse
between them, and even of Seneca having secretly become a Christian.
Ithas been shown conclusively by Lightfoot (in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians)
and others that there are no grounds for such a supposition. It is however possible
that he may have heard of St. Paul from Burrhus, from his brother Gallio, or others, and have been interested
in a man whose language and moral sentiments were in certain respects so closely akin to his own.
As Seneca was Consul suffectus during Paul's imprisonment he must have had some acquaintance with the
case. That a member of the Annaean gens in the next century was a Christian seems to be proved by an inscription discovered at Ostia
in January 1887.
D. M.
M. ANNIO
PAVLO PETRO
M. ANNEVS PAVLVS
FILIO CARISSIMO
See Lanciant, Pagan and Christian Rome, p. 17.
That he was acquitted at the
beginning of 62 A.D. there can be no reasonable doubt. Clement of Rome, a contemporary, affirms that
Paul after-wards travelled to the far West, and the fragment of the Muratorian
Canon, about 200 A.D., states that he carried out his intention of visiting
Spain. The Pastoral Epistles also refer to extensive journeyings of the Apostle later still
in Asia Minor. What probably occurred was that when Paul was brought before the
Court the charges preferred against him in the literae dimissoriae
of Festus would be read and considered, and then an interval of time would be
given for the appearance of witnesses. Then, as no witnesses came, and the
relatio of Festus was found to be favourable, a dismissal followed.Clement, 1 Ep. to Car. c. v.: ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως.
Murat. Canon, lines 37, 38: ‘Sed profectione Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis.'
There was a law of Claudius, which permitted the discharge of a prisoner
if the prosecutors did not put in an appearance after a certain time. Dion Cassius, lx. 28.
LECTURE V.
1 Peter iv. 16: ‘If a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but
let him glorify God in this name.'
The reasons that were given at the close of the last lecture for holding that
St. Paul was released from his bonds and left Rome at the beginning of the year
62 A.D. are greatly strengthened by the consideration of certain facts recorded
by Josephus. He tells us that during the short procuratorship of Festus a serious
quarrel had arisen between King Agrippa and the priestly party at Jerusalem. Agrippa
had built a lofty tower to his palace, from the top of which he was able to overlook
the Temple courts. This the Jews bitterly resented, and in their turn erected a
high wall to block out the view. Agrippa thereupon applied to Festus, who at first
commanded the Jews to pull down the wall and then, fearing an outbreak of violence,
afterwards permitted them to send an embassy to lay the matter before Caesar. This
embassy consisted of twelve persons headed by the High Priest Ishmael, son of Fabi,
and Hilkiah the treasurer. The probable date of their arrival in Rome was April
or May, 62 A.D., for Festus died in the spring of this year. Nero had just married
his mistress, the beautiful and profligate Poppaea Sabina, to satisfy whose ambition
he had first divorced his long-suffering wife Octavia and was within a few weeks
to order her murder. Now Poppaea was, if not actually a Jewish proselyte, one of
that outer circle of adherents to Judaism known as ‘God-fearers.' Her influence
with the Emperor was now exerted on behalf of the Jewish embassy, with the result
that Nero decided in their favour. Ishmael and Hilkiah were, however,
retained at Rome as hostages, a very necessary precaution, for Agrippa
on hearing the news had at once deposed Ishmael from the High Priesthood, and Jerusalem
was in a very disturbed state.Josephus, Ant. xx. 8. 11: τῇ γυναικὶ Ποππαίᾳ, θεοσεβὴς γὰρ ἦν, ὑπὲρ τῶν
Ἰουδαίων δεηθείσῃ χαριζόμενος, ἣ τοῖς μὲν δέκα προσέταξεν ἀπιέναι.
Poppaea was buried after the Jewish custom, Tac. Ann. xvi. 6; Hist. i. 22. Had these two men been in Rome at the time of Paul's
trial, they would have been important witnesses in support of the charges against
him, and it would not have been difficult with the help of Poppaea to secure his
condemnation.The above was not an isolated act of interference by Poppaea on behalf of the
Jews. Josephus in his autobiography tells us of the hard case of certain priests
who were his friends. They had been sent in irons to Rome by Felix to be tried before
Caesar, and remained there in strict confinement without trial for some four years.
Josephus describes how in 63 A.D. he went to Rome to see if he could do anything
on their behalf. After a perilous voyage, in which he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic,
he finally, like St. Paul, landed at Puteoli, and there met a Jewish actor, named
Aliturus, who was a favourite with Nero. By this man's help he obtained an introduction
to Poppaea, who not only secured for him the liberation of the priests but gave
to him some costly presents before his return to Judaea.—Josephus, Vita, c. 3. Josephus
tells us that he was at this time twenty-six years of age, and as he was born in
the year of the accession of Caligula, i.e. 37 A.D., this fixes the date of his
voyage to Rome as 63 A.D.
The growth of a bitter feeling of hostility between the Jews and the new Christian
sect which had sprung up out of their midst was in this sixth decade of the first
century becoming more accentuated. The men of the synagogues hated this new faith,
which had for a number of years found shelter under the protection of the privileges
accorded to Judaism, as a religio licita, throughout the empire, but which by its
principle of universalism struck a blow at the very foundations of Judaic exclusiveness.
And it was against the Jewish converts, much more than against the far larger number
of Gentiles who had embraced the Gospel, that their anger was especially directed.
The Jewish Christians were in the eyes of their orthodox fellow-countrymen traitors
to their race and to the traditions of their fathers. Hence the vindictive spite
with which
St. Paul was pursued, and the fierce outburst of fanaticism at Jerusalem
which in this very spring of 62 A.D. had led to the stoning of St. James the Just.Josephus, Ant. xx. 9. 1; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 23.
The animosity of the Roman Jews was probably much less pronounced than that of the
fierce priestly fanatics in Judaea, but they would naturally be anxious not to add
to the hatred and contempt in which they were held by all classes of the population
of Rome, by allowing public opinion to regard Christianity as a mere sect of Judaism.It was not until the second century that the hatred between Jew and Christian
became irreconcilable. In the period we are considering the Christians had no enmity
against the Jews, as a race. Despite the bad treatment he received at their hands
at Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, and, above all,
at Jerusalem, St. Paul always showed the strongest affection for his fellow-countrymen,
and in his preaching held fast to the rule ‘the Jew first.' But Tertullian's words
‘synagogas Iudaeorum fontes persecutionum' were true always. Tert. Scorp. 10.
About this time it is certain that the distinction between Jew and Christian began
to be generally recognised, and rumours to spread abroad, which probably had their
origin in Jewish malice, by which the Christians were accused of holding impious
orgies and horrible Thyestean feasts and of being a secret society of anarchists
and criminals. It is not difficult to see that such slanders might be based upon
distorted versions of Christian teaching, of the baptism of infants in the Catacombs,
and of the nocturnal meetings of the brethren for the holding of the Agape meal
and the partaking of the Eucharist.The well-known Roman archaeologist, Orazio Marucchi, has discovered in the 1st-century
cemetery of Priscilla on the lower floor an ancient baptistery that he has identified
with the ‘Coemeterium ad Nymphas Beati Petri ubi baptizaverat,' Acta Liberii [according
to their Acts the Martyrs Papias and Maurus were interred ‘via Nomentana ad nymphas
Beati Petri ubi baptizabat']. In any case this baptistery dates from the first century
and the local traditions in the Acta are generally correct. Marucchi, Eléments d'Archéologie
Chrétienne, ii. 385–6, 457–61; also Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro e Paolo in
Roma, pp. 93–102. The language of Tacitus (Ann. xv. 44) and Suetonius (Nero, 31,
39) testifies that the charges against the Christians in the time of Nero were of
the same kind as those mentioned in detail at a later date by Justin Martyr, Dial.
c. Tryph. 10, 17, 108; I Apol. 26; Athenagoras, Apol. 3; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi.
1 (as to the charges brought against the Christians at Lyons).
The exact date of the last visit of St. Peter to Rome cannot be fixed with certainty,
but a number of considerations point to the year 63 A.D. as the time of his arrival.
That St. Peter was martyred in Rome towards the end of the reign of Nero is a fact,
as I have previously shown, established by overwhelming evidence.See pp. 47–51. That he resided
there for some length of time before his death is witnessed to by a weight of tradition
which only prejudice and prepossession can put on one side, as without evidential
value. By some curious perversity of critical aberration it was precisely the Ebionite
fictions, which have come down to us in the 3rd century pseudo-Clementine literature,
which Baur and Lipsius and their followers adopted as historical, accepting their
representation of Peter and Paul as the heads of two rival and hostile Christian
factions and as passing their lives in continuous and acute conflict, while rejecting
the tradition universally accepted in every part of the Christian world for fifteen
centuries, which regarded these two Apostles as the joint founders of the Roman
Church, working in harmony for the common cause, and sealing their testimony by
death in the city where both alike spent their last days. This Tübingen theory,
worked out with much literary ingenuity and all the resources of erudition, had
for some decades a great vogue, but being fundamentally false it could not live
long when tested by the results of scientific archaeological research, and has at
length been practically abandoned. Christian archaeology indeed has during the past
half century made giant strides, especially at Rome itself, and the accumulating
evidence furnished by the excavations and explorations in the Catacombs and elsewhere
has been most illuminating, and tends more and more by the testimony of still existing
monuments, tombs, and inscriptions to verify the general correctness of early Christian
tradition.G. B. de Rossi, Roma sotterranea cristiana, 4 vols. 1864–1877;
Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae VIIº saeculo antiquiores, 1864–1888. De Rossi examined over
15,000 epitaphs in the Catacombs. Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, 1863–1894,
etc. Nuovo Bullettino di archeologia cristiana (edited by Orazio Marucchi), 1895; Orazio
Marucchi, Eléments d'archéologie chrætienne: I. ‘Notions générales,' II. ‘Itinéraire
des Catacombes,' III. ‘Basiliques et églises 1906–9. Roma sotterranea Christiana
(Nuova serie) Cimitero di Domitilla,' No. 4, 1909; Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro
e Paolo in Roma, 1903, etc.; P. Wilpert, Principienfragen der christlichen Archäologie,
1892; R. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, 1892, and New Tales of Old Rome; J.
S. Northcote and W. R. Brownlow, Roma Sotterranea, 2 vols. 1879.
St. Peter's final sojourn in Rome has a permanent
record in the first Epistle bearing his name, which is from the historian's
standpoint a document of the utmost value. Its authenticity was never questioned
in ancient times and the external witness to its genuineness is unimpeachable.On this point Renan (L'Antéchrist, Introd. p. vii) may be quoted: ‘La I Petri
est un des écrits du Nouveau Testament qui sont le plus anciennement et le plus unanimement
cités comme authentiques.' 1 Peter is quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews, of which
the date is probably 66 A.D., and in Clement, 1 Corinthians, an epistle written
by a disciple of St. Peter.
If on subjective grounds doubts have been thrown on its authorship, its date and
the place from which it was written, it has been simply because its contents, being
on the face of them that which they claimed to be—Petrine, Neronian, and Roman—naturally
clashed with theories which denied to it any of these attributes. With the death
and burial of the Tübingen fictions, let it be hoped that the doubts about the genuineness
of this Epistle may also find decent interment.
The salutation of the Epistle is addressed to the elect sojourners of the Dispersion,
in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, in other words to the Jewish
Christians scattered throughout the four Roman provinces (for Pontus and Bithynia
formed one province) which lay north and west of the Taurus mountain range.There was regular intercourse between Rome and the seaports of provincial Pontus,
especially Sinope. Possibly, as Dr. Hort suggests, Silvanus may have had special
personal reasons for beginning his journey as the bearer of the Epistle from this
point. As Bithynia adjoined Pontus and formed part of the same province the route
of Silvanus would be a circuit ending at a point not far from that at which it began.
See Dr. Hort's special note on ‘The Provinces of Asia Minor included in St. Peter's
address': Hort, 1st Epistle of St. Peter, pp. 157–185; also the very interesting
Introduction to Bigg's 1st Epistle of St. Peter, pp. 67–80. This
region then, it may be assumed, had been the scene of Peter's missionary labours
for a number of years before the
visit to Rome during which the epistle was written. Taken in conjunction
with the strong body of evidence from other sources for a residence of St. Peter
in Rome during the latter part of Nero's reign,See Dr. Chase's article on Peter in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, in
which references will be found to the literature bearing on the subject. and with the internal evidence
of the epistle itself—that it was written in that city during the earlier stages
of the persecution which followed the great fire of 64 A.D., the words of ch. v.
v. 13, ‘the Church (or the sister) which is in Babylon elect together with you
saluteth you,' are not difficult of interpretation. To Jewish readers the term Babylon,
as symbolically and figuratively connoting the great city of oppression and corruption
on the Tiber, was, if one may judge by the use made of it in the Apocalypse, so
familiar as to be at once intelligible. The 5th book of the Sibylline Oracles, in
a passage of Jewish origin referring to the misdeeds of Nero, and possibly written
not long after the fall of Jerusalem, likewise employs the name Babylon for Rome
simply and directly, as St. Peter does.The Sibylline Oracles, Book v. p. 143: Φεύξεται ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἄναξ
φοβερὸς καὶ ἀναιδής.. The subject of this passage is the flight of Nero from Rome. Zahn gives
the date 71–74 A.D. in Zeitschrift für Kirchliche Wissenschaft und Leben, 1886,
p. 337 ff.
The epistle is remarkable for the extent of its indebtedness to other New Testament
writings, and especially to those of St. Pau1.St. Peter in many passages shows an acquaintance with the Epistle of St. James.
In this there is nothing remarkable, considering the close association of the two
early Christian leaders. Far more striking are the numerous echoes and reflections
of our Lord's sayings, as they are recorded in the four Gospels. These Petrine reminiscences
of the Master's words do not, however, seem to be derived from any canonical gospel
we now possess. Possibly St. Peter made use of some pre-canonical source, i.e. that
which the critics have named ‘Q.' Far more probably he was in the habit of quoting
from memory in his preaching the sayings of Jesus, which his love for the speaker
had enshrined in his mind unforgettably. It is not unlikely that 1 Peter contains
many phrases and thoughts which may have their source in sayings of the Lord unrecorded
in the extant Gospels. It is noteworthy that the phraseology of 1 Peter contains
several coincidences with that of the Fourth Gospel, a piece of evidence strongly
testifying to the historical character of the Johannine record. There is no lack of
originality in either
thought or diction in this essentially Petrine document, but St. Peter's
mind appears to have been one of those that absorbed what he had heard or read so
completely that he reproduced it almost unconsciously, and yet in reproducing transformed
the borrowed phrase or idea, so as to make it his very own. It is peculiarly interesting
to note that this Epistle plainly testifies that the Apostle was intimately acquainted
with those two great epistles of St. Paul, the Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians,In the Authorised Version of 1 Peter will be found more than forty marginal
references to Romans, more than twenty to Ephesians.
and that he was deeply impressed by them. This being so, it follows
not only that there was at this time no opposition between Peter and Paul, such
as fills the foreground of Christian Baur's imaginative representation of the relations
between the two men, but that any earlier divergencies of view had been replaced
by the closest agreement and by practical identity in the general character of their
teaching. Further the fact that the language of these two Epistles, Ephesians and
Romans, should have been thus fresh in the memory of St. Peter, when dictating his
own letter, is one of those undesigned coincidences which afford the strongest circumstantial
proof that the historical setting is in exact accordance with that traditional interpretation
of documentary evidence which I have been endeavouring to show is the correct interpretation.
St. Paul, as we have seen, had sent from Rome in 61 A.D. an Epistle to the Church
in Colossae and another circular epistle, commonly called the Epistle to the Ephesians,
but in reality addressed to a whole group of Asian Churches. In the Epistle to Colossae
the Apostle in sending the salutation of Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, who was then
with him states that he (Mark) was about to visit them, and he gives to him his
commendation.Col. iv. 10. St. Peter in writing, also from Rome, to these same Asian Churches
a few years later adds to the salutation from the Church that of ‘Marcus my son.'1 Pet. v. 13.
Now St. Peter, according to the opening passage of his Epistle, had been
working himself in Asia Minor in the years preceding this last Roman
visit. The natural inference therefrom is that Mark had, while journeying through
those Churches to which the Epistle of the Ephesians had been sent, joined himself
to his old chief, and then accompanied him once again to Rome, as his interpreter.
The many references to the Epistle to the Ephesians by St. Peter in these circumstances
are not more than what might reasonably be expected. Moreover in. Christian Rome,
the Apostle on his arrival so soon after Paul's release would find himself in a
Pauline atmosphere, and being a man keenly susceptible to influences from without,
familiarity with the Epistle to the Romans could scarcely fail to exercise that
profound effect upon his mind which is reflected in his utterances. But not only
was Mark a living bond between the two Apostles at this period; the concluding paragraph
of this Epistle seems to imply that Silvanus also, Paul's former missionary associate,
had been with Peter in Asia Minor, that he had accompanied him to Rome, that he
was now acting as his amanuensis in writing his epistle to the Churches of the Dispersion,
and that he was destined to be its bearer. The words ‘through Silvanus, a faithful
brother in my judgement, have I written to you briefly' stand at the beginning
of the short postscript to the epistle, which was in all probability written by
St. Peter in his own hand, and it has been taken to signify that in the body of
the epistle the more cultured scribe was allowed more or less a free hand in putting
into literary form the rough-hewn Greek which fell from the lips of the Apostle.1 Pet. v. 12: διὰ Σιλουανοῦ ὑμῖν τοῦ πιστοῦ ἀδελφοῦ,
ὡς λογίζομαι, δἰ ὀλίγων ἔγραψα. Compare the words of Dionysius of Corinth quoted in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl.
iv. 2. 11, who speaks of the epistle of Clement as ἡμῖν διὰ Κλήμεντος γραφεῖσαν..
The Epistle was sent in the name of the Church of Rome, but the general assent of
antiquity makes Clement to have been the author. He had no doubt general instructions
agreed upon by the Presbyterate, i.e. by Bishop Linus and the body of episcopi who
were his coadjutors and of whom Clement was one. He appears, according to Hermas,
to have acted as the secretary of the Presbyterate in their intercourse with foreign
churches and to have been given a free hand in the actual composition of the letter.
To a less extent this was probably the case with Silvanus in his transcription of
Peter's dictation.
An event took place when St. Peter was in Rome, but some months before he wrote
his Epistle, which was fraught with terrible consequences to the Christians. On
July 19, 64 A.D., a fire broke out at the end of the Great Circus adjoining the
Palatine and Caelian Hills, amidst shops containing inflammable wares. For nine
days the conflagration raged, with most disastrous results. Of the fourteen districts
into which Rome was divided, four only escaped uninjured, three were totally destroyed,
in the other seven only a few scarred and half-ruined houses remained. Nero was
at Antium at the time, but he hurried to Rome only to see his own palace buildings
on the Palatine and Esquiline, filled with works of art, consumed by the flames.
From 400,000 to 500,000 persons found themselves homeless and most of them destitute.
The Emperor threw himself with energy into the formidable work of dealing with such
an emergency. He opened to the people the Campus Martins, the public buildings of
Agrippa and his own gardens, where he erected temporary shelters for the homeless.
He brought up supplies of corn and lowered the price. The Sibylline Oracles were
consulted and propitiations offered to the Gods. But in spite of all these acts,
which should have won him popularity, manifold rumours were soon afloat attributing
the fire to incendiaries carrying out Nero's own orders. It was commonly believed
that he wished the ancient city to be burnt down, with its dark, narrow, close-packed
streets in order that he might build a new one to be called after his own name.See Tacitus,
Ann. xv. 38—41; Suet. Nero, p. 38; Dion Cassius, lxii. 16—18; Pliny,
Nat. Hist. xvii. 5. Of these Suetonius, Dion and Pliny agree in ascribing the crime
of incendiarism to Nero. Tacitus does not commit himself to any positive statement:
‘sequitur clades forte an dolo principis incertum, nam utrumque auctores prodidere.'
The legend of ‘Nero's fiddling while Rome burned' is probably a fiction, but there
must always be strong doubts whether or no he was the author of the fire.
The work of rebuilding in any case was one in which he delighted and on which
he lavished vast sums of money. Broad, well-built streets of stone brought from
the quarries of Gabii and Alba, with long colonnades, replaced the
narrow and tortuous alleys which had disappeared. Above all he now
appropriated an immense area for the erection of a magnificent palace for himself,
to which the name of the Domus Aurea was given, surrounded by open fields, woods
and lakes, in which nature and art vied with each other in creating a scene of perfect
sylvan beauty. All this is told us by Tacitus, who then proceeds to describe the
effect upon the public mind of all this activity on the part of the Emperor:—‘but
neither man's efforts to give relief, nor the largess of the prince, nor the propitiations
of the Gods were able to dissipate belief in the sinister report that the fire had
been ordered. Wherefore to efface the rumour, Nero contrived that accusations should
be brought against a set of people hated for their abominations, whom the populace
called Christians, and subjected them to the most exquisite torments. The author
of this name, one Christus, had in the reign of Tiberius been executed by the procurator
Pontius Pilatus; and the pernicious superstition, though repressed for the moment,
began to break out afresh, not only in Judaea, the origin of that evil, but also
in Rome, where all things horrible and shameful from every quarter collect together
and are practised.'Tac. Ann. xv. 44: ‘sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum
placamentis decedebat infamia, quin iussum incendium crederetur. Ergo abolendo
rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos
vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante
per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam,
originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque.'
‘Subdidit reos' means ‘brought to trial with the malicious object of shifting
the hatred of the people from himself upon the Christians.'Compare Ann. 1. 6: ‘quod
postquam Sallustius Crispus . . . comperit metuens ne reus subderetur, iuxta periculoso
ficta seu vera promeret.'See also Suetonius, Nero, 16: ‘affiicti suppliciis Christiani,
genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae'; and Pliny in his letter to the
Emperor Trajan: ‘nomen ipsum, si flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini
puniantur' . . . ‘nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam.'
With these sentences Tacitus begins the famous passage, so full of difficult
and debateable points, in which he describes the Neronian persecution of the Christians. Before,
however, proceeding further, and as a necessary preliminary to any
detailed consideration of the passage as a whole, I wish to point out what seems
to me a fundamental error on the part of almost every writer upon the subject: the
error of connecting the criminal process set on foot by Nero against the Christians,
and its culmination in the horrible fete in the Vatican Gardens too closely with
the Great Fire, either as regards the time or the character of the charges. Most
writers assume that the Christians were accused of being incendiaries almost as
soon as the last flames were extinguished, and that the Vatican holocaust took
place in the month of August 64 A.D. Now such a supposition runs directly counter
to the Tacitean narrative and derives no support from any other source.
The section of Book XV of the ‘Annals' comprising seven chapters (38–44) forms
a continuous story and treats of a considerable interval of time. The words ‘wherefore
to efface the rumour' . . . are in strict dependence on the sentence that precedes
them—‘but neither man's efforts to give relief, nor the largesses of the prince,
nor the propitiations of the Gods were able to dissipate belief in the sinister
report that the fire had been ordered.' With the utmost distinctness and clearness
of which language is capable Tacitus here declares that Nero did not try to shift
odium from himself by inflaming odium against the Christians, until he had exhausted
all the means for gaining popularity and diverting the suspicions of the crowd,
which the historian has just recapitulated. Now it is simply impossible that the
gigantic administrative task, first, of providing food and temporary shelter for
some hundreds of thousands' of homeless and destitute persons, and, afterwards,
of clearing away the ruins and debris of so vast a conflagration, of laying out
and planning new and spacious streets and of setting to work to build them with
stone brought from distant quarries, can have been carried out in less than five
or six months. In all probability the Emperor did not give instructions for the
prosecution of the Christians until the early part of 65 A.D.
It is no objection that the whole of this section (i.e. cc. 38–44) is included
in what appears to be the Tacitean narrative of the events of the year 64, while
the account of the happenings of the year 65 begins at chapter 48. It is the ordinary
practice of this historian thus to group together so as to form a single and complete
episode in his narrative a series of events having close connexion with one another
but really spread over a considerable space of time. A conspicuous instance occurs
in the account of the Pisonian conspiracy and its suppression, which follows that
of the fire and fills the last twenty-six chapters of Book XV. The history of the
year 65 seems to begin in chapter 48 with the words ‘Silius Nerva and Atticus Vestinus
then enter on the consulship, when a conspiracy was begun and at once gathered strength,
into which senators, knights, soldiers even women had vied with one another in giving
in their names, partly through hatred of Nero, partly through a liking for C. Piso.'‘Ineunt deinde consulatum Silius Nerva et Atticus Vestinus, coepta simul et
aucta coniuratione, in quam certatim nomina dederant senatores eques miles, feminae
etiam, cum odio Neronis tum favore in C. Pisonem,' Ann. xv. 48. Cf. xiv. 65: ‘Romanus
secretis criminationibus incusaverat Senecam ut C. Pisonis socium. . . . Unde Pisoni
timor, et orta insidiarum in Neronem magna moles sed inprospera.' In xii. 56, 57
Tacitus speaks of the piercing by Claudius of (Monte Salviano) the mountain intervening
between Lake Fucinus and the river Liris with the object of creating an outlet for
the lake into the river, and he seems to place the execution of the work and fetes
attending its inauguration all in the year 53: ‘sub idem tempus inter lacum Fucinum
amnemque Lirim perrupto monte, quo magnificentia operis a pluribus viseretur etc.'
Suetonius tells us that the work employed 30,000 men for eleven years, Claud. 20.
See also Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 15, 24.
But Tacitus in thus writing had apparently forgotten that he had already spoken
of the conspiracy of Piso as being in existence in the year 63 A.D., and it is evident
therefore that the narrative of the growth of the plot given in chapters 48 to 53
covers the whole intervening period. The statement that one of the leaders, Subrius
Flavus, ‘had formed a sudden resolution to attack Nero when his house was in flames
and he was running hither and thither unattended in the darkness' shows that as
far back as the crisis of the conflagration the Emperor
only escaped by the lack of nerve of his would-be assailant. It will
thus be seen that, while seeming to compress the rise and fall of the Pisonian conspiracy
into the first few months of 65 A.D., Tacitus is really telling of the long-drawn-out
drama of some two or three years. The two sections therefore of the ‘Annals,'
(1) that dealing with the fire, the rebuilding and the persecution, and (2) that
which treats of the doings of the conspirators after the failure of Subrius Flavus,
are overlapping narratives and really contemporary. What influenced Nero at this
juncture to select the Christians as his victims can only be conjectured. Possibly
the suspicions of the Roman crowd had fallen upon the Jews, the objects at once
of their detestation and contempt, as being incendiaries, partly because their own
Ghetto across the Tiber was one of the few uninjured quarters of the city, and partly
because the hated race were at that time in especial favour at the Court. The Jews
on their part, alarmed at being the objects of popular anger, would not be slow
to use the influence of Poppaea with the Emperor, and to suggest that the blame
should be thrown on the Christians, a sect from which they were anxious to be dissociated
and on which they would be only too glad to wreak their spite.Allard, Hist. des Persécutions, pp. 42–3; Renan, l'Antéchrist, pp. 154–5; 1
Clement, 5, διὰ ζῆλον καὶ φθόνον. Nero must have been well aware of the existence
of the Christians, many of whom were to be found in his own household. Difficulties
must have arisen at times with the freedmen and slaves who refused to take part
in any pagan ceremonies or sacrifices or to attend public spectacles. A plausible reason
would easily be found in distorted versions of the utterances of Christian ‘prophets'
and preachers concerning that approaching destruction of the world by fire, in
which all Christians at that time firmly believed. However this may have been, the
charge of incendiarism, if ever preferred, was only a pretext; it was as malefactors
and criminals that the Christians suffered. An examination of the extant authorities
will, I think, bear out this contention.
In the first place comes the all-important passage of Tacitus (xv. 44), a part
of which has been already given.
After his reference to the origin of Christianity he continues thus:
‘those therefore who confessed were first brought to trial, afterwards by the information
derived from them, an immense multitude were joined with them, not so much for the
crime of incendiarism, as for hatred of the human race. To their deaths mockeries
were added, so that covered by the skins of wild beasts they were torn to pieces
by dogs and perished or were affixed to crosses or set on fire and, when day had
fallen, were burnt so as to serve as an illumination for the night. Nero had offered
his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a public show in the circus. He
mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer, standing in a car. Hence compassion
began to arise, although towards criminals deserving the extremest forms of punishment,
on the ground that they were destroyed not for the public good but to gratify a
single man's savage cruelty.'‘Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum
multitudo ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis
coniuncti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti
laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus adfixi aut flammandi, atque, ubi
defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. Hortos suos ei
spectaculo Nero obtulerat et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigae
permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. Unde quamquam adversus
sontes et novissima exampla meritos miseratio oriebatur, tamquam
non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur' (Ann. xv. 44).
Correpti = (1) seized by violence; (2) dragged
violently to trial. Compare ‘continua hinc et vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum adiacere. Atque
ubi dicendam ad causam introissent' (Ann. xv. 58) of the Pisonian
conspirators. Fatebantur can only mean ‘made open confession.'
Indicio eorum:
this may possibly mean that some turned renegades (see Heb. vi. 5, 6), but it includes
information of all kinds. Many no doubt made no concealment about their being Christians
and the views that they held as to the approaching destruction of all things by
fire. It may also mean that papers and other proofs were found by search of the
houses of the accused. Coniuncti: this is the reading of MS. Med. and on the ground
that the more difficult reading should be preferred, I adopt it with Henderson,
Ramsay, Boissier and others, and also because it seems to me to give the right interpretation
of the words that precede, ‘haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis.'
The other reading is convicti.
Since the publication of Mommsen's article ‘Der Religionsfrevel nach römische
Recht' in 1894,‘Der Religionsfrevel nach römische Recht' (Historische Zeitung, 1890, t. lxiv.
389 ff) (see also Expositor, 1893, vol. viii. 1–7). the views
of the writer, as the greatest authority upon the history of the early
Empire, gained wide acceptance, and have now a large and growing number of adherents.
According to this view stated briefly the early persecutions of the Christians were
mere matters of police and were dealt with by the summary powers, coercitio, possessed
by the executive magistrates at Rome and by the governors, proconsuls, procurators
and their deputies, in the provinces. Now the subject of this article is in no sense
specially the Neronian persecution or the interpretation of the passage of Tacitus
which we are considering. It is a paper of a general character, dealing with what
I may call the normal procedure of the Roman State in its treatment of religious
offences, and no doubt it gives a perfectly correct account of the ordinary repressive
measures which were continually being exercised against the Christians, as Christians,
certainly after the time of Trajan's rescript, but to some extent during the whole
of the FIavian period also.Among the many modern writers on early Christian persecution the following
works are specially deserving of mention: Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, 1899; Arnold,
Die Neronische Christenverfolgung, 1888; Schiller, Gesch. des Röm. Kaisserreichs
unter der Reg. des Nero, 1872; Allard, Histoire des Persécutions pendant les deux
premiers siècles, 1892; Callewaert, ‘Les premiers Chrétiens, furent-ils persécutés
par édits ou par mesures de police?' (Rev. d'hist. ecclés. Louvain 1901, p. 771
ff; 1902, p. 6 ff, 326 ff, 601 ff); Duchesne, ‘La prohibition du Christianisme
dans l'Empire romain' (Misc. di storia ecclesiastica a stud. ausil. 1902, i. 1);
Le Blant, Les persécutions et les martyrs, 1903; Guérin, ‘Etude sur le fondement
jurid. des persécutions dirigées contre les Chrétiens pendant les deux premiers
siècles de notre ère' (Rev. Hist. de droit franc. et étrang. 1895, pp. 600, 713);
Renan, L'Antéchrist, 1873; Boissier, Fin du Paganisme, 1892; Parfumo, Le fonti e
i tempi dello incendio Neroniano, 1905; Ramsay, The Church and the Empire, 4th edit.
1905; ‘Christianity in the Roman Empire' (Expositor, 1893, viii, pp. 8–21, 110–119,
282–296); Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government, 1894; Henderson, Life and
Principate of the Emperor Nero, 1902; Klette, Die Christenkatastrophe unter Nero, 1907. But the Neronian persecution was not a normal repressive
measure, such as those with which Mommsen is concerned. The persecution of 65 A.D.
was the first act of hostility of the Roman State against those professing the Christian
faith, and it was the personal act of the Emperor himself. No one can read Chapter
44 of Book XV of the ‘Annals' without
admitting this. From first to last Tacitus lays stress upon the personal part taken
by Nero in the whole of the proceedings. The account opens with the statement ‘Ergo
abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per
flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat,' and in the closing scene ‘hortos
suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat.' That in the popular view Nero was the prime
mover throughout could scarcely be more strongly expressed than in the words ‘in
saevitiam unius.'
The evidence of Suetonius is scarcely less direct. His biography of Nero strikes
a kind of balance between the praiseworthy and beneficent deeds of the Emperor and
the much longer list of black crimes and histrionic follies, apparently with the
object of showing that the latter far outweigh the former. Among the good and commendable
deeds comes the brief notice—‘the Christians, a race of men holding a strange and
noxious superstition, were visited with punishments.'‘Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae'
(Suet. Nero, 16). These words occur in the midst of a number of sumptuary regulations
enforced by Nero. The epithet maleficae suggests that one of the charges was that
of sorcery or magic. The impious sect was only
worthy of mention because the severity of their punishment reflected a certain measure
of personal credit upon Nero's administration. That of Tertullian is remarkable.
In his ‘Apology' to the Emperor Septimus Severus he writes: Consult your records
[commentarios]; there you will find Nero first savagely attacked with Caesarean
sword this sect then rising chiefly at Rome. But of such an initiator of our condemnation
we are even proud. For he who knows that man can understand that nothing except
what is great and good was condemned by Nero.' Again in the ‘Scorpion'—‘we have
read the lives of the Caesars; Nero was the first to stain with blood the rising
faith at Rome.'Tertullian, Apol. c. 51, 21; Scorp. c. 15; Ad Nat. 1, 7: ‘sed tali dedicatore
damnationis nostrae etiam gloriamur.' The word dedicator in Tertullian's writings
has the signification auctor, initiator, see Oehler's Index Verborum in his edition
of Tertullian's works. In the passage from Scorp. occur the words ‘si fidem commentarii
voluerit haereticus, instrumenta Imperii loquentur.' Tertullian
was himself a jurist learned in the law, and as the quotations above
testify, he bases his statements and arguments upon documentary evidence, both the
works of historians and state records. Since, therefore, the Emperor personally
initiated the persecution of the Christians in 64–65 A.D.—‘ergo abolendo rumori
Nero subdidit reos,' as Tacitus says—the trial must have taken place in the imperial
court presided over in the Emperor's absence by the Pretorian prefects and their
assessors of the Imperial Council.Tac. Ann. xiv. 51, 60; xv. 37, 50, 72; xvi. 19, 20; Hist. i, 72; Suet. Galba,
15; Plutarch, 0tho, c. 2; Tac. Ann. xv. 58: ‘Atque ubi dicendam ad causam introissent
. . . pro crimine accipi cum super Neronis ac Tigellini saevas percontationes, Faenius
quoque Rufus violenter urgeret.' The trial of the Pisonian conspirators thus took
place before Nero and the two Pretorian Prefects, April 65. A little afterwards
Seneca was accused of complicity, and his answers to the charge were brought by
a tribune to the Court. Tacitus (Ann. c. 61) thus relates it: ‘Ubi haec a tribuno
relata Bunt Poppaea et Tigellino coram, quod erat saevienti principi intimum consiliorum. . . . Probably in this matter Tigellinus took the
leading part; the character of the final tragedy in the Vatican Gardens was quite
in accord with what we are told of the fiendish ingenuity of his cruelty. There
is abundant evidence to show that Tigellinus after 62 A.D. was not merely the instigator
of many of Nero's crimes but the active and merciless agent in the execution of
them.See Juvenal, Sat. i, 155–157:
Pone Tigellinum: taeda lucebis in illa,
Qua stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture (pectore) fumant
Et latum media sulcum diducit arena.
On this passage an ancient Schol. comments: ‘In munere Neronis arserunt vivi
de quibus ille iusserat cereos fieri, qui lucerent spectatoribus. . . . Maleficos homines
taeda, papyro, cera super vestiebat, sicque ad ignem admoveri iubebat ut arderent.'
If Nero then, in the course of the winter months of 64–65 A.D., by his personal
initiative brought the Christians to trial before his court, knowing them to be
held in general odium for their crimes, in order to divert public attention from
the widely accredited rumour that it was by his secret orders that the city had
been set on fire, let us now proceed to examine the highly condensed and somewhat
enigmatic narrative of Tacitus with the view of further investigating
the character of the charges brought against the accused. In the first
place let us clear our minds of a misapprehension. Negatively they were not accused
of having had any hand in the actual conflagration of July, 64 A.D. Not a single
writer, Christian or pagan, who refers to the Neronian persecution ever suggests
that it had any connexion with the fire, with the single exception of the late fourth-century
chronographer, Sulpicius Severus, who, however, contents himself with an almost
slavish reproduction of Tacitus.Sulp. Sev. Chron. ii. 29. Neither Tertullian nor Orosius, who were well
acquainted with the works of Tacitus and with other documentary sources no longer
accessible to us, shows any sign of being aware of any correlation between the charges
against the Christians and the burning of Rome.This negative evidence of Tertullian comes out the more forcibly as his Apology
was addressed to the Emperor Septimius Severus, and to the chief magistrates of
the Roman Empire. Orosius roundly charged Nero with being the incendiary: ‘denique
urbis Romae incendium voluptatis suae spectaculum fecit' (Hist. adv. Paganos, vii. 7). There is not a trace in the contemporary
writings—1 Peter, Hebrews, the Apocalypse or 1 Clement—that such an accusation
was made.
This being so, what then is the meaning of ‘those therefore who confessed were
first brought to trial, afterwards by the information derived from them an immense
multitude were joined with them, not so much for the crime of incendiarism as for
hatred of the human race'? Now in the first place it is surely plain that had
any Christians confessed to the crime of setting fire to Rome in July, 64 A.D.,
and had they implicated the general body of their fellow-Christians in their guilt,
there would have been no need of any subsidiary charges; exemplary punishment would
have been summary and immediate, and Nero's name would at once have been freed from
the stigma that rested upon it. But it was not freed. There is something approaching
unanimity in the verdict of the writers of succeeding centuries (for Tacitus scarcely
conceals what was his personal opinion) in ascribing the fire to Nero, and what
is more important for our present contention of contemporaries also. The
above-named Subrius Flavus, a tribune of the Pretorian guard, when
on his trial before Nero, as a conspirator, in April 65 A.D., did not scruple to
tell the Emperor to his face that he was an incendiary, and Tacitus is at pains
to state ‘I have given the man's very words.'‘Ipsa rettuli verba,' Tac. Ann. xv. 67. ‘Pliny the Elder also, in his ‘Natural History' published before
79 A.D., writing upon the longevity of certain
trees remarks that they lasted until the fires of the Emperor Nero with which he
burnt the city. . . ,' and he concludes in words that leave not the smallest doubt
as to his conviction in this matter, ‘They would have remained afterwards by cultivation
green and young had not that Prince hastened the death even of trees.'‘Duraveruntque, quoniam et de longissimo aevo arborum diximus, ad Neronis
principis incendia quibus cremavit Urbem, annis CLXXX . . . postea cultu virides iuvenesque
ni Princeps ille accelerasset etiam arborum mortem,' Pliny, Hist. Nat. xvii. 1.
The incendiarism of which the Christians were accused and of which they made
open confession was an incendiarism in will not yet realised, but in their firm
and absolute conviction immediately to come, and meanwhile eagerly watched for and
desired. In Christian circles this one belief during the early decades of the second
half of the first century overpowered all others, and transformed all men's ideas
and their outlook upon life, that the second Advent of Christ was at hand, and it
would be preceded by the destruction by fire of the world and with it the great
city of Rome. In every part of the New Testament there are evidences that the Christians
of the period with which we are dealing expected that ‘the end of all things'1 Thess. iv. 16-18; 2 Thess. i. 7-10; 1 Cor. xv. 51-2;
Rom. xiii. 11-13; Tit. ii. 12, 13; Heb. ix. 37;
1 Pet. iv. 7; 2 Pet. iii. 10-12; Rev. xviii. 1-21, xxii.
10-12, 20.—See Turner, Studies in Early Church History, pp. 226–7.
would be consummated in their own lifetime, and the Apocalyptic literature of
the time dwells not only upon the fire which was to burn up the world and all its
wickedness, but also upon the sign that the final judgment was at hand, by the
appearance in bodily form of Antichrist, the incarnation of Belial or Satan, and
there is evidence to show that the enormities of Nero had before the end of his
reign led Christians to identify him as Antichrist personified.Rev. xiii., xvi. 10, 19, xvii. 5–9; Ascension of Isaiah [80–90 A.D.]
14 (2, 5) and 18. Orac. Sibyllina, iii. 63–93
[about 80 A.D.], iv. 179–182, v. 158–162.
There are many other passages of Judaeo-Christian origin which are difficult to
date, as the books in their present form contain many ancient fragments. See also
Apoc. of Baruch, xxxvi.–xl., which Dr. Charles dates before 70 A.D., and iv. Esdras
a little earlier. The open expression
of such views at such a time would not escape the notice of Tigellinus' secret police,
and the offenders, no doubt, when arrested (exactly as Tacitus reports) made no
attempt to deny or explain away the language they had used. Confessing that they
were Christians and that a belief in the approaching destruction by fire of wicked
Rome and of the world of which it was the head was to them as Christians an article
of faith, it is easy to see how ‘by their information' the whole body of Christians
became included in the accusation. That afterwards under torture some of the more
weak-kneed prisoners may have turned traitors and furnished the government with
the names and meeting-places of their fellow disciples, and in the stress of agony
may even have given false evidence concerning the crimes with which popular opinion
charged them, is not impossible. The language of the Epistle to the Hebrews rather
supports such an hypothesis, as do certain passages of ‘The Shepherd' of Hermas.Heb. vi. 4-6, x. 26-29, 39. The title of Confessores was one in which the Christians
of later centuries gloried. Compare 1 Tim. vi. 12–13. Compare Hernias,
Pastor, Sim. ix. 21. 3, 28. 4,
Vis. iii. 2. 1, the persecution to which Hermas refers was probably
that of Nero.
The proceedings against the Christians for the use of language threatening a coming
judgment upon the world and its destruction by fire can be paralleled by the account
given by Philostratus of the visit of the sophist and wonder-worker, Apollonius
of Tyana, to Rome in 66 A.D. We read how ‘Tigellinus, who controlled the sword
of Nero, expelled from Rome' the cynic Demetrius, a friend of Apollonius, ‘for
destroying the Baths by his language, and secretly he [Tigellinus] began to keep his eye on
Apollonius against the time when he should say something unguardedly
that could be taken hold of. . . . All the eyes that Government sees with were turned
to scrutinise him: his discourses or his silences; his sitting or walking; what
he ate and with whom—all was reported. . . .' Finally, we read a little further
on that Apollonius was overheard saying concerning the Emperor: ‘Pardon the gods
for taking pleasure in buffoons,' and on this being reported. Tigellinus ‘sent
officers to arrest him, and he had to defend himself on a charge of sacrilege against
Nero.' The representation here given of the power and methods of procedure of Tigellinus
and of the action that he took in the year 66 in regard to Apollonius and his companion
furnishes us with the means of filling in with detail the story of what happened
to the Christians in the preceding year told by Tacitus in barest and briefest outline.The translation from Philostratus' Apollonius is that of Prof. J. S Phillimore,
recently published by the Clarendon Press, 1912, vol. ii. 43–45, bk. iv. cc. 42,
43, 44. Prof. Phillimore in his Preface sides with the majority of critics in asserting
that this work of Philostratus is a Romance. At any rate, many sections of it may
undoubtedly be regarded as imaginative fiction, But, as in the Acta Sincera of
the Martyrs, the romance is built upon a basis of historical fact, and the fictitious
details fill in the framework of a real biography. The portion of the book which
treats of Apollonius' visit to Rome in 66 A.D. gives strong evidence of its historicity.
The name of the consul Telesinus, the inauguration of the Gymnasium and Baths by
Nero and his later departure for Greece, the personality of Demetrius the Cynic,
and the character and activity of Tigellinus are all historical. The original Greek
of two important passages stands thus: Τιγελλῖνος γάρ, ὑφ᾽ ᾧ τὸ ξίφος ἦν τοῦ Νέρωνος, ἀπήλαυνεν αὐτὸν τῆς Ῥώμης . . .
ἀπαγγελθέντος δὲ τῷ Τιγελλίνῳ τὸν λόγον τοῦτον πέμπει τοὺς ἄξοντας αὐτὸν ἐς τὸ
δικαστήριον ὡς ἀπολογήσαιτο μὴ ἀπέβειν ἐς Νέρωνα.
The offences with which the Christians were charged under Nero appear to have
been, according to Tacitus, of the same character as those of which Pliny the Younger
speaks in his famous letter from Bithynia to the Emperor Trajan, as ‘the crimes
adhering to the name,'‘Flagitia cohaerentia nomini,' Plin. Ep. x. 97. and which we find described in the writings of the second-century
Christian Apologists, perhaps more succinctly than any other by Athenagoras (about
177 A.D.), who writes ‘Three things
are alleged against us: Atheism, Thyestean feasts, Oedipodean intercourse.'
The refusal to take part in the ceremonies or to recognise the gods of the national
religion constituted the crime of Atheism. The secret assemblies, the bringing of
children to them for the rite of baptism, the words of consecration in the Holy
Eucharist, the salutation with ‘a holy kiss,' were travestied by the enemies of
Christianity into charges of murder, cannibalism, and promiscuous intercourse, which
were accepted as true by public opinion already in the days of Nero, and which still
remained a fixed article of popular belief and execration when Tertullian wrote
his ‘Apology' about a century and a half later. Athenagoras, Supplicatio 3; also Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 26, 2 Apol. 12, 13;
Dial. c. Tryph: 10, 17, 108; Tertullian, Apo1. 2, 4, 7, 8, 39; Ad Nat. 2. In the
account of the persecution at Lyons and Vienne, 177 A.D., which has been preserved
by Eus. Hist. Eccl. v. i., the same charges are brought forward: κατεψεύσαντο
ἡμῶν Θυέστεια δεῖπνα καί Οἰδιπεδείους μίξεις. These were the flagitia to which
Tacitus attaches the epithets atrocia and pudenda, abominations horrible and shameful.
That the Christians were also condemned for the crime of ‘magic' may he inferred
from the fact that their religion is styled by Tacitus a most pernicious superstition—exitiabilis
superstitio—and by Suetonius a strange and maleficent superstition — superstitio
nova ac malefica — (the word maleficus having juristically the special signification
of a magician or sorcerer), and the punishment in the Vatican Gardens was that specially
assigned to those convicted of practising magical arts.Gebhardt, Acta Martyrum Selecta, 119: ‘Magi estis quia novum nescio quod genus
religionis inducitis.' Cod. Iust. ix. tit. 18: ‘de maleficis et mathematicis.'
Suetonius, Nero, 16: ‘Afflicti suppliciis christiani, genus hominum superstitionis
novae et maleficae.' Paulus, Sent. v.: ‘Qui sacra impia nocturnave ut quem obtruncarent,
defigerent, obligarent, fecerint faciendave curaverint, aut crucibus suffiguntur
aut bestiis obiiciuntur. . . . Magicae artis conscios summo supplicio adfici placuit,
id est bestiis obiici aut crucibus suffigi; ipsi autem magi vivi exuruntur.'
The crime of ‘hatred of the human race,' however, was the charge which included
all these other accusations, and henceforth during the succeeding centuries was
to render the mere name of Christian a sufficient ground for summary
punishment. This charge, as we have seen, may have originated in the
suggestions of Jewish malice, sustained by the reports which no doubt reached the
ears of the authorities—through the agency of some of that host of spies and informers
(delatores) employed by Tigellinus—of the incendiary discourses in which certain
noxious religious fanatics, called Christians by the populace, were openly expressing
their belief in the imminent destruction of the world and its inhabitants by fire
without any concealment of the joyful anticipation with which they awaited the
Divine judgment that was impending over a city which was in their eyes the home
of iniquity and of every sort of blasphemy. But when those first arrested were brought
before the magistrates it was soon found that the fiery words of these enthusiasts
were not nearly so damning as the principles in which they gloried and which forbade
them to recognise the national gods or the religion of the Roman people, or to take
part in any of the public religious ceremonies or spectacles, or in that worship
of the genius of Caesar, who was the personification of the state. Thus that law
of maiestas, which in the reign of Tiberius had
been such a powerful instrument for the assertion of the imperial authority, and
which after a period of disuse had been revived by Nero in 62 A.D., to be during this very spring of 65 A.D. employed
by him with such terrible effect in securing the condemnation of those implicated
rightly or wrongly in the Pisonian conspiracy, was no less a ready implement in
the hands of Tigellinus for striking at the humbler Christians as enemies of the
Roman state. It is of this lex de maiestate that Tertullian writes in his appeal
‘ad Nationes' (c. 7) ‘under Nero condemnation [of this Name] was firmly established.'
And a few lines further on, ‘Although all his other acts were rescinded this Neronian
ordinance alone remained permanent.'Tertullian, Ad Nat. i. 7: ‘Principe Augusta nomen hoc ortum est,
Tiberio disciplina eius inluxit, sub Nerone damnatio invaluit. . . . Et
tamen permansit erasis omnibus hoc solum “institutum Neronianum”
iustum denique ut dissimile sui auctoris.' The lex de maiestate was a
juridical creation of Tiberius and so would not be affected by the rescissio
actorum of the latter after his death: ‘addito maiestatis crimine, quod
tunc omnium accusationum complementum erat,' Tac. Ann. iii. 38. Nero himself was spoken
of by Pliny the Elder as ‘hostis generis humani' (Hist. Nat. vii. 8. 45. 46). Attilio
Profumo in his learned work Le Fonti ed i Tempi dello Incendio Neroniano (p. 227),
commenting on the passage above quoted from Tertullian's Ad nationes, thus states
the conclusions at which he arrived: (1) ‘Non esser mai esistita nè legge nè altra
disposizione giuridica qualsiasi che colpisse nominativamente e solo, come tali,
Christiani. (2) Le persecuzioni contro di essi furono sempre fatte in forma giuridica
e legale, applicando loro 1' “institutum” delle tre accuse—suntuaria, di sacrilegio,
di maestà—detto “Neronianum”; “istituto” non già esclusivo per essi, ma ad
essi solo e sempre applicato. (3) La natura dell' “Institutum” istesso, spiega
i periodi di persecuzione e di pace che si alternavano per i Cristiani, senza bisogno
di fare o di annullare legge alcuna; dappoichè era affidita alla suprema autorità
del Principe e fino ad un certo limite anche a quella dei Presidi delle Province,
e 1'applicazione di esso e 1'applicazione più o meno lata,' Tertullian, as a jurist,
uses the word ‘institutum' correctly to signify a legal procedure resting upon
custom, not necessarily written, Compare Tac. Ann. xiii. 32 of the domestic court
for the trial of Pomponia Graecina; ‘isque (Aulus Plautius) prisco instituto propinquis
coram de capita famaque coniugis cognovit et insontem pronuntiavit.' Henceforth the mere confession
that he was a Christian rendered a man an outlaw. It has been argued
that the name of ‘Christian' was not yet in common use in the days of Nero, and
that Tacitus and Suetonius being writers of the second century may have employed
the term proleptically. Apart from the fact that both these historians drew their
material from contemporary sources, St. Peter in his first epistle, which, as we
hold, was written while the Neronian persecution was gathering force, distinctly
says ‘If a man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify
God in this Name,' and, the Acts of the Apostles already completed before 62 A.D.,
it testifies not only that the word was popularly used in Antioch about 40 A.D.,
but that it was familiar to a man in the position of King Agrippa in 59 A.D. With
the constant intercourse between Antioch and the capital, the nickname would be
carried to Rome probably quicker than to any other place, and the familiar Latin
form of the word would be speedily popularised even so early as the time of Claudius.Suet. Claudius, c. 25.
Pliny in his letter to Trajan most clearly points out that condemnation of Christians for the name
only was already of long standing in 112 A.D. His chief object in
writing to the Emperor was to know whether he was to punish ‘for the Name itself,
if crimes were wanting, or for the crimes adhering to the Name.'‘Ipsum nomen, si flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini puniantur,'
Pliny, Ep. x. 96. Pliny had no definite edict against Christianity to guide him:
‘cognitionibus de Christianis interfui nunquam; ideo nescio quid et quatenus aut
puniri soleat aut quaeri'—so in Trajan's rescript ‘Neque enim in universum aliquid
quod quasi certam formam habeat constitui potest.' In comparing the action of Pliny
with that of Tigellinus it should be noticed that there are many points of close
resemblance. Pliny writes: ‘interim in iis, qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur,
hunc sum secutus modum. Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani; confitentes iterum
ac tertio interrogavi, supplicium minatus; perseverantes duci iussi.' Thus there
is the same confession before trial, and finally punishment for the name. Though
he could find no specific law, there was no searching for precedents. Pliny knew
that for some time past the Christians had been legally regarded as the enemies
of the state and that confession of the name meant outlawry. It should be observed
that he was not hasty in condemnation, but that he mentions having granted three
cognitiones before ordering them to be executed. Finally, an anonymous paper was
placed in the governor's hand implicating a large number of persons which led to
his writing to the Emperor for direction and advice: ‘Propositus est libellus sine
auctore, multorum nomina continens. Qui negabant esse Christianos. . . . Alii ab
indice nominati, esse se Christianos dixerunt.' Compare with Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44:
‘Igitur primo correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens. . . .' The
Rescript of Trajan merely confirmed in writing the practice, which had subsisted
since the time of Nero, of treating the very name of Christian as a crime against the State.
Let us now see how far the evidence from contemporary Christian sources confirms
that derived from Pagan authorities of a later date. That of the 1st Epistle of
St. Peter has already been quoted to show that in 65 A.D. Christians were punished
for the name. This epistle was written in an atmosphere of persecution. The Apostle
as one who has been an eyewitness of persecution in Rome sends a letter of exhortation
and warning to the Judaeo-Christians of the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, who were
at the time he was writing passing through trials of the same character as those
which their brethren in the capital had just been experiencing. Three times does
Peter refer to the charge of being evildoers or malefactors,1 Pet. ii, 12, 14; iii. 15-17; iv. 15. twice to
the ordeal of punishment by fire.1 Pet. i. 7: διὰ πυρὸς δοκιμαζομένου.
1 Pet. iv. 12: τῇ ἐν ὑμῖν πυρώσει πρὸς πειρασμὸν ὑμῖν γινομένῃ. His exhortations are largely directed
to the object of entreating his readers to prove by the goodness of their lives
and their obedience to lawful authority that the accusations of being criminal evildoers
was unfounded.1 Pet. ii. 11-17. Are the words (v. 14):
ἡγεμόσιν, ὡς δἱ αὐτοῦ [τοῖ βασιλέως πεμπομένοις
εἰς ἐκδίκησιν κακοποιῶν, a reference to instructions sent out by Nero
with regard to the Christians of Asia Minor? 1 Pet. iii. 16. But on the other hand ‘if ye be reproached by the name of Christ,
blessed are ye'; ‘if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let
him glorify God in this name.'1 Pet. iv. 14-16. The testimony of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which
was most probably sent from Asia Minor to Rome in the following year 66 A.D., and
of the Apocalypse, of the date 70 A.D., is similar to that of St. Peter in that
both refer to the severity of the sufferings which the Roman Christians had endured,
and also to the fact that the persecution which had begun in Rome had afterwards
spread to Asia Minor. The evidence that Tacitus did not exaggerate either the horrors
of the scene in the Vatican Gardens nor the large number of those who perished is
abundantly corroborated. ‘Ye endured'—says the Epistle to the Hebrews—‘a great
conflict of sufferings; partly being made a public spectacle by insults and afflictions:
and partly by becoming partakers with them that were so used,'Heb. x. 32, 33. See also iv. 14, 15,
vi. 4-6, x. 23-27,
xii. 1-13, xiii. 23. For the
date of Hebrews and of the Apocalypse see Lecture VI. while the writer
of the Apocalypse, to quote only one of many passages, speaks of the woman seated
on the Seven Hills as ‘drunken with the blood of the Saints and of the martyrs
of Jesus.'Rev. xvii. 6. See also ii. 3, 9, 10, 13;
iii. 8-11; vi. 9-11;
vii. 13-17; xii. 10, 11;
xiii. 7, 8; xvi. 6;
xviii. 24; xx. 4. Still more remarkable are the added details given by Clement of Rome
in what seems to be the description of an eyewitness. ‘Enough of ancient examples,'
he writes, ‘let us pass on to the athletes of very recent times, let us take the noble examples
of our own days.' Then after telling of the deaths of St. Peter and
St. Paul he proceeds:—‘to these men {the Apostles] of holy living was gathered
together a great multitude of the elect, who having suffered through jealousy many
insults and tortures, became very splendid examples amongst ourselves. Persecuted
through jealousy, women after having suffered, in the guise of Danaids and Dirces,
terrible and monstrous outrages, attained the goal which made sure to them the race
of faith, and those who were weak in body received a noble reward.'1 Clem. v. Ἀλλ᾽
ἵνα τῶν ἀρχαίων ὑποδειγμάτων
παυσώμεθα ἔλθωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς
ἔγγιστα γενομένους ἀθλητάς·
λάβωμεν τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν τὰ
γενναῖα ὑποδείγματα . .
vi. τούτοις τοῖς ἄνδρασιν
ὁσίως πολιτευσαμένοις
συνηθροίσθη πολὺ πλῆθος
ἐκλεκτῶν,
οἵτινες πολλάκις αἰκίαις καὶ
βασάνοις διὰ ζῆλος παθόντες
ὑπόδειγμα κάλλιστον
ἐγένοντο ἐν ἡμῖν. Διὰ ζῆλος
γυναῖκες Δαναίδες καὶ Δίρκαι
αἰκίσματα δεινὰ καὶ
ἀνόσια παθοῦσαι ἐπὶ τὸν
τῆς πίστεως δρόμον κατήντησαν.
I have already shown that the arrest of the first batch of accused Christians
cannot have taken place till several months after the fire of July 64, probably
in the early spring of 65 A.D. The language of Tacitus may be held to imply that
there were, as in the case of Pliny's proceedings in Bithynia, several questionings
and trials of the prisoners, and some time would elapse between the first confessions
of which the historian speaks and the final seizing of the ‘immense multitude'
for the holocaust in the Gardens. One thing, moreover, may be regarded as certain:
that such a nocturnal spectacle would not have been planned so long as the night
air was chilly, nor would Nero with his scrupulous care for the preservation of
his divine voiceSuet. Nero, 20; Plin. Hist. Nat. xix. 6. 108, and xxxiv. 18. 1666 Tac. Ann. xv. 22. have appeared at night in the open on a car in the garb of a
charioteer in cold weather. But if this were the case then an additional motive
appears for the arresting in the spring of 65 A.D. of this crowd of humble Christians
in order that their execution might be a spectacle to glut the eyes of the Roman
populace. In the middle of April the plot of the Pisonian conspirators to take Nero's
life during the festival of Ceres was discovered. He grasped at the opportunity of getting rid of a
number of illustrious and wealthy men, the confiscation of whose goods
helped to fill his treasury, depleted by the building of the Domus Aurea and other
extravagances. Some undoubtedly were guilty, but once more public opinion condemned
Nero. ‘He was perpetually,'says Tacitus, ‘under the lash of popular talk, which
said he had destroyed men of rank, who were innocent, out of jealousy or fear.'Tac. Ann. xv. 73: ‘etenim crebro vulgi rumore lacerabatur, tamquam viros claros
et insontes ob invidiam aut metum extinxisset.' Compare Josephus, Ant. xx. 8, 3; Suet. Nero, xxvi.
Thus confronted with a fresh crop of disquieting rumours, while those of his complicity
in the conflagration were still current, it may well be that he sought at the great
fetes that were given in gratitude for his escape from death to win a fleeting popularity
and divert criticism from himself by devising the spectacle of the illumination
with living torches and of the rest of the unspeakable barbarities of that night.
But if so, the arrest of the ingens multitudo must have been synchronous with the
trials and condemnation of the Pisonian conspirators. May it not be that in this
fact may be found the explanation of that passage of Tacitus in which he relates
how Nero sent out bodies of soldiers in every direction, and how ‘in long succession
troops of prisoners in chains were dragged along and stood at the gates of the imperial
gardens'?Tac. Ann. xv. 58; ‘continua hinc et vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum adiacere.' Mr.
Henderson in his ‘Life and Principate of Nero,'Henderson, pp. 272–4. commenting on
these trials of April 65 A.D., says ‘The temporary measures of repression and punishment
were grossly exaggerated . . . . Forty-one persons in all were implicated; of these
twenty were certainly guilty, sixteen of them suffered death, the others were acquitted—only
one certainly innocent person was slain.' Who then were these troops of prisoners
in chains? Is it not possible that the ingens multitudo who were arrested and convicted
in chapter 44 are identical with the continua et vincta agmina of chapter 58? If
the two events were really contemporaneous, Tacitus may have misread some record
and converted Christian prisoners into Pisonian conspirators.
In dealing with the question of the Neronian persecution and its date, one important
authority cannot be neglected, that of Orosius, who wrote his Historiae adversus
Paganos under the direction of his master and friend St. Augustine (410–20). In the
seventh book of his history, in which is found the account of the fire and the persecution, Orosius shows himself to be thoroughly
acquainted with the writings of Suetonius,
Tacitus, and Josephus, all of which he quotes by name. The passage which specially
concerns us runs as follows: ‘The boldness of his [Nero's] impiety towards God
increased the mass of his crimes, for he was the first at Rome to visit the Christians
with punishments and deaths, and through all the provinces he commanded that they
should be tortured with a like persecution, and having endeavoured to extirpate
their very name he killed the most blessed Apostles Peter by the cross, Paul by
the sword. Soon calamities in heaps began on every side to oppress the wretched
state, for in the following autumn so great a pestilence fell upon the city that
according to the registers [in the temple] of Libitina there were thirty thousand
funerals.' These last words are a direct quotation from Suetonius, who however as
usual gives no date to the pestilence. This is however given by Tacitus, who thus
concludes his narrative of the events of 65 A.D.: ‘The Gods also marked by storms
and diseases a year made shameful by so many crimes. Campania was devastated by
a hurricane. . . . the fury of which extended to the vicinity of the City, in which
a violent pestilence was carrying away every class of human beings . . . houses
were filled with dead bodies, the streets with funerals.'Orosius, vii. 7 ‘Auxit hanc molem facinorum eius temeritas impietatis in Deum,
nam primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et mortibus affecit ac per omnes provincias
pari persecutione excruciari imperavit
ipsumque nomen exstirpare conatus beatissimos Christi apostolos Petrum
cruse, Paulum gladio occidit. . . . Mox acervatim miseram civitatem
obortae undique oppressere clades, nam subsequente autumno tanta
Urbi pestilentia incubuit, ut triginta milia funera in rationem Libitinae
venirent.' Suet. Nero, 34. Tac. Ann. xvi. 13: ‘Tot facinoribus foedum
annum etiam di tempestatibus et morbis insignivere, vastata Campania
turbine ventorum qui . . . pertulitque violentiam ad vicina urbi; in qua
omne mortalium genus vis pestilentiae depopulabatur. . . .'
Orosius thus confirms the evidence of 1 Peter, the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse,
that a general persecution in the provinces was concurrent with that in Rome; and
his express statement that the pestilence happened in the autumn following the persecution
fixes the date of the trials and execution of the Christians, as having taken place
in the earlier part of 65 A.D.
LECTURE VI
Rev. xii. 11: ‘They loved not their life unto death.'
The deaths by martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul
at Rome towards the close of Nero's reign are among the facts of first-century Christian
history which may in these days be regarded as practically outside controversy.
The evidence of the letter of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth written
by Clement,Clement, 1 Cor. v. 6; supra, p. 47. a first-century document of the most authentic character, even if
it stood alone, could not seriously be challenged. ‘Let us take the noble examples
of our own days. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars
[of the Church] were persecuted and contended unto death. Let us take before our
eyes the good Apostles. Peter, who through unjust jealousy endured not one, or two,
but many toils, and having thus borne witness went to the place of glory that was
his due. Through jealousy and strife Paul showed [how to obtain] the prize of endurance.
. . . To these men of holy life was gathered together a great multitude of the elect,
who having through jealousy suffered many insults and tortures became very splendid
examples amongst us.' The instances mentioned here, Peter, Paul, and the great multitude,
cannot be separated. If language means anything, it means here that these several
examples of brave and patient witness unto death took place ‘amongst us,' i.e.
recently and at Rome.
That the Church of Corinth to whom it was addressed thus interpreted the passage
in the latter half of the second century appears from the letter of Dionysius bishop
of
Corinth to Soter bishop of Rome written before 1174 A.D., in which
the statement appears ‘Both alike [Peter and Paul], having taught together in Italy,
suffered martyrdom about the same time.' And when we learn from this same Dionysius
that it had been the custom at Corinth to read Clement's Epistle in the Church on
the Lord's Day from the earliest times, it may be assumed that the tradition of
events, which, at the date when Clement's epistle was first received at Corinth,
must still have been fresh in men's memories, had been handed down continuously.Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 25; iv. 23: ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὁμόσε
ειδάξαντες, ἐμαρτύρησαν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν.
Both these passages have been preserved by Eusebius and in the same chapter of
his ‘Ecclesiastical History' in which the first Dionysian extract is found, Caius,
a Roman presbyter, who lived in the days of Pope Zephyrinus (198–217), is quoted
as saying ‘I can show you the trophies—i.e. the Memoriae or chapel-tombs—of the
Apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, you will find
there the trophies of those who founded the Church'—the apostles throughout this
chapter being Peter and Paul. Irenaeus, an Oriental by birth, in his youth the disciple
of Polycarp, in later life bishop of Lyons, spent some time in Rome about 170 A.D.; he was thus in a special way a representative man both of Eastern and Western
Christianity, and he speaks of the ‘Church at Rome, founded and established by
the two most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, as being the greatest, the most ancient
and well known to all.'Irenaeus, adv. Haer. iii. 3. 2: ‘Sed quoniam valde longum est in hoc tali volumine
omnium Ecclesiarum numerare successiones, maximae et antiquissimae et omnibus cognitae,
a gloriosissimis duobus apostolis Petro et Paulo Romae fundatae et constitutae Ecclesiae,
eam quam habet ab apostolis traditionem et annuntiatam hominibus fidem, per successiones
episcoporum pervenientem usque ad nos indicantes, confundimus omnes eos, qui quoquo
mode, vel per sibi placenta, vel per vanam gloriam, vel per caecitatem et malam
sententiam praeter quam oportet, colligunt.' And again ‘to this Church, on account of its more especial
eminence, all other Churches must gather,' and he only spoke the truth, for as a
recent writer (Rev. C. H. Turner) quoting this passage has stated, ‘in the next
generation'
i.e. after the Apostles—‘we might say all the Churches of the Empire
“made rendezvous” at Rome.'C. H. Turner, Studies in Early Church History, p. 222. And why? Not because it was the political capital,
but because Peter and Paul there gained the crown of martyrdom, and because at Rome
their hallowed remains at the Vatican and on the Ostian Way were piously preserved
and held in reverence. The authority of the Church of Rome during the early centuries
of Christianity obtained a general recognition accorded to no other Church, not
because Rome contained the palace of the Caesars, who persecuted the faith, but
because it was acknowledged everywhere and always that the Church of Rome had the
distinction of having been founded by St. Peter and St. Paul and that it guarded
the tombs of these ‘two most glorious Apostles.'Iren. adv. Haer. ‘Ad hanc enim Ecclesiam propter potiorem principalitatem
necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in
qua semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata est ea, quae est ab apostolis traditio.'
On the universal acceptance by all Churches of the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter
and Paul at Rome, see P. Martin, Revue des Questions historiques, xiii. pp. 31 ff.
Many legends gathered round the deaths of the two Apostles, but the ‘Acts'
in which they have been preserved are of late date and mainly pure fiction,Richard A. Lipsius, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten and Apostellegenden, 2er Band, 1e Hälfte. except
in their topographical references, which the archaeological researches of De Rossi,
Lanciani, Marucchi and others in recent years have shown to be generally correct.
In one important point the tradition embodied in these Acts, that the martyrdom
of Peter and Paul took place on the same day, i.e. June 29, 67 A.D.—a tradition
which for centuries was universally accepted as historical—is almost certainly wrong.
Considerable obscurity must always surround the actual date and manner of their
death, but the only contemporary evidence we possess seems to testify clearly to
an interval of time separating the two martyrdoms.
The passage of St. Clement (already quoted) mentions the examples of St. Peter
and St. Paul in two distinct paragraphs, without any hint that they suffered together;
indeed the words about St. Paul—‘when he had borne his witness before
the rulers, so he departed out of this world' —by the use of the singular ‘he'
imply that the witness-bearer—the martyr—stood alone.A. Harnack, Altchristl. Lit. 2er Theil, 1er Band, pp. 549–60. See Chase's admirable
article on St. Peter in Hastings's Dict. of the Bible; 1 Clem. v: καὶ μαρτυρήσαςm ἐπὶ
τῶν ἡγουμένων οὕτως ἀπηλλάγη τοῦ κόσμου. To this may be added the
silence of the Second Epistle to Timothy as to the presence of St. Peter at Rome
during the time of St. Paul's last imprisonment and trial. The evidence from silence
is always a very treacherous argument to rely upon, but in this case it would indeed
be strange, if St. Peter had been tried and condemned simultaneously with St. Paul,
that the latter should not have referred in any way to his brother Apostle's presence.
As to the manner of their death Tertullian (A.D. 200) writes: ‘We read in the
lives of the Caesars that Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith.
Then is Peter girt by another, when he is made fast to the Cross. Then does Paul
obtain his birthright of Roman citizenship, when in Rome he is born again ennobled
by martyrdom.' The language of the African Father here shows plainly that he is
referring to the undoubted first-century testimony to St. Peter's death by crucifixion
from the last chapter of the Fourth Gospel.Tert. Scorp. 15. See also Praescript. 36: ‘Ista quam felix ecclesia . . .
ubi Petrus passioni dominicae adaequatur'; Adv. Marc. iv. 5; John xxi. 18, 19:
‘Verily, verily I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself,
and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch
forth thy hands and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest
not. Now this he spake signifying by what manner of death he should glorify God.'
Comp. xiii. 36. Seneca (Cons. ad Marciam, 20) writes of those crucified ‘brachia
patibulo explicuerunt.' The tradition that St. Peter at his own request was crucified
head-downwards was first mentioned by Origen, ἀνεσκολοπίσθη κατὰ κεφαλῆς (Op.
ii. 24 de la Rue), in his Commentary on Genesis to which Eusebius refers (Hist.
Eccl. iii. 1). This shows that the tradition was known early in the third century,
and the letter of Seneca quoted above is evidence that such a method of execution
was not unknown in Rome, for he writes: ‘Video istic cruces non unius quidem generis,
sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas; capite quidem conversos in terrain suspendere.'
It is impossible to say whether this tradition of the mode of St. Peter's death
be true, on the whole it is improbable. Dionysius of Corinth,
as we have seen, merely states that both Apostles suffered about the
same time. The very early Judaeo-Christian Apocalypse, ‘The Ascension of Isaiah'Ascension of Isaiah, Charles, pp. 25 and 95, iv. 2, 3: ‘A lawless king, the
slayer of his mother: who himself, even this king, will persecute the plant which
the Twelve Apostles of the Beloved have planted. Of the Twelve one will be delivered
into his hands.' Comp. τὴν φυτείαν ἢν φυτεύσουσιν
οἱ δώδεκα ἀπόστολοι and
the words of the letter of Dionysius of Corinth, τὴν ἀπὸ Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν
γενηθεῖσαν Ῥωμαίων τε καὶ Κορινθίων. Eus. Hist. Eccl. ii. 25. In the Ascension
of Isaiah St. Paul is not reckoned among the Twelve.
(79–80 A.D.), seems to have a clear reference to St. Peter's death at the hands
of Nero, but no allusion to that of St. Paul. The Liberian Catalogue, 354 A.D.,
is the first document in which the death of the Apostles on the same day is mentioned,
and from the Liberian Catalogue the ‘Liber Pontificalis' adopted it, and June 29
was henceforth regarded as the common anniversary of the martyrdom of the two Apostles.
The origin of this mistake is however revealed by certain entries in authentic lists
of the feasts of martyrs annually celebrated in the Church belonging to the second
half of the fourth century, from which it appears that in the year 258 A.D., owing
to the outbreak of the Valerian persecution, the relics of the two Apostles were
taken from their resting-places at the Vatican and on the Ostian Way and deposited
for safety in a cemetery on the Appian Way known as the Catacombs. The translation
took place on June 29, and when afterwards the relics were again restored to their
original tombs, a hymn of St. Ambrose tells us that henceforth on that clay there
were three feasts kept at Rome: one at the Vatican, a second on the Ostian Way,
a third at the Catacombs.On the Liberian Catalogue, its sources and its relation to the Liber Pontificalis,
see Duchesne's great edition of the Liber Pontificalis; Light-foot's excursus on
the early Roman succession in his Apostolic Fathers (St. Clement of Rome), part
I. vol. i. 201–345; Harnack, Chron. der Altchristl. Literatur, vol. i: ‘Die ältesten
Bischofslisten,' 79–230; also the chapter ‘The Western Church' in Turner's Studies
in Early Church History, 1912. The burial and tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul
and the translation of their bodies for a time to the Catacombs are the subject
of a special Note, Note E, Appendix. The fact of the date of the translation and
of the triple feast being on June 29 will be found in Duchesne, pp. civ–cvii; also
in Barnes, St. Peter in Rome, pp. 107 ff. In the Hieronymian Martyrology (in a
Codex discovered by De Rossi at Berne) the following entry occurs: ‘III Kal. iul.
Romae, natale sanctorum Petri et Pauli: Petri in Vaticano, via Aurelia; Pauli
vero in via Ostensi; utriusque in Catacumbas; passi sub Nerone, Basso et Tusco
Consulibus.' The words passi sub Nerone must be regarded as in a parenthesis, the
date of the consulship of Bassus and Tuscus is 258 A.D. A somewhat earlier and more
abbreviated entry is found in the so-called Feriale Philocalianum (335–354 A.D.,
Duchesne). The title of the document is Depositio Martyrum, and we find ‘III. Kal.
iul. Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostense Basso et Tusco Consulibus.' A hymn attributed
to St. Ambrose (Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus, Halle, 1841, No. 71) has this verse:
‘Tantae per urbis ambitum
Stipata tendunt agmina,
Trinis celebrator viis
Festum sacrorum Martyrum.
This hymn was written for the Feast of St. Peter and
St. Paul on June 29. The ‘trinis viis' signifies the Aurelian, the Ostian, and the
Appian Ways.
From the beginning of the fourth century
then the belief that the Apostles suffered together in 67 A.D. on
the same day became general, though a passage in one of the poems of Prudentius
written quite early in that century is a proof that with the acceptance of June
29 as the anniversary of both Apostles, a tradition remained of their martyrdoms
having taken place in different years. Prudentius saysPrudentius, Περιστεφανων, hymn xii.
‘Prima Petrum rapuit sententia legibus Neronis,
Pendere iussum praeminente ligno.
* * * * * * * *
Ut teres orbis iter flexi rota percucurrit anni
Diemque eundem sol reduxit ortus,
Evomit in iugulum Pauli Nero fervidum furorem,
Iubet feriri gentium magistrum.'
St. Augustine (Sermons, 296–7) held a similar opinion.
that St. Peter died exactly
a year before St. Paul. It was the influence of St. Jerome more than any other cause
that led to the universal adoption in the Western Church of the fourteenth year
of Nero as the date of St. Peter's death, his account of that Apostle in the ‘De
Viris Illustribus ‘being the basis of the notice of St. Peter which appears in
the ‘Liber Pontificalis.'Duchesne, Lib. Pont. vol. i. p. 119: ‘Ce d'but, de même que plusieurs autres
parties de la notice, étant emprunté au De Viris de Saint-Jérôme.' C. H. Turner
in his chapter on St. Cyprian's correspondence in Studies in Early Church History,
p. 101, writes; ‘The older critics, following St. Jerome's statement (De Viris,
lxvii.) that Cyprian suffered ‘eodem die quo Romae Cornelius sed non eodem anno,”
naturally placed Cornelius with Cyprian on September 14. But we know from the Liberian
Catalogue that Cornelius died at Centumcellae, and September 14 was perhaps the
day of the translation of his remains to Rome.' Hence it appears how easily these
confusions of dates may have arisen through the commemoration of a depositio. The
passages of St. Jerome bearing upon the date are:
(1) ‘Simon Petrus . . . Romam pergit, ibique viginti quinque annis cathedram
sacerdotalem tenuit usque ad ultimum Neronis annum, id est, quartum decimum' (c. i.).
(2) ‘Paulus Apostolus . . . quarto decimo anno Neronis eodem die quo Petrus, Romae
pro Christo capite truncatur . . . anno post passionem Domini XXXVII' (c. v.).
(3) ‘Hic [Lucius Annaeus Seneca] ante biennium quam Petrus et Paulus martyrio coronarentur,
a Nerone interfectus est' (c. xii.). Seneca was put to death end of April, 65. A.D.
The internal evidence of St. Peter's first Epistle shows that he survived the
Vatican fete and that the extension of the persecution to the provinces was the
chief cause of his writing. It follows therefore that he must have been in concealment
during the climax of the Neronian attack upon the Roman Christians. Now among the
legends which have grown up around the death of St. Peter there is a very beautiful
one, which may possibly have an historical foundation, I mean the well-known Quo Vadis? story. His friends, so runs the story, had entreated the Apostle to save
his life by leaving the city. Peter at last consented, but on condition that he
should go away alone. ‘But when he wished to pass the gate of the city, he saw
Christ meeting him. Falling down in adoration he says to Him “Lord, whither goest
Thou?” And Christ replied to him “I am coming to Rome to be again crucified.”
And Peter says to Him “Lord, wilt Thou again be crucified?” And the Lord said
to him “Even so, I will again be crucified.” Peter said to Him “Lord, I will return
and will follow Thee.” And with these words the Lord ascended into Heaven . . .
And Peter, afterwards corning to himself, understood that it was of his own passion
that it had been spoken, because that in it the Lord would suffer.' The Apostle
then returned with joy to meet the death which
the Lord had signified that he should die. Now the mere existence
of this ancient tradition would indicate that the crucifixion of Peter took place
while the persecution was still active, i.e. some time in the summer of 65 A.D.Lipsius, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten.and Apostellegenden, 2er Band, 1e
Hälfte, p. 318. The following extract is from the Passio Petri by pseudo-Linus: ‘Ut autem portam civitatis voluit egredi, vidit
sibi Christum occurrere. Et adorans eum ait: “Domine, quo vadis?” Respondit ei Christus: “Romam venio iterum crucifigi.”
Et ait ad eum Petrus: “Domine, iterum crucifigeris?” Et dixit ad eum dominus:
“Etiam, iterum crucifigar.” Petrus autem dixit: “Domine, revertar et sequar te.”
Et his dictis dominus ascendit in coelum . . . Et [Petrus] post haec rediens in
se ipsum, intellexit de sua dictum passione.' Compare St. John, xiii. 36, 37: ‘Dicit
ei Simon Petrus: Domine, quo vadis? Respondit Iesus: Quo ego vado, non potes
me mode sequi: sequeris autem postea. Dicit ei Petrus: Quare non possum te sequi
modo? animam meam pro te ponam.' Wordsworth's edition of the Vulgate.
That it contains a story that is authentic in the sense of being based on events
that really occurred is not improbable. The Peter described here is the Peter of
the Gospels—brave, loving, but in critical moments irresolute. The persuasions of
friends may have induced him to seek safety in flight, but no sooner is he on his
way than his conscience reproves him. He who had just written to the persecuted
disciples in Asia ‘if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed; but
let him glorify God on this behalf,'1 Pet. iv. 16; also see ii. 19-21,
iii. 14-18. must have felt that he was again denying
his Master, and, as in the High Priest's palace, once more did the Lord look upon
Peter. The vision came to him now, as in former days the vision on the roof of the
tanner's house at Joppa, as perhaps overwrought with fatigue he had flung himself
on the ground to rest. There is a passage in St. John's Gospel which seems to me
to support the historicity of the Quo Vadis? tradition.If, on the other hand, the Quo Vadis? story were a pure invention of a later
age, then the original romancer must have based it on the two passages St. John,
xiii. 36, 37, and Hebrews, vi. 6, taken with St. John, xxi. 15-23. It was after the Supper
on the last night of the Lord's earthly life, when (according to St. John) ‘Simon
Peter said unto Him, Lord,
whither goest Thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst
not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards. Peter saith unto Him, Lord,
why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake.' Two questions
at once come into the mind: (1) Was the echo of those words haunting Peter's memory
when he saw the vision? (2) Did his knowledge of the cause of Peter's voluntary
return to death move the Fourth Evangelist to insert those verses in his narrative? Possibly both should be answered in the affirmative.
Before leaving the subject of the Quo Vadis? tradition I should like to point
out that the remarkable language of Hebrews vi. 6, if it were possible to regard
it as suggested by the words of the Lord to Peter, I am coming to Rome to be crucified
again, acquires a living force and becomes full of meaning as a reference to an
event fresh in the minds of the readers. The writer of Hebrews was acquainted with
1st Peter, and if, as I venture for the moment to assume, this Epistle was addressed
to the Jewish Christians in Rome about a year or a year and a half after St. Peter's
death then the solemn words in which those who in times of persecution shall fall
away were warned that it was impossible to renew them again to repentance—‘seeing
that (by such an act of apostasy) they crucify the Son of God afresh and put him
to an open shame'—recalling, as they did, the very words which had caused Peter
to turn back and welcome martyrdom, would strike home to the hearts and consciences
of any waverers that heard them. For the Quo Vadis? story, if in any sense historical,
must have been widely known from the first.
Having made this reference to the Epistle to the Hebrews let us now turn to the
consideration of the problems that it presents.
The internal evidence tells us that this epistle was sent to a Church containing
a considerable body of Jewish Christians, who though they spoke Greek and used the
LXX. version, were accustomed to style themselves ‘Hebrews.' They had been exposed
to a severe persecution, ‘having
endured a great conflict of sufferings, being made a gazing-stock
both by reproaches and afflictions'—a conflict in which certain persons had apostatised.Heb. x. 32, 33, comp. vi. 6, x. 39, 15-25.
Further it would appear that persecution had not ceased, but that some were still
in bonds.Heb. xiii. 3. Among those who had suffered were leaders, who had set an example to
be followed.Heb. xiii. 7. The place of martyrdom is plainly indicated as lying outside the city
walls.Heb. xiii. 12, 13. Those who would be the readers of the Epistle had not yet themselves resisted
unto blood, but they needed encouragement to persevere, and as a deterrent to the
weak-kneed and faint-hearted the terrible judgments of God against apostasy are
painted in the sternest colours.Heb. xii., the whole chapter. Now all this applies to the Judaeo-Christian community
of Rome in the year 66 A.D.
That there was such a body of Judaeo-Christians at Rome and that the writer of
this Epistle should address them as Hebrews, there is a sufficiency of evidence,
apart from that furnished by the document itself. In the Epistle to the Philippians,
which was written at Rome some four years before the Epistle to the Hebrews, St.
Paul makes mention of a party among the Christians there, who ‘preach Christ of
envy and strife, of contention and not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to
my bonds.' And in this same epistle he warns the Philippians ‘Beware of dogs, beware
of the concision, for we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit,'
and then proceeds ‘if any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust
in the flesh, I more. Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, an Hebrew
of the Hebrews.' We may gather from this that the party who tried to add affliction
to the Apostle's bonds ‘of envy, strife, and contention,' were the party that held
that circumcision was binding on Christians, and who styled themselves Hebrews.Phil. i. 13, 14, iii. 2-5. The very words St. Paul uses of these opponents
at Rome, διὰ φθόνον καὶ ἔριν, are the words used by Clement of the causes which
led to St. Peter's death, διὰ ζῆλος καὶ φθόνον, and to St. Paul's
διὰ ζῆλος καὶ ἔριν.
Of this extreme Jewish party, who
were Jews first and Christians afterwards, some under the stress of
persecution seem to have apostatised, probably by reverting to Judaism and seeking
protection under its privilege. Moreover in an extant inscription one of the Jewish
congregations at Rome is described as the synagogue of the Hebrews.Corp. Inscr. Graec. 9909, see Garrucci's Cimitero degli antichi Ebrei, p. 39.
This synagogue doubtless belonged to a small isolated settlement of Jews, which
had only one place of worship; it therefore had no distinctive name, but was known
simply as the synagogue of the Hebrews. And Professor
Lanciani writes ‘the whole district outside the Porta Portese has retained its
connexion with the Ghetto of Ancient Rome up to our own days, being called Ortaccio
degli Ebrei, just as in bygone times it bore the name of Campus Iudaeorum or
Contrata Hebreorum.Lanciani, New Tales of Old Rome, p. 248. The love of the Hellenist Jews of the
Dispersion, living as strangers and sojourners in a foreign land, for the name of
Hebrews was probably due to the desire to emphasise the fact that they were the
heirs of the promises made to Abraham who ‘by faith sojourned in the land of promise
as a stranger' (Heb. xi. 9). Corp. Inscr. Graec. 9922 is a striking proof that the
Roman Jews called themselves ‘Hebrews': Ἀλῦπις Τιβεριεὺς καὶ οἱ αὐτοῦ,
Ἰοῦστος καὶ Ἀλῦπις, Ἐβρẽοι, μετὰ
τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῶν ὧδε κῖντε.
The external evidence that the Epistle to the Hebrews was addressed to Roman
Christians is circumstantially strong and convincing. It was so familiar to Clement
of Rome that in his own epistle to the Church of Corinth he incorporates its phrases
and its ideas freely, but without mentioning the writer's name. This proves that
Hebrews was well known in Rome during the last half of the first century and that
it had for Clement an attraction which may reasonably be attributed to an acquaintance
with and respect for the author. The extent of Clement's indebtedness may be gathered
from the fact that at a later time the actual authorship of Hebrews, despite the
great dissimilarity of style, was ascribed at him.Origen, Hom. in Hebr. quoted by Eus. Hist. Eccl. vi. 25; Philastrius, de Haeres.
89; Jerome, de Viris Illustribus, 15. Others suggest that Clement was the translator
into Greek of an Epistle of Paul written in Hebrew. Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 37. Euthalius,
Migne, P.G. lxxv. 776. Again the frequency with which
the anchor appears as the emblem of Christian hope, in the most ancient inscriptions
found in the Catacombs,
may be regarded as a testimony to a very early and wide-spread knowledge
of the Epistle to the Hebrews among Roman Christians.Marucchi, Arch. Chrét. ii. 173. Into the whole question of
patristic evidence of a later date I cannot enter here, space forbids it, but it
may be stated broadly that in the middle of the second century Hebrews was accepted
at Alexandria by Pantaenus and his school as an epistle of St. Paul's; that the
great Alexandrian Fathers, Clement and Origen, both quote Hebrews frequently as
St. Paul's, though Clement expressed doubts whether it was actually written by St.
Paul, and Origen goes further and declares that the name of the writer was absolutely
unknown. The same indecision and indefiniteness of opinion appear in Eusebius'
‘Ecclesiastical History' in a number of passages, and he may be taken as reflecting
the general attitude of the Alexandrian and Eastern Churches at the beginning of
the fourth century.Eus. Hist. Eccl. vi. 14, 25, 41. Origen believed the thoughts to be those of
St. Paul, the actual language and argument those of a disciple. As to the authorship
however he declares—τίς δὲ ὁγράψας τὴν ἐπιστολὴν
τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς θεὸς οἶδεν. Later the opinion at Alexandria that Paul himself was the author became dominant and at
last accepted by all. Very different was the attitude of the Roman or Western Church
during the same period. There never seems to have been the smallest doubt in Rome
and the West at any time that the epistle was not Paul's. Not until the middle of
the fourth century does any Western writer cite any passage from Hebrews as Pauline.
Indeed, in the course of the second century a distinct line of division between
canonical and uncanonical writings began to be drawn, and there seems to have been
no hesitation in the Western Church in placing the Epistle to the Hebrews among
the uncanonical. Irenaeus in all his works never appears to have cited the epistle,
though in his ‘Treatise against Heresies' many passages would have been effective.
He may be regarded as a representative man of the last quarter of the second century.
Tertullian and Hippolytus, the one at the beginning, the other in the second quarter
of the third century, both deny the Pauline authorship.
Later still in that century neither Novatian at Rome nor Cyprian at
Carthage, in their controversy about ‘the Lapsed,' ever brings forward the passage
from Hebrews vi. 2-6 which bears directly upon it, nor do they make any quotations
from this epistle in their writings. This affords conclusive evidence that Rome
and the West, unlike Alexandria and the East, were not in two minds about this
epistle: it was not Paul's and therefore not authoritative. But there is evidence
to show that their knowledge was not merely negative. They were sure it was not
Paul's because they were acquainted with the name of the actual writer.
Tertullian in his treatise ‘De Pudicitia' makes the following statement:Tertullian, De Pudicitia, 20: ‘Volo tamen ex redundantia alicuius
etiam comitis apostolorum testimonium superinducere, idoneum confirmandi
de proximo iure disciplinam magistrorum. Extat enim et Barnabae
titulus ad Hebraeos, adeo satis auctoritatis viri, utquem Paulus iuxta se
constituerit in abstinentiae tenore (1 Cor. ix. 6). Et utique receptior
apud ecclesias epistola Barmabae illo apocrypho pastore moechorum.'
Another and a much later witness, that in the Western Church the authorship of
the Epistle to the Hebrews was assigned to Barnabas, is to be found in the Index
Claromontanus, D. 2, a MS. of the sixth century. In the stichometrical
catalogue of the books of the Old and New Testaments at the end of this codex
there is no mention of the Epistle to the Hebrews. After Jude, however, and
before the Apocalypse comes ‘the epistle of Barnabas,' the length of which is
set down as 850 stichoi or lines, the Apocalypse as 1200. This corresponds to the length of the Epistle
to the Hebrews and not to that of the epistle of the pseudo-Barnabas, which the
stichometry of Nicephorus, 850 A.D., shows to be practically the same as the Apocalypse,
i.e. pseudo-Barnabas, 1360 stichoi; Apocalypse, 1400. The position of the epistle
in the Codex Claromontanus and the length assigned are well-nigh positive proof
that the Epistle of Barnabas here signifies the Epistle to the Hebrews.
‘for there is extant [a testimony] of Barnabas with the title “To the Hebrews”—a man
moreover sufficiently accredited, as one whom Paul had placed next to himself
in the observance of abstinence. . . . And at any rate the Epistle of Barnabas is
more received among the Churches than that apocryphal “Shepherd” of adulterers.'
Then, after quoting the passage at the opening of the sixth Chapter of Hebrews,
Tertullian adds ‘He who learnt this from Apostles, and taught it with Apostles,
never knew of any second repentance promised to the adulterer and
fornicator.' Now here it will be noticed that the great African Father
is not attempting to reckon the Epistle to the Hebrews as authoritative, or to place
it among the Apostolical Scriptures; he quotes the epistle as the work of a man
whose credentials are simply that he was a companion and fellow-worker with Apostles.
But on the question of authorship there is not a sign that he was making an assertion
about which there was any doubt. He assumes that his readers were aware of it and
would admit it. In fact as he is inveighing, as a Montanist, against what he regarded
as ‘the lax discipline of the Church of Rome,' he would not be likely to have quoted
this passage in support of his argument as written by Barnabas, unless he knew that
his opponents would not impugn his assertion. It is clear then from this that the
tradition of the Barnabas authorship was held without dispute not only in Provincial
Africa but in the Church of Rome itself in the time of Tertullian. But if so, does
not the existence of such an accepted tradition in a Church where no counter-tradition
existed, except that the author of Hebrews was not St. Paul, virtually postulate
its truth?
Now it is needless for me to dilate on the fact here that Barnabas was peculiarly
qualified to be the writer of such a hortatory homily or dissertation as the Epistle
to the Hebrews. He was at once a Cypriote Jew, brought up in close contact with
Alexandrian influences and modes of thought, and a Levite by descent, who had relatives
living at Jerusalem. The writer himself styles his epistle a ‘Word of
Exhortation'—λόγος παρακλήσεως—a technical expression for those expositions or interpretations
of Scripture which it was customary to deliver in the synagogues, and Barnabas'
very name in its Greek form, υἱὸς παρακλήσεως, signifies a man gifted with powers
of such exhortation. The addresses of St. Stephen to the Sanhedrin or of St. Paul
at Antioch are specimens of such hortatory expositions of Scripture, and it has
been noted how closely the Epistle to the Hebrews follows in many places the lines
of St. Stephen's speech. The influence of St. Stephen is particularly observable
in the eleventh chapter. The whole character of this Epistle is moreover
exactly in accordance with what we should expect from the man who in the Acts of
the Apostles is brought before us as the mediator between the two schools of Judaistic
and Pauline conceptions of Christianity. His epistle, possibly written at Paul's
wish and with his full approval, was sent to Rome as an eirenicon, with the aim
of drawing nearer together the Hebrews and the Gentiles—the party of the circumcision
and those converts who were followers of St. Paul's doctrines. His object is to
show that Christianity is the historical outcome of Judaism, and that, so far from
being in any way opposed, the Law, the Temple, and all the characteristic Jewish
rites and ceremonies were but types and shadows of the more perfect dispensation
that was to come; and that they all found their spiritual fulfilment in Christ.
It only remains to point out that the personal references in the epistle support
the hypothesis of a Barnabas author-ship. The tone of authority is marked,Renan, L'Antéchrist, xvi–xvii: ‘I1 (l'auteur) n'en tenait pas moins
un rang élevé dans l'Eglise; il parle avec autorité; il est très-respecté des frètres auxquels
il écit; Timothée paraît lui être subordonné. Le seul fait d'adresser une épitre
à une grande Eglise indique un homme important, un des personnages qui figurent
dans 1'histoire apostolique et dont le nom est célèbre . . . L'attribution à Barnabé
est la plus vraisemblable.' and
has led some commentators on this ground to hold that, even if St. Paul was not
the actual writer, the epistle was sent to its destination in his name. But there
was one man who could write with an authority second only to that of the chief Apostles,
Barnabas, and, if the destination of the epistle were Rome, from what has already
been said of the connexion of Barnabas with the Roman ChurchSupra, pp. 80–2. it is certain that
after St. Peter's death the words of no other leader would carry so much weight
with the Judaeo-Christians there as his. From one passage we gather that the writer
had not been a personal hearer of the Lord, and from the Acts it would appear that
Barnabas did not become a Christian until some short time after the Great Day of
Pentecost.2 Acts, iv. 36–7. Lastly, the writer,
who had himself been in bonds, sends the news that Timothy had been
released,Heb. x. 32, xiii. 23. and that he was hoping that he would shortly be able to pay a visit to
his readers with Timothy as his companion. But according to the First Epistle to
Timothy, that disciple had at Ephesus ‘confessed a good confession before many
witnesses'1 Tim. vi. 12 and i. 3. ; this city, then, it may be safely inferred, had been the scene of
Timothy's imprisonment and release. But it will be remembered that in the last
lecture some reasons were given for believing that Barnabas and Timothy were the
joint bearers from Rome of the Epistle to the Philippians, and that from Philippi
they went on to Asia Minor.Supra, p. 121. If then Barnabas were the author of Hebrews, nothing
would be more natural than that they should be in 66 A.D. the one in Ephesus, the
other in some neighbouring town, and that Barnabas should be planning in company
with Timothy to journey once again to Rome. The words ‘they of Italy salute you' are a fitting greeting, if sent to Rome by a man well known to the Christian congregations
in Italy, and to whom Italian Christians sojourning in the province of Asia would
resort as a proved friend and teacher: conditions which, unless tradition be altogether
untrustworthy, apply pre-eminently to Barnabas and to no one else,
At the close of the year 66 A.D. or the beginning of 67 A.D. we find St. Paul
again at Rome. In the interval that had elapsed since his release in the year 62
A.D., he seems first to have carried out his intention of making a missionary journey
to Spain and then to have revisited the scenes of his former labours in Asia Minor
and Greece. Clement in his Epistle to the Corinthians speaks of his having reached ‘the farthest bounds of the West,'Clement, 1 Cor. v.: ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως ἐλθών. In the year 66 A.D., according
to Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana being banished from Rome ‘turned westwards
to the land which they say is bounded by the Pillars. He intended to see Gades and
the tides of the ocean, for he heard some report of the philosophy of the men in
those parts and their proficiency in religion.' In 68 or 69 A.D. he was once more
in Greece. See Phillimore's Philostratus, ii. 48, 63 ff. and the Muratorian
fragment on the Canon speaks of ‘the departure of Paul from the city
on his journey to Spain.'‘Profectione Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniā proficiscentis.' The Muratorian fragment
is generally supposed to be of the age of Hippolytus, if not his work. Lightfoot
(Apostolic Fathers, part i. vol. ii. 405 ff) places its date towards the close of
the second century. Also Zahn and Harnack. The authorities for his later travels are the Pastoral
Epistles. With those travels, or with the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles
as a whole, these lectures have no necessary concern. It is enough that the autobiographical
sections of the Second Epistle to Timothy should be recognised as derived from a
genuine Pauline source, and this recognition is generally conceded even by some
who most strenuously deny that the entire epistle as we possess it was written by
Paul,Salmon (Int. to N.T. p. 511) writes: ‘As for the general Pauline character
of these letters there cannot be a better witness than Renan, who, while continuing
to assert them not to be genuine, every now and then seems staggered by the proofs
of authenticity that strike him. He says in one place “Some passages of these letters
are so beautiful that we cannot help asking if the forger had not in his hands some
authentic notes of Paul which he has incorporated in his apocryphal composition'
(L'Eglise Chrétienne, p. 95).' Of those who reject the Epistle (2 Tim.) Hausrath,
Pfleiderer and Ewald recognise the sections i. 15-18, iv. 9-22
as fragments of a genuine Pauline letter. Salmon, p. 303. for it is these sections only which deal with the second imprisonment of
the Apostle in Rome. At the same time I should like at this point to record my complete
agreement with the conclusion of Sir William Ramsay that ‘it is far more difficult
to frame any rational theory how these letters came into existence, if they are
not the work of Paul, than it is to understand them as composed by him, and as completing
our conception of his character'; and again, ‘regarded in the proper perspective,
they [the Pastorals] are historically perhaps the most illuminative of all the
Pauline epistles; and this is the best and the one sufficient proof that they are
authentic compositions.'Ramsay, ‘Hist. Commentary on 1st Epist. to Timothy,' Expositor, Ser. vii.
7, June 1909, p. 488, and Ser. vii. 8, p. 1. Prof. Vernon Bartlett (Expositor, Ser.
viii. 25, Jan. 1913, p. 29) writes: ‘When one approaches these Epistles fresh
front the few pages on them in Hort's Lectures on Judaistic Christianity, and in
The Christian Ecclesia, and from Sir W. M. Ramsay's recent “Historical Commentary
on the Epistles to Timothy” in the Expositor, one feels the subject has been lifted
to a new level of reality and that much criticism between Baur and Jülicher is simply
out of date and irrelevant.'
In the Second Epistle to Timothy we find Paul at Rome in prison awaiting inevitable
death in the calm consciousness of having fought the good fight and finished his
course.2 Tim. iv. 6-8. Of what befell him on his arrival at Rome we know nothing. But his previous
captivity of two years and trial would make him well known as a Christian leader,
and the swarms of informersHenderson's Principate of Nero, p. 392. would lose no time in denouncing him to the authorities
as suspect. Possibly he may have been arrested under the edict of 66 A.D. forbidding
philosophers to reside in Rome, which had sent Apollonius into banishment. Clement
tells us he was brought ‘before the governors,'Clement, 1 Cor. v.: μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων. which, in the absence of Nero
in Greece accompanied by Tigellinus, may be taken to mean the freedman Helius, to
whom the government had been entrusted, and Nymphidius Sabinus, the Pretorian Prefect.Dion Cassius, lxiii. 12: οὕτω μὲν δὴ τότε ἡ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχὴ δύο αὐτοκράτορσιν
ἅμα ἐδούλευσε, Νέρωνι καὶ Ἡλίῳ· οὐδὲ ἔχω εἰπεῖν ὁπότερος αὐτῶν χείρων ἦν.
In any case, whatever the original cause of his arrest, it was as a malefactor (κακοῦργος)
that he was—at the time he was writing—suffering hardship even unto bonds; in other
words, he was being charged with the crimes imputed to those who bore the name of
Christian.Comp. 1 Pet. ii. 12, iii. 16, iv. 13, 16, 19. Already he had been once before the tribunal, and bitterly does he complain
that he could find no one to stand by his side and aid him in his defence, but by
God's help he had been able fully to proclaim his message so that all the Gentiles
might hear, and he had for the time been delivered ‘from the mouth of the lion'2 Tim. iv. 17: Helius—probably.
and escaped immediate condemnation. But he was still in prison, his enemies
were busy, and he does not anticipate any issue but death. In his captivity, however,
he is feeling lonely and deserted. Of his personal friends and disciples some
like Demas had openly forsaken him, others were engaged on various
missions, Prisca and Aquila probably in consequence of the persecution had left
Rome and were once more at Ephesus. Only the faithful Luke was with him.2 Tim. iv. 10-13, 19, 20. For some
reason or other the Apostle appears in these last months of his life to have been
under a cloud. Sadly he recalls to Timothy—‘this thou knowest, that all that are
in Asia turned away from me,'2 Tim. i. 15. and the whole tone of the Epistle shows that the
Roman Christians as a body were, if not unfriendly, at least unsympathetic. There
were of course exceptions, such as Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia, who send
their salutations by him to Timothy, and well-authenticated tradition points to
two of these, Pudens and Linus, as being among the foremost leaders of the Roman
Church at the close of the seventh decade of our era.2 Tim. iv. 21. Linus is no doubt the man who appears in the episcopal lists
as the first bishop of Rome after Peter. Pudens was a man of senatorial rank, who
according to tradition played a considerable part in the early history of the Church
in Rome. See Appendix, Note C. The whole soul of Paul however
is filled with a longing desire to see once more his own beloved son Timothy before
the end, and twice does he earnestly in the course of the concluding verses of
this most touching and noble letter beseech him—‘do thy diligence to come shortly
unto me'—‘do thy diligence to come to me before winter.'2 Tim. iv. 9, 21. And then the veil
falls. Whether Timothy arrived in time to comfort the Apostle in the final hours
of his life we shall never know. We trust it was so. All tradition says that St.
Paul, as became his status as a Roman citizen, suffered martyrdom by decapitation,
being led out of the city to the third milestone upon the Ostian Road, at the spot
known as Aquae Salviae. The site of his tomb is now covered by the basilica which
bears his name.See Appendix, Note E, The Tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul.
A document now claims our attention which has a closer relation to Rome and throws
more light upon the feelings with which first-century Christianity regarded the World-
Empire of the Caesars than any other book of the New Testament. I
mean the apocalypse of St. John. The Apocalypse is full of references to historical
events of which the author had quite recently been himself an eyewitness at Rome,
or which were fresh in the memories of the Roman Christians with whom he had been
associating, and it can be dated with great exactitude from internal evidence as
having been written at the beginning of the year 70 A.D.
The witness of the contents of the book itself, as will be shown, amply
justifies such an assertion. There is how-ever a certain amount of external
evidence, which has had much more weight than it deserves, apparently supporting
a later date. I think it best to deal with this first, with the object of
tracing to its source the error on which I believe it rests. The witness of
Irenaeus, 180 A.D., is no doubt important, especially on the
question of the authorship of the Apocalypse, for he had himself in Asia been instructed
by Polycarp, who was a personal disciple of St. John. Now Irenaeus several times
states that John the disciple of the Lord, whom he identifies with the author of
the fourth Gospel, was the writer.For the question of the identity of John the Apostle the son of Zebedee, John
the disciple of the Lord, who reclined on His Breast at Supper, John the author
of the Epistles and the Fourth Gospel, and John the Presbyter—see the convincing
arguments of Dom John Chapman, O.S.B., in his John the Presbyter and the Fourth
Gospel: Clarendon Press, 1911. The vexed question of this identity only concerns
us now in as far as it throws light on the passage of Irenaeus bearing upon the
date, which I proceed to quote. It is commonly rendered as follows: ‘We are not
bold enough to speak confidently of the name of Antichrist. For if it were necessary
that his name should be declared clearly at the present time, it would have been
announced by him who saw the revelation. For it was seen no such long time ago,
but almost in our generation toward the end of the reign of Domitian.' But surely
this rendering is wrong. It should be ‘for he [St. John the writer] was seen . . . almost
in our generation toward the
end of the reign of Domitian.'Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. v. 30. 1–3; Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 18 and v. 8:
τοὔνομα αὐτοῦ δἰ ἐκείνου ἂν ἐρρέθη, τοῦ καὶ τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν ἑωρακότος· οὐδὲ γὰρ
πρὸ πολλοῦ χρόνου ἑωράθη, ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας γενεᾶς, πρὸς τῷ τέλειτῆς
Δομετιανοῦ ἀρχῆς. That John is the subject before ἑωράθη seems to follow necessarily
from the words which precede in the same passage—μαρτυρούντων
αὐτῶν ἐκείνων τῶν κατ᾽ ὔψιν Ἰωάννην ἑωρακότων. . . . It is of the Seer and his ability
to declare the name of Antichrist that Irenaeus is speaking. The misunderstanding
about the meaning of the passage is largely due to Eusebius, who after a reference
to Domitian's persecution proceeds ‘in this [persecution] report affirms that the
Apostle and Evangelist John, who was still living, in consequence of his testimony
to the divine word was condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos,' and then he
quotes Irenaeus in support of his statement. Now Eusebius was very familiar with
the works of Origen, and more particularly his commentaries, and it seems to me
that in making this statement he had in his mind the following comment by Origen
upon St. Matthew xx. 22: ‘And the sons of Zebedee were baptised with the baptism,
since Herod killed James the [brother] of John with the sword, while the king of
the Romans, as tradition teaches, condemned John bearing testimony through the word
of truth unto the island Patmos. And John speaks of the things concerning his testimony,
not saying who condemned him . . . and he seems to have beheld the Apocalypse in
the island.'ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαίων βασιλείς, ὡς ἡ παράδοσις
διδάσκει, κατεδίκασε τὸν Ἰωάννην
μαρτυροῦντα διὰ τὸν τῆς ἀληθείας λόγον εἰς Πάτμον τὴν νῆσον·
διδάσκει δὲ τὰ περὶ τοῦ μαρτυρίου αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννης,
μὴ λέγων τίς αὐτὸν κατεδίκασε. Origen does not give the name of the Roman king, since, as he says,
John does not tell us who condemned him. He certainly does not say that the Roman
king was Domitian, indeed he is but repeating what Irenaeus had said before, who
after discussing the meaning of ‘the number of the Beast' declares himself in
doubt, ‘for if it were necessary that his name should be declared clearly at the
present time, it would have been announced by him who saw the vision.' But the enigma,
which Irenaeus and Origen both left unsolved, is no longer sealed to us. In his
‘Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero' Mr. Henderson writes ‘The
number of the Beast is now fairly generally admitted to be' Nero Caesar.Henderson, Life of Nero, p. 440. See infra, p. 173. Eusebius,
again, after speaking of Trajan succeeding Nerva in the Empire writes: ‘About
this time also, John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, at once Apostle and Evangelist,
still surviving in Asia, supervised the Churches there, having returned from his
banishment to the island after the death of Domitian.' He then refers to Clement
of Alexandria and Irenaeus as his authorities. With Irenaeus we have already dealt.
The words of Clement are: ‘For when the tyrant was dead he (John) departed from
the island of Patmos to Ephesus; he also, when called upon, went to the neighbouring
districts of the Gentiles, in some appointing bishops, in some organising entire
Churches.'Eus. Hist. Eccl. 23. But Clement does not say ‘the tyrant' was Domitian, the name might
with even greater propriety be applied to Nero.
The evidence of Victorinus and of Jerome next calls for notice. Victorinus, who
suffered martyrdom in 303 A.D., is a pre-Eusebian witness to the tradition. In his
commentary on the Apocalypse, which is the earliest extant, he writes ‘When John
saw these things, he was in the island Patmos, condemned to the mines by Domitian
Caesar. There it was therefore that he saw the Apocalypse; and when already the
Elder had thought that he through his passion would receive acceptance, Domitian
having been slain all his sentences were quashed and John, freed from the mines,
then afterwards published this same Apocalypse, which he had received from God.'Migne, P.L. v. 1665.
Jerome is still more explicit: ‘In his fourteenth year when Domitian was stirring
up the second persecution after Nero, John having been banished into the island
Patmos wrote the Apocalypse . . . but when Domitian had been slain and his acts
on account of their excessive cruelty repealed by the Senate in the reign of Nerva
he returned to Ephesus.'De Viris Illust. 9.
Now the first comment I make on all these passages is, that one and all of these
early Christian writers that I have quoted had no doubt that the author of the Apocalypse
was John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee; rightly or wrongly that was their belief,
yet he is at the close of Domitian's reign condemned to exile in a lonely island
as a criminal (to work in the mines according to Victorinus), and after his release
by Nerva he returns to Ephesus, and as Clement of Alexandria (quoted by Eusebius)
tells us—‘he also when called upon went to the neighbouring districts of the Gentiles,
in some appointing bishops, in others organising Churches &c. . . .' But John, son
of Zebedee, must in the year 96 A.D. have been well-nigh a centenarian; is it seriously
contended that he at such an age could have survived the hardships of such an exile,
even without the mines, or that he would have been able physically, had he survived,
to have taken in hand in the reign of Nerva the organisation over a large area of
the Churches in Asia and the neighbouring districts? It is on the face of it absurd.
The evidence for this late date is moreover, when critically examined, decidedly
weak. It is extremely doubtful whether any of the three earliest authorities which
refer to the exile at Patmos support it. Eusebius, as we have seen, read his own
interpretation of the words of Irenaeus into the passages from Origen and Clement,
neither of whom here names Domitian. Of the other two witnesses, however, Victorinus
certainly did not write under the influence of Eusebius, and the similarity of his
version of the tradition to that of Jerome seems to point to their common derivation
from some documentary source, which connected the condemnation to Patmos and the
subsequent release with the names of Domitian and Nerva. But, as I shall now proceed
to show, a condemnation by Domitian and a release by Nerva is not merely not inconsistent
with but is strongly confirmatory of the fact, attested so strongly by the internal
evidence of the book, that the Apocalypse was written in the early part of the year
70 A.D.
Let us examine that portion of the internal evidence which chiefly concerns us
in this lecture, the portion which reflects the events of contemporary history in
the city of Rome.
In the seventeenth chapter of the Revelation ‘the great city which reigneth
over the kings of the earth' is brought before us under the likeness of a woman
seated un a scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads, which are explained to be seven
hills, and on her forehead is written her name of Mystery—Babylon the Great, the
Mother of Harlots and the Abominations of the Earth. On this woman drunken with
the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of JesusRev. xvii. 3-7, 9. judgment is
pronounced. Again in the following chapter the Seer repeats this last indictment: ‘And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were
slain upon the earth.'Rev. xviii. 24. Compare vi. 9-11, 14,
xiii. 15, xvi. 5-7. There are other passages of similar import, but these two
are sufficient to make it clear that the writer is referring to the Neronian persecution
with its multitude of victims, and not to that of Domitian, which was not a general
persecution at all, but a series of isolated acts directed chiefly against a few
influential persons, including members of his own family.
Again both in chapter xiv. 8, and chapter xviii. 2, an angel is represented as
crying with a mighty voice ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great,' and the lurid
picture which is given of that fall is no mere effort of ecstatic imagination, it
is the picture of a real event, fresh in the memory. As we read of the kings of
the earth and the merchants of the earth standing afar off and weeping and lamenting
for her, as they see the smoke of her burning, and crying out ‘Alas, alas that
great city Babylon, that mighty city; for in one hour is thy judgment come,' and
as we read again—‘of the winepress of the wrath of God being trodden without the
city and blood came out of the winepress even to the horses' bridles'—there is
but one occasion in the whole
of the first century to which such a description could be applied: the writer had seen it with his own eyes—the storming and burning of the Capitol
by the foreign mercenaries of Vitellius, and the subsequent capture and sacking
of the city by the infuriated Flavian army under Mucianus and Antonius Primus on
December 19 to 21, 69 A.D. At no other time, certainly not in the end of Domitian's
reign, was it possible to speak of Rome as fallen, or for the Seer to have raised
his triumphant cry ‘Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her' (Rev. xviii. 20).
The following passages from the ‘Histories' of Tacitus, if read side by side
with the passages telling of the fall of Babylon the Great in the Apocalypse, will
carry conviction that both writers are describing one and the same unique event.
Of the burning of the Capitol Tacitus writes ‘The fire extended itself to the porticoes
adjoining the temples; soon the eagles that supported the cupola caught fire, and
as the timber was old they fed the flame. Thus the Capitol . . . was burned to the
ground. . . . From the foundation of the city to that hour the Roman republic had
felt no calamity so deplorable, so shocking as that.' And again of the capture of
the city by the Flavian troops: ‘The city exhibited one entire scene of ferocity
and abomination. . . . Rivers of blood and heaps of bodies at the same time; and
by the side of them harlots, and women that differed not from harlots—all that unbridled
passion can suggest in the wantonness of peace—all the enormities that are committed
when a city is sacked by its relentless foes—so that you could positively suppose
that Rome was at one and the same time frantic with rage and dissolved in sensuality. . . .
lamentation was heard from every quarter, and Rome was filled with cries of
despair and the horrors of a city taken by storm.'Tac. Hist. iii. 72, 83, iv. 1. Rev. xiv. 8, 17-20, xvii. 16, xviii. passim. Well might they who stood afar
off as they saw the smoke of her burning and the
terror of her torment exclaim ‘Alas, alas that great city Babylon,
that mighty city; for in one hour is thy judgment come.'Rev. xviii. 10. Even the description—‘mother
of harlots and of the abominations of the earth'—what a realistic intensity
and force it gains, as the utterance of one who had seen with his own eyes the scenes
in the streets of Rome on those terrible December days.
In the course of eighteen months four emperors had perished and Italy had been
the scene of continuous and savage civil war. In consequence of the events just
described Vespasian became emperor, but at the opening of the year 70 A.D. both
he and his elder son Titus were abroad. Vespasian in Egypt, Titus in Judaea. Domitian
was the sole representative of his family in Rome, and he was at once presented
to the people by the victorious Flavian general, Mucianus, was saluted as Caesar,
and made praetor. His father and brother were appointed consuls, but as they were
absent, Domitian was invested with full consular authority—imperio consulari.
For six months he in conjunction with Mucianus acted as regent, administered public
affairs, restored order and distributed offices. His name, says Tacitus,Tac. Hist. iv. 3, 44–47, 51, 68; Josephus, Bell. Iud. iv. 11. 4. was placed
at the head of all despatches and edicts. Though but a boy of eighteen his head
became filled with ambitious ideas, and he began, says Suetonius,Suetonius, Domitian, 1. to use his power
in so arbitrary a manner as to give proof of what he was to become later. To such
an extent was this the case that Dion CassiusDion Cassius, lxv. 22, lxvi. 1–3. tells us that Vespasian wrote to
him from Alexandria ‘I am much obliged to you, my son, for letting me still be
emperor, and for not having as yet deposed me.'
Such incendiary language as we find in the Apocalypse, if used publicly, would
at such a time soon bring down upon the offenders the repressive arm of those charged
with the maintenance of order in the capital after the
terrible experiences of the year 69 A.D. Tradition says that John
narrowly escaped martyrdomTertullian (Praescrip. 36), after speaking of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul,
relates that John was cast into burning oil but escaped unhurt. Jerome in his commentary
on Matt. xx. 23 refers to the same tradition. Whatever the grounds of the tradition,
there can be no question that the writer of the Apocalypse speaks of himself ‘as
a partaker in the tribulation.' ; however this may be, there is a high probability
that his deportation to Patmos took place very early in the year 70 A.D. (in January
or February) through a sentence passed in Domitian's name. In the month of June
of that year Domitian and Mucianus left Rome to take part in a campaign in Gaul,
and a little later Vespasian arrived in Rome and at once assumed the direction of
affairs.Gsell, Règne de 1'Enapéreur Domilien, pp. 13–14. Suetonius informs us that from the beginning he was anxious to conduct
himself with great moderation and clemency.Suetonius, Vespasian, 8, 10. One of his first cares was to take
in hand the administration of justice, which had been sadly interrupted by the civil
wars, and to examine into the accumulation of law-suits which had arisen, and to
provide for the restitution of what had been seized by violence in the disorders
of the time. Now Vespasian associated Titus with himself in the government in the
course of the year 71 A.D. and was very jealous during the whole of his reign of
allowing authority to be vested in any but members of his own family. But Vespasian
took as his colleague in the consulship in 71 A.D. M. Cocceius Nerva. Now Nerva—the
future emperor—was the representative of a family distinguished for three generations
as jurists, and no doubt his appointment at this particular time was due to Vespasian's
desire to have a skilled lawyer at his side for dealing with the mass of sentences
of exile and of confiscation which were the legacy of the successive revolutions.
Nerva held office during the first nundinum of 71 A.D., and it is permissible to
believe that in accordance with tradition one of the sentences quashed by him was
that which sent John to Patmos. If by an order of Nerva
he were now released, his exile would have lasted almost exactly one year.Gsell, 17–18. C.I.L. vi. 1984. In the ten years from 70 to 79, Vespasian filled
the office of [ordinary] consul nine times, Titus seven times, Domitian once. Domitian
was consul suffectus five times during the same period. In 80 Titus and Domitian
were consuls. For complete list see Bouche-Leclerc, Institutions Rornaines, p. 603.
For Nerva and his father and grandfather, see Profumo, Le fonte ed i tempi dello
Incendio Neroniano, p. 511 ff. Pauly, Real-Encyclopädie, under Cocceius.
The external evidence, which was supposed to be adverse to the acceptance of
the early date for the writing of the Apocalypse, having thus been transformed into
an argument in its favour, we will now proceed by a further examination of certain
crucial passages of the book to make assurance on this matter doubly sure.
The opening verses of chapter xi. imply that the Temple of Jerusalem was still
standing, and that there was no expectation of the destruction of the Shrine itself.
But the outer court was to be given to the nations, who for a period represented
by 42 months would trample it under foot.Rev. xi. 1, 2. See Daniel, vii. 25, three and a half years or 42 months. It
is the time of the duration of the Fourth Kingdom or Roman Empire. This statement must have been made at
the time when the legions of Titus were already closing round Jerusalem and its
doom was sealed, but before it was known that the desperate character of the defence
would carry with it the entire destruction of the city and its world-famous sanctuary.
That Jerusalem was not destroyed when the words (xi. 8) were written—‘their dead
bodies lie in the street of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and
Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified'—is evident. In 95 A.D. the city was
in ruins.
The central theme of the Apocalypse is the struggle between Christ and Antichrist,
between Christianity and the Imperial World-Power of Rome. To St. John the Roman
World-Power is Antichrist and both of them are personified by Nero. The baleful
figure of Nero dominates the entire picture of the struggle between the forces of
good and evil.
The wild beast,Rev. xiii. 1. At a short distance from Patmos the island of Thera or ‘the
Wild Beast‘ rises out of the sea. coming up out of the sea with its seven heads and
ten horns, and the imagery connected with it, was suggested to the Seer by the apocalyptic
visions of Daniel vii., the fourth kingdom of Daniel being identified by him with
the Roman Empire. The name of the beastRev. xiii. 18. Irenaeus, cont. Haer. v. 30. C. 11 gives the reading 616. In Philostratus,
Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius is represented as saying on his arrival at Rome—‘In my travels,
which have been wider than ever man yet accomplished, I have seen
many, many wild beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, which is commonly called
a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it be crooked of claw, and armed
with horrible fangs. However they say it is a civil beast and inhabits the midst
of cities; but to this extent it is more savage than the beasts of mountain and
of forest, that whereas lions and panthers can sometimes by flattery be tarried
and change their disposition, stroking and petting this beast does but instigate
it to surpass itself in ferocity and devour at large. And of wild beasts you cannot
say that they were ever known to eat their own mothers, but Nero has gorged himself
on this diet.'—Phillimore's tr. vol. ii. p. 38. is expressed by a
number—‘the number of a man'—and the number is Six Hundred and Sixty-Six.
Irenaeus discusses the meaning of this number which concealed the name of
Antichrist, and already when he wrote his treatise ‘Against Heresies' in 180 A.D. the key had been lost. And he is puzzled
by the fact that he found in some MSS. the number 616 instead of 666—one such MS.
exists still—and he supposes it due to the error of copyists. But there is a solution
now generally accepted, and whose correctness this very variant reading actually
confirms. For if the Greek spelling of Nero Caesar be transliterated into Hebrew
and the numerical values of the Hebrew letters added together they make 666. If
however the Latin spelling be treated in the same way, the total comes to 616. Nero
then was Antichrist, and the interpretation of the seven heads, the ten horns and
the other symbolic imagery of this portion of the Apocalypse must be approached
from the point of view that they all belong to the Neronian period. St. John was
not an historian, his mind was stored with the language and ideas of Daniel and
Ezekiel and other Apocalyptic writers,
who had preceded him; and his own Apocalypse was but one out of a
number of Jewish or Judaeo-Christian Apocalypses of the first century, with some
of which he shows himself to be acquainted. Nevertheless in all that he writes there
is a distinctive historical background, and it is limited to what he himself knew
of the actual contact of Christianity with the Imperial power at Rome: a contact
which began in the days of Claudius and which had issued in the reign of Nero in
a conflict for life and death, which was still undecided. Indeed I may go further
and say that it is only when the Apocalypse is treated historically as a Neronian
document that any satisfactory interpretation can be found for the imagery of certain
difficult passages. For example, nothing is more remarkable in the years which followed
Nero's death than the belief that gained firm possession of the popular imagination,
that the Emperor was not really dead, but that he had fled to the East and would
speedily reappear and once more possess himself of power. In 69 A.D. a false Nero
was put to death in the island of Cythnus, and twenty years later another Nero pretender
raised a revolt in Asia.Henderson's Life and Principate of Nero, p. 440. Tac. Hist. ii. 8: ‘vario
super exitu eius rumore eoque pluribus vivere eum fingentibus credentibusque.'
Sueton. Nero, 57: ‘edicta quasi viventis et brevi magno inimicorum malo reversuri.'
The pretender of 69 A.D., driven by stress of weather to the island of Cythnus,
was taken by Calpurnius Asprenas, Governor of Galatia, and put to death. Tac. Hist.
ii. 8, 9. Dion Cassius, lxiv. 9; also Tac. Hist. i. 2: ‘mota prope etiam Parthorum
arma falsi Neronis ludibrio.' The Christian Sibylline Oracles are evidence as to the
character and prevalence of this Nero legend in the reign of Vespasian,Sibylline Oracles, v. 143–147, 361–373. This portion of the Sibylline Oracles
was written 71–74 A.D.: so Bousset, Zahn and Charles.
Φεύξεται ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος [Rome] ἄναξ φοβερὸς καὶ ἀναιδής
ὃν πάντες στυγέουσι βροτοὶ καὶ φῶτες ἄριστοι·
ὤλεσε γὰρ πολλοὺς καὶ γαστέρι χεῖρας ἐφῆκεν. 143–5.
* * * * * * * *
ἥξει δ᾽ ἐκ περάτων γαίης μητροκτόνος ἀνήρ
ὃς πᾶσαν γαῖαν καθελεῖ καὶ πάντα κρατήσει. 363–4.
See also iv. 119–122, 137–139; this part of the Sibylline
Oracles is dated about 80 A.D. See also Ascension of Isaiah, iv. 2–4. It is of importance
to notice, says Dr. Charles in his note on this passage, that the persecution under
Nero is the only one known to the writer (p. 25).
and the references
to it in the Apocalypse are a proof of the strong impression which
it had made upon the writer. In the thirteenth chapter, after describing the beast
with its seven heads and ten horns, St. John proceeds: ‘and I saw one of his heads
as though it had been smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed'; and
in chapter xvii. verses 7, 8, he writes ‘I will tell thee the mystery of the woman,
and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns.
The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the
abyss, and goeth into perdition.' Then a few verses further on comes the passage
which has caused so much trouble to commentators, in no small measure because they
allow themselves to wander out of a strictly limited field of investigation—i.e.
the Neronian cycle. St. John says (verses 9-12) 'The seven heads are seven mountains,
on which the woman sitteth: and they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the
one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little
while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of
the seven; and he goeth into perdition.' Now the key to this passage is found as
soon as it is recognised that it deals with no other period of Roman history than
that which I have called ‘the Neronian cycle'—the period during which the Church
and the Empire, Christ and Antichrist, were first brought face to face as forces
irreconcilably opposed. For note that throughout Nero is not merely one of the seven
heads, he is identified with the Beast itself.Rev. xi. 7: ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony the beast
that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and
kill them.' Dr. Charles in the Introduction to the Ascension of Isaiah (p. lxiv)
makes the following comment on this passage: ‘The antichrist in this instance
makes his advent in Jerusalem (see v. 8), therefore before 70 A.D.' In one passage (xiii. 3) he is the
head that ‘was smitten unto death and his wound was healed,' in another (xiii.
14) ‘the beast that had the wound of a sword and did live,' and again (xvii. 8)
the beast ‘that was, and is not, and yet is.' Now the words ‘five are fallen'
(ἔπεσαν) imply that in each of these five cases there was a violent death
Augustus and Tiberius could not be described as ‘fallen,' even had
their reigns come within the Seer's purview. The five are Claudius, who adopted
Nero as his son and heir, Nero himself, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. ‘The one who
is' signifies the man for the moment invested with imperial power, Domitian, the
acting Emperor, who banished the writer. ‘The one not yet come' is the real Emperor
Vespasian, who had not yet arrived at Rome to take into his hands the reins of government,
and ‘he will continue only a short while,' for Nero—‘the beast that was, and is
not, who is also an eighth, and is of the seven'—will quickly return from the East
whither he had fled, and once more seat himself on the throne. And ‘his end is
perdition,' for after his return will immediately follow the great struggle between
Christ and Antichrist, when the latter will be overthrown and cast alive into the
lake of fire.Rev. xix. 20. Again ‘the ten horns with ten diadems,' of chapter xiii. verse 1,
are generally considered to be the governors of the chief provinces of the Empire,
and this is borne out by the reference to them in chapter xvii. verses 12-13: ‘And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom
as yet, but they receive authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour'; and
then a few verses lower ‘and the ten horns that thou sawest, and the beast, these
shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her
flesh, and burn her utterly with fire.' Is there not a direct reference here to
the events of the two preceding years? The revolt of Vindex was the signal for
the overthrow of Nero. The armies of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian in succession
occupied Rome, and the imperial city was held in subjection by foreign troops, sacked,
and its most sacred edifices burnt. All these five men were governors of provinces.
Lastly it seems to me impossible to dissociate the gathering together of the
nations to battle at Armageddon, ‘the nations which are in the four corners of
the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war, the number
of whom is as the sand of the sea,'Rev. xvi. 14-16, xx. 8. from the actual gathering of the
nations in those battles near Bedriacum which had taken place in the year 69. Gog
and Magog had come to signify in the Apocalyptic literature the uncivilised tribes
of the earth, and surely if ever Armageddon was realised in the history of the world
it was in that second battle of Bedriacum ending in the sack of Cremona in which
the armies of Vitellius and Vespasian contended for the mastery. On the one side
were troops from Italy, Spain and Portugal, Gaul, the German Rhine frontier, even
from far distant Batavia and Britain; on the other, legions from the Danube frontier,
and behind these the armies of Syria, Judaea and Egypt, with auxiliaries from the
furthermost East, from the borderlands of the Euphrates and Tigris.Henderson, Civil War in the Roman Empire, pp. 21–35, 128–144. The Seer is
not describing these battles, but he saw the medley of troops from every nation
under heaven actually fighting in the streets of Rome, and the scenes he witnessed
still so freshly imprinted in his mind are vividly reflected in the imagery of his
vision.
RenanRenan, L'Antéchrist, pp. 327–329. has pointed out in his well-known work ‘L'Antéchrist' that the portents,
scourges, and convulsions of nature which in the Apocalypse follow upon the opening
of the seals, the blowing of the trumpets, and the emptying of the vials were far
from being merely imaginative. The years that preceded 70 A.D. were years marked
by every kind of disaster and catastrophe. Earthquakes were frequent and violent,
especially in that part of Asia to which John addressed his seven letters.Tac. Ann. xiv. 13, 27; Suet. Nero, 20; Philostratus, Apollonius, vi. 38, 41;
Seneca, Quaest. Nat. vi. 1: ‘Mundus ipse concutitur . . . consternatio omnium';
Sibyll. orac. iii. 471 ff. The
great pestilence at Rome in 65 A.D. was followed by a wild hurricane, which laid
waste the Campagna.Tac. Ann. xvi. 13; Suet. Nero, 39. All sorts of portents were said to have foreshadowed the death
of Nero in 68 A.D. and the succession of political convulsions that followed.Tac. Ann. xv. 47; Hist. i. 18, 86; Dion Cassius, lxiii. 26. This
same year 68
was marked by a famine at Rome,Suet. Nero, 45; Sibyll. Orac. iii. 475 ff. the year 69 by a very disastrous
inundation of the Tiber.Tac. Hist. i. 86; Plutarch, Otho, 4. It was no wonder that a visionary mystic like St. John
should have perceived the signs of the consummation of all things in such a series
of catastrophes, political and physical. Surely there could not be a more convincing
piece of circumstantial evidence for fixing the date of the book.
Moveover as the Seer in the island of Patmos sat brooding over and recording
his visions, before his very eyes there was a spectacle which has left its traces
upon his language. The volcano in the neighbouring island of Thera was in violent
activity during the greater part of the first century, after which it had a long
period of quiescence until 726 A.D. No one can read a number of passages in the
ApocalypseRev. vi. 12-17, viii. 5-9, xvi. 3, 18, 20, 21. without feeling that the writer must have been the witness of a volcanic
eruption on a grand scale, and there are other passages which point to familiarity
with such scenes. Now the very remarkable fact stands recorded, that on two separate
occasions, in 196 B.C. and in 46 A.D., so extraordinary was the violence of the
eruptive forces in the very neighbourhood of this island that new islands came into
existence, whose modern names still recall the character of their origin. A vivid
description is given by Strabo of the eruption of 196 B.C.: ‘Midway between Thera
and Therasia flames rushed forth from the sea, causing the whole of it to boil and
be on fire, and afterwards an island, twelve stadia in circumference, composed of
the burning mass was thrown up as if raised by machinery.'See Pauly, Real-Encyclopädie under ‘Thera.' The name of the island described
by Strabo as thrown up was Hiera, now Nea Kaumeni; that thrown up in 46 A.D. Theia,
now Mikra Kaumeni. Seneca, Nat. Quaest. vi. 21; Dion Cassius, lx. 29; Orosius,
vii. 6. The modern name of Thera is Santorin (a corruption of St. Irene), see Encyclopaedia
Britannica (ed. 1911) under ‘Santorini' Compare with this the
language of Rev. viii. 8, 9: ‘and the second angel sounded, and as it were a great
mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the
sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures that were in
the sea and had life died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed.' All
these graphic touches are such as we should expect from a writer who had actually
resided in a group of islands where such catastrophic convulsions had recently taken
place. There was an eruption in Thera in 6o A.D., and the following decade was marked
by continued seismic and volcanic disturbances.
LECTURE VII
1 Cor. i. l0: ‘Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing, that there be no divisions
among you.'
Before proceeding to the consideration of that earliest
official document of the Roman Church commonly known as the ‘First Epistle of Clement
to the Corinthians,' some reference should be made to the order of the episcopal
succession in that Church. It is only necessary to touch upon it briefly here, for
it has been treated so fully and thoroughly by many writers that it appears sufficient
to state the conclusion arrived at and generally accepted, viz. that the order of
names is that given by Irenaeus, Linus, Anencletus or Cletus, Clemens, and that
the traditional terms assigned to their episcopates, Linus twelve years, Anencletus
twelve years, and Clemens nine years, are approximately correct. If Linus became
bishop in 68 A.D. this would make the close of the episcopate of Clemens to coincide
with the first year of the second century.Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. pp. 63– 7, 79– 81. The whole subject
is exhaustively discussed and examined in his Excursus No. 5, pp. 201– 345, on the
‘ Early Roman Succession,'see supra, pp. 70, 71; and p. 84, note 3.
As to the exact character of the office that they held, and of the organisation
of the Church during these decades, there has been much difference of opinion, and
from lack of the necessary material to clear up doubtful points such difference
of opinion will probably always continue to exist. The constitution of the Mother
Church of Jerusalem after 42 A.D. seems to have followed strictly the Jewish model,
James and the elders or presbyters corresponding to the
High Priest and the Sanhedrin.Harnack, Constitution and Law of the Church, p. 34. The position of James
was undoubtedly monarchical, but there is no strict analogy between his position
and that of the Christian bishop of the time of Ignatius. James's position was exceptional.
His authority, derived at once from near relationship to the Lord and from his own
lofty personal character, placed him on a level with the acknowledged leaders of
the Twelve. He ranked with Peter and John, as one of the pillars of the Church.Gal. ii. 9; also i. 19, and ii. 12.
But just as the earliest local organisation of the Church at Jerusalem followed
the Jewish model that was at its side, so did that of the Christian communities
which sprang into being among the Diaspora. There is no hint given that the presbyters
that were ordained in every city were officials of a type unknown to the Synagogue.Hort, Christiana Ecclesia, pp. 62–3; Lightfoot, Philippians, pp. 191–2.
Each Christian ecclesia like each Jewish synagogue had its presbyters, and in large
cities, like Rome, as there were a number of distinct synagogues, so there were
several distinct Christian congregations or Churches, such as the Church in the
house of Aquila and Prisca. In so far as there was a new departure, it lay in the
fact that the Christian presbyter was a spiritual as well as an administrative official.
Little as we are told in the New Testament on the subject, the picture drawn in
the Apocalypse of the four and twenty presbyters seated round the throne of God
and taking the leading part in the worship of Heaven seems to place this beyond
reasonable question.
But though the original model of Christian organisation was the Synagogue, more
and more as the Gentile element increased and became predominant would the separate
congregations or ecclesiae gradually acquire Gentile characteristics, derived from
the constitution of the various associations for religious cults and other purposes,
known as collegia, sodalitates, θ ί α σ ο ι or ἔ ρ α ν ο ι , which, with the licence or at
least the connivance of the state, were to be
found in every part of the empire.Hardy, Studies in Roman History, ‘Christianity and the Collegia,' pp. 129–43. The choice, for instance, by the
early Christians of the word ecclesia in preference to synagoge was probably deliberate.
Both words are used in the LXX, ecclesia as the translation of the Hebrew
Qātal
signifying a religious assembly, synagoge as that of the Hebrew word ēdhāh, a general
assembly of the whole people. The adoption of the term ecclesia, says Harnack,
‘was the happiest stroke which the primitive (Christian) community accomplished in
the way of descriptive titles.'Schürer, Hist. of the Jewish People, 2 Div., vol. ii. pp. 59 ff.; Harnack,
Const. and Law, pp. 15–6; Hort, Christ. Eccl. pp. 3–18. Its choice was at once distinctive and would have
familiar associations to Gentile ears.
So, too, with the term episcopus. This word in the sense of ‘overseer' occurs
many times in the LXX, and its ecclesiastical use was probably suggested by familiarity
with certain passages in this Greek version of the Old Testament, which was the
only Scriptures with which the vast majority of the early Christians were acquainted.Such passages as Ps. cviii. (cix.), quoted by St. Peter,
Acts, i. 20, and Ezekiel,
xxxiv. 11, or again Is. lx. 17, as quoted by Clement of Rome, xlii. 5:
καταστήσω τοὺς ἐπισκόπους αὐτῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ τοὺς διακόνους αὐτῶν
ἐν πίστει.
But again it must not be forgotten that the name would be the more readily adopted
by Greek-speaking Christians of Gentile origin, since it was already well known
as the title of officials engaged in secular duties, as Overseers or Superintendents.
When it first passed into Christian use is unknown, but its earliest appearance
is in the remarkable words addressed by St. Paul to the presbyters of the Ephesian
Church, whom he had summoned to meet him at Miletus as he was journeying to Jerusalem
in 57 A.D. ‘Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit
set you as overseers (ἐπισκόπους) to shepherd (ποιμαίνειν) the Church of God,
which He purchased with His Blood.'Acts, xx. 28. See Hort, Christ. Eccl. pp. 97–104; Harnack, Const. and Law, p.
53. Among the numerous works on the subject of the early organisation of the Christian
Church are the following: Hatch's well-known and most important Bampton Lectures
of 1881; also his Hibbert Lectures of 1888, ‘The Influence of Greek Ideas and
Usages upon the Christian Church' [edited by Dr. Fairhairn and published 1907]; Sohm, Kirchenrecht, 1892; Michiel, Les Origines de l'épiscopat, 1900; Knopf,
Das Nachapostolische Zeitalter, 1906; Batiffol, L'Eglise naissante et le Catholicisme,
1909; Gwatkin (articles in Hastings's Dictionary) ‘Bishops,' ‘Church Government,' &c. Here we find certain presbyters described
as ‘overseers' and their special function as that of shepherding
or tending the flock, implying that in the local organisation of the Church their
duty was not only that of government, guidance, and discipline, but of the provision
of spiritual food. Again in the Epistle to the Philippians St. Paul salutes ‘the
saints in Christ Jesus with the overseers and deacons.' Turning to the Pastoral
Epistles we have the qualifications set forth carefully, which should guide Timothy
and Titus in their choice of persons fit for the Church's official ministry.Comp. 1 Tim. iii. 2 with v. 17 and Titus, i. 7. From
these instructions two facts seem to come out clearly: that while all episcopi
were presbyters, only a limited number of the presbyters were episcopi. In other
words these titles cannot be used convertibly. An episcopus, or presbyter-bishop
if one may so style him, differed from the ordinary presbyter in that he had certain
superadded duties of oversight and superintendence such as were connoted by his
name. There is a spiritual side to his office: he must be ‘apt to teach,' ‘able
to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers'; and a business
or administrative side: ‘he must be blameless, as God's steward.'1 Tim. iii. 2; Titus, i. 7, 9:
δεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἐπίσκοτον ἀνέγκλητον εἶναι, ὡς
Θεοῦ οἰκονόμον. The language
of St. Peter, ‘Ye were as sheep going astray but are now returned to the Shepherd
and Bishop of your souls,'The words of St. Peter deserve careful consideration. In 1 Peter ii. 25 the
Apostle writes: Ἦτε γὰρ ὡς πρόβατα πλανώμενοι· ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεστράφητε νῦν
ἐπὶ τὸν ποιμένα καὶ ἐπίσκοπον τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν. The Shepherd here, whose office
is described by the additional term ἐπίσκοπος (note there is only one article),
being the Good Shepherd Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom all earthly ποίμενες
καὶ ἐπίσκοποι were the delegates and representatives. Can it be doubted that the
Apostle had here in his mind his Master's commission so emphatically and lovingly
repeated Ποίμαινε τὰ πρόβατά
μοῦ—βόσκε τὰ προβάτιά μου? A very interesting
passage is that at the opening of the fifth chapter of this same First Epistle of
St. Peter, vv. 1, 2: Πρεσβυτέρους οὖν ἐν ὑμῖν παρακαλῶ ὁ συμπρεσβύτερος . . .
ποιμάνατε τὸ ἐν ὑμῖν ποίμνιον τοῦ Θεοῦ [Comp. Acts, xx. 28] ἐπ9ισκοποῦντες.
This last word is not found in Aleph and B, possibly omitted for ecclesiastical
reasons. Consult the excellent notes of Bigg's commentary on ii. 23 and v. 1, 2
(Int. Crit. Commentary Series), pp. 119–50, 182–8. while
it seems to point to an equivalence of the two terms Shepherd and
Bishop—pastor and episcopus—no less significantly marks out the sphere of duty—as
the pastorate of souls. That it was possible to be a presbyter without having a
specific local charge, just in the same way as in modern days there are priests
without cure of souls, seems to be conveyed in another passage of this epistle,
where St. Peter addresses the presbyters, as their fellow presbyter, exactly as
St. John at a later date styled himself simply the presbyter ' in the opening salutation
of his second and third Epistles, and indeed it was as John the Presbyter that he
was best known in his old age.2 John, v. 1; 3 John, v. 1. For the identity of John the son of Zebedee, the
Apostle, with John the Presbyter—see Chapman's John the Presbyter. This writer's
arguments go to the very root of the question. Certainly neither Peter nor John was a local official.
The whole passage runs as follows: ‘the presbyters therefore among you I exhort
who am your fellow-presbyter . . . tend (shepherd) the flock of God which is among
you, exercising the oversight (acting as episcopi) not of constraint but willingly
like God; nor yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as lording it
over your allotted charges,μηδ᾽ ὡς κατακυριεύοντες τῶν κλήρων. The word κλήρων is ambiguous, but
its most natural interpretation is that of separate allotted charges or cures, otherwise
the expression κατακυριεύοντες would be unmeaning. Dr. Bigg (Commentary on 1 Peter,
p. 189) remarks that St. Paul warns the presbyter-bishop that he is to be ‘no striker'
(1 Tim. iii. 3; Tit. i. 7) and that this implies that discipline in a congregation,
many of whom were converted slaves, might be roughly administered. but making yourselves ensamples to the flock.' The
presbyters therefore who were addressed were presbyter-bishops, and it may be gathered
they had each of them a separate cure, over which they had independent spiritual rule, and moreover that they
received stipends, otherwise it would not have been necessary to warn
them against the danger of seeking after filthy lucre. It will be at once seen how
appropriate is the name of ‘rulers' which is applied to these officers of the
Church in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The exhortation ‘obey your rulers and submit
to them; for they watch in behalf of your souls, as they that shall give account'Heb. xiii. 17; also xiii. 7 and 24. Twice in Clement (1 Cor. i. 3 and xxi. 6)
are the ἡγούμενοι and the πρεσβύτεροι distinguished from one another, i.e. there
was an inner committee of presbyter-bishops.
at once emphasises the authority which, as we have seen, these presbyter-bishops
exercised, and likewise defines the double sphere of their jurisdiction and the
two aspects of their office, as at once ‘shepherds of souls' and ‘God's stewards.'
Thus after the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul such evidence as we possess
points to the government of the Church in Rome passing into the hands of that inner
committee of the presbyterate consisting of those who had spiritual charge of the
several congregations or domestic Churches in the capital. At their head we find
a president, either elected or chosen by seniority of office, bearing the title
of The Bishop, but at first differing in no way from the other presbyter-bishops
except in precedence, as primus inter pares.
The analogy between the earliest Christian organisation and that of the Synagogue
has already been pointed out. The presbyters ordained by the Apostles from city
to city were to a certain extent the Christian counterparts of the Jewish presbyters,
but, as the Christian Church had no Temple and no priestly caste entrusted with
the conduct of sacrificial worship, the Christian presbyter differed from the Jewish
in that his functions were not merely administrative but spiritual and liturgical.
In the same way the government of the Church by a committee of presbyter-bishops
representing the several congregations with a Bishop-president at their head was
analogous to that of cities like Alexandria, in which the Jewish population was
large, where the government was entrusted to a gerousia or committee
of archons representing the several synagogues, whose president bore the name of
Gerousiarch.The analogy is made the more complete by the fact that the Greek title ἄρχων
was the equivalent of a Hebrew word signifying ‘shepherd.' see Schürer, Hist. of
the Jewish People, 2 Div., vol. ii. pp. 59ff, 247ff. In the inscriptions in the
Jewish cemeteries at Rome the titles ‘archon' and ‘gerousiarch' are frequent.
‘Presbyter' has according to Schürer never been found. The contention of Dr. Hatch in his Bampton Lectures that the Christian
presbyters were purely administrative and judicial officers is not, as we have shown,
borne out by a careful examination of the scriptural references to their functions,
nor is the supposed evidence of the ‘Didache' to the existence in the latter part
of the first century of a hierarchy of Apostles, Prophets and Teachers, whose authority
was supreme in spiritual matters and to whom the presbyters and deacons were subordinate,
really tenable. Notably to the Prophet a lofty position is assigned in the ‘Didache,'
especially in the conduct of worship and in the celebration of the Eucharist.Didache, x. 7, xiii. 3, xv. 1, 2. The
discovery of this work and its first publication in 1883 has had an immense influence
in moulding the opinions of recent writers on the early organisation of the Church,
particularly those of Harnack,Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, vol. i. pp. 407 ff.; Constitution
and Law of the Church, p. 78 ff.; Die Lehre der Zwölf Apostel [Texte and Untersuchungen,
ii. 1, 2, pp. 193–241]; Chronologie, pp. 428–38. but it may be asked what proof is there that its
picture of first-century Church life and order is trustworthy? We have indeed the
witness of many passages in the Acts and Epistles to the fact that the prophet with
his peculiar charismatic gift of ecstatic (chiefly eschatological) utterance occupied
a prominent place in the early Christian communities, but these passages also testify
not merely that the prophet, as such, had no definite place in Church organisation,
but that his influence was intermittent and even spasmodic, and that, at Corinth
for instance, he might be a disturbing factor in the assemblies, an element, to
use St. Paul's words, ‘of
confusion rather than of peace.'See especially 1 Cor. xiv. passim,
also xii. 28, 29; and
Eph. ii. 20, iii. 5, iv. 11. The passages which the author
of the Didache had chiefly in his mind were no doubt
1 Cor. xii. 28, where St. Paul writes ‘God hath set some in
the Church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers,' and Eph. iv. 11:
‘He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists,
and some pastors and teachers' Hort remarks (Christian Ecclesia, pp. 157–61)
‘much profitless labour has been spent on trying to force the various terms used
into meaning so many different ecclesiastical offices. Not only is the feat impossible,
but the attempt carries us away from St. Paul's purpose, which is to show how many
different functions are those which God has assigned to the different members of
a single body . . . ; these passages give us practically no evidence respecting
the formal arrangements of the ecclesiae of that age; though they tell us
much of the forms of activity that were at work within them.' Dr. Bigg's account
of New Testament prophets and prophecy in his Introduction to 1 Peter, pp.
43–48, is clear and illuminating. He comments on the fact that in 1 Peter there
is no allusion to Christian prophecy. For the ‘prophets' in sub-Apostolic times and
in the Didache see his introduction to the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, pp. 28–38. The truth is that there
are very cogent reasons for holding the ‘Didache' to be a fourth-century document,
whose author in his presentation of first-century Christianity drew largely upon
his imagination.In Dr. Bigg's Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles (Early Church Classics,
S.P.C.K., 1898) just referred to, he gives a series of reasons for holding this
document to have been written early in the fourth century. More recently in the
Journal of Theological Studies, April 1912, Dean Armitage Robinson announces
his adhesion to Dr. Bigg's view as to a probable late date for the Didache.
The author, he argues, was trying to represent the state of the Church in accordance
with what he thought to be the Apostles' teaching, not as it was in his own days.
His description is not derived from contemporary knowledge. See also an article
in the same journal, October 1911, by Rev. A. S. Duncan Jones, on ‘The Nature of
the Church,' in which the writer cricicises the views of Harnack and of Sohm on
the constitution of the early Church. It is not wise therefore to base any arguments or theories about
the true character of the earliest organisation of the Church upon a writing whose
date is very disputable and whose origin and sources are unknown.
Leaving therefore the ‘Didaches' on one side let us now try to supplement the
evidence as to the state of the Church in Rome and elsewhere about 68 A.D. that
has been gathered from the canonical books of the New Testament, evidence that on
the face of it is very incomplete and obscure,
by an examination of two works both of them Roman and at one time
regarded as almost canonical, I mean the (so-called) ‘First Epistle of Clement
to the Corinthians' and ‘The Shepherd of Hermas.' These writings with the Epistles
of Ignatius are first-class authorities, but clearly much depends upon a knowledge
of the date of their first appearance. That of Ignatius' epistles has been determined
within very narrow limits, 107 to 109 A.D. The notice about Hermas in the Muratorian
fragment and the Liberian catalogue is, as I shall attempt to show later, most probably
a blunder. The date of Clement's Epistle was at one time regarded as uncertain,
but since the publication of Light-foot's great work on the Apostolic Fathers, the
opinion of scholars has become practically unanimous that it was written at the
close of the reign of Domitian, about 96 A.D.; indeed this date may be regarded
as one of the ‘accepted results' of present-day criticism. I feel therefore how
very bold it is on my part to venture even to hint at a difference of view. I have
never however been able to convince myself that this ‘accepted result' is correct,
and I welcome the opportunity afforded me by these lectures for stating my reasons
for doubting the soundness of the arguments on which it is based.
Of the authenticity of the anonymous epistle which opens with the wordsἡ ἐκκλησία
τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡ παροικοῦσα Ῥώμην τῇ
ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῇ
παροικούσῃ Κόρινθον. ‘the
Church of God sojourning in Rome to the Church of God sojourning in Corinth' or
of the accuracy of the early, continuous, and widespread tradition, which assigned
the actual authorship to that Clement who in the earliest lists of the bishops of
Rome stands the third in order from the Apostles, there is absolutely no question.Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 16, 37. The epistle is called by Eusebius μεγάλη,
θαυμασία, ἀνωμολογημένη παρὰ πᾶσιν.
The patristic evidence is conclusive, and is admitted as such. But the corollary
to this postulate, that because Clement was the author therefore the epistle was
written during the time of his episcopate, 92 to 101 A.D.,
does not follow. Nevertheless the assumption has been made with surprising
unanimity, and it has led to the date at which this letter was sent to Corinth being
assigned to the time when the Church found deliverance from the persecution of Domitian
by that tyrant's assassination. Nay, to such an extent has this pre-supposition
gained possession of the mind even of a writer like Bishop Lightfoot, so eminently
careful and cautious in the handling of historical evidence, that in his criticism
of the chronology of the early Roman succession, he writes ‘ The date of Clement's
epistle is fixed with a fair degree of certainty at 95 or 96 A.D.,
as it was written
during or immediately after the persecution under Domitian. This year therefore
must fall within the episcopate of Clement.'Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 342. The italics are mine. Among
the older writers Hefele in his Prolegomena to the Epistle (1855) writes as to the
date ‘tota haec quaestio facillime posset dissolvi si tempus Clementis episcopatus
plane constaret.' Workman (Persecution in the Early Church, p. 206) writes: ‘As
I incline to a later date for the epistle of St. Clement, I see no reason to reject
the succession of bishops as Linus, Cletus, Clement. . . . The question of succession
is bound up with the date of the Epistle.' But surely this is something like
arguing in a circle, for I venture to say that there does not exist any definite
evidence, internal or external, that the epistle was written during or immediately
after the persecution of Domitian. It will be my object to show that such evidence
as we possess points to a very different conclusion, viz. that when Clement gave
literary expression to the message from the Church in Rome to the Church in Corinth
he was not yet the official head of the Roman Church, and further that the probable
date of the epistle is the early months of 70 A.D.
It will be necessary to deal with the arguments for and against seriatim.
The cause of the writing of the epistle was the outbreak of schism and dissension
in the Corinthian Church described by the writer as ‘that abominable and unholy
sedition, foreign and strange to the elect of God, which a few head-strong and self-willed
persons have kindled to such a pitch
of madness, so that your name, once respected and widely spoken of
and worthily beloved of all men, hath been greatly defamed.'Clement, 1 Cor. i. 1. The cause
of this sad change is ascribed to jealousy and envy, and the examples of Cain and
Abel, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of Moses, and of David and Saul are brought
forward as warnings of the evil consequences which indulgence in jealousy and envy
produces. The writer then proceeds: ‘But let us cease to speak of examples of ancient
days, and let us come to those who very recently were athletes [of the faith]; let us take the illustrious examples of our own time. Through envy and jealousy
the greatest and most righteous pillars were persecuted and contended even unto
death. Let us take before our eyes the good apostles.'Ibid. v. 1: ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα τῶν ἀρχαίων ὑποδειγμάτων παυσώμεθα, ἔλθωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς
ἔγγιστα γενομένους ἀθλητάς· λάβωμεν τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν τὰ aενναῖα ὑποδείγματα.
Lightfoot translates τοὺς ἔγγιστα γενομένους ἀθλητάς ‘those champions who lived
very near to our tune'; Gregg (Early Church Classics): ‘those great ones, who
are nearest to our time'; Hippolyte Hemmer, Clément de Rome (1909): ‘venons
en aux athlètes tout récents.' τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν can only mean ‘our own time,'
i.e. the time in which all of us are living, not a period thirty years ago. When
John the Baptist cried ‘ generation of vipers,' or our Lord ‘Whereto shall I
liken this generation?' or ‘An adulterous generation seeketh after a sign,' or
St. Peter ‘save yourselves from this untoward generation,' they were speaking
to and of the living men and women they saw around them, and so does Clement in
this passage. Then follow references
to the martyrdoms of St. Peter and of St. Paul. This epithet ‘good' has exercised
the minds of critics, but there seems to be no doubt that it is the true reading.
Lightfoot remarks ‘Such an epithet may be most naturally explained on the supposition
that Clement is speaking in affectionate remembrance of those whom he had known
personally, otherwise the epithet would be out of place.' Does not the same comment
apply, it may be asked, to the readers of the Epistle? Peter and Paul were regarded
as the founders of the Corinthian as well as of the Roman Church, and the epithet
points to their memory being still quite fresh. Then in the following chapter Clement
gives a description of the climax of the Neronian persecution;
briefly but with graphic strokes he tells us how ‘to these men of
holy living was gathered together a great multitude of the elect, who having suffered
through jealousy many indignities and tortures became very splendid examples amongst
ourselves. Persecuted through jealousy, women after having suffered in the guise
of Danaids and Dirces terrible and monstrous outrages attained the goal which made
sure to them the race of faith and those who were weak in body received a noble
reward.' If any one were to read those paragraphs for the first time without any
presuppositions or arrière-pensées, would they doubt that they told of scenes of
horror which not only the author but all those in whose name he wrote had literally
before their eyes, and which still haunted the minds of the witnesses?
Further, if Clement had just passed through the persecution of Domitian in which
so many Christians of illustrious rank suffered, with whom as bishop he must have
had intimate relations, is it conceivable that none of their examples should have
been brought forward, but only those of an already distant persecution, whose memory
more recent events must have tended to throw into the background? But it is said
that Clement is speaking of what happened under Domitian in the sentence which follows
the opening salutation—‘by reason of the sudden and successive troubles and calamities
which have befallen us, we consider that we have been somewhat slow in giving attention
to the questions in dispute among you.'διὰ τὰς αἰφνιδίους καὶ ἐπαλλήλους γενομένας ἡμῖν συμφορὰς καὶ τεριπτώσεις,
ἀδελφοί, βράδιον νομίζομεν ἐπιστοφὴν πεποιῆσθαι περὶ τῶν ἐπιζητουμένων παῤ ὑμῖν πραγμάτων. But it may be asked, is it possible to
read into these words so large a reference? The Domitianic persecution, when it
came, must have touched Clement himself and his fellow-Christians at Rome far too
severely and closely for the subject to have been dismissed thus casually and once
for all in the ten opening words of a sentence containing fifty-nine words? When
one considers that according to the opinion of the critics this Epistle was written almost
immediately after the death of Domitian the Persecutor, it seems mere
trifling to suppose that the deep sorrow and keen sense of bereavement that must
have been filling the Roman Church at the sad fate of so many of its foremost members
could not have found here or elsewhere in this lengthy letter more fitting expression.
But if the date of the document be, as I hold that it is, the early months of 70
A.D., then the reference to ‘the sudden and successive troubles and calamities,
which have befallen us' receives a natural explanation, one written large in the
historical records of the time,See Lecture VI, pp. 168–170. Also Tac. Hist. i. 2. Philostratus, Apollonius
of Tyana (ed. Phillimore, ii. p. 58): ‘Galba was killed at Rome itself after grasping
at the Empire; Vitellius was killed after dreaming of empire; Otho, killed in
lower Gaul, was not even buried with honour, but lies like a common man. And destiny
flew through all this history in one year.' and a mere allusion to which would be sufficient
to account to the Corinthians for the delay of the Roman Church in dealing with
the questions on which its advice had been sought.Unless the advice of the Church at Rome had been sought, there could have been
no reason to excuse delay in attending to the matter. Zahn, Intr. to N.T. vol. i.
p. 269, holds that Fortunatus, who is mentioned in Clement's Epistle lxv. brought
the news of the Corinthian dissensions to Rome. See also Stahl, Patristische Untersuchungen, 1901. In the whole course of its long
and chequered history the city of Rome has never experienced so many ‘sudden and
successive troubles and calamities' as befell it in the course of the year 69 A.D.,
and the brief reference to them by the writer of this Epistle is seen to be as aptly
as it is tersely phrased.
The internal evidence of the Epistle is in many important respects strongly in
favour of the early date. In the organisation of the Church only ‘bishops and deacons'
are mentioned, exactly as they are in St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, while
the title ‘bishop' is to the same extent inter-changeable with that of ‘presbyter'
as it is in the Acts and the Pauline epistles, and the word ‘rulers' has the
same sense as in the Epistle to the Hebrews.Clement, 1 Cor. xlii, 4, 5; x1iv. 1. 4, 5; liv. 2; lvii. 1, for rulers.
ἡγούμενοι i. 3, προηγούμενοι xxi. 6. The Apostles
derive their authority directly from Jesus Christ, the presbyter-bishops
and deacons from the Apostles, who are described as having gone through town and
country preaching the good tidings that the kingdom of God was about to come.Ibid. xlii. 2, 3: ὁ Χριστὸς οὖν ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ οἱ ἀπόστολοι ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ
. . . . ἐξῆλθον (οἱ ἀπόστολοι) εὐαγγελιζόμενοι τὴν βασιλείαν
τοῦ Θεοῦ μέλλειν ἔρχεσθαι. All
this is thoroughly primitive. It is too the mark of a very early date that while
Clement three times speaks of the Lord Jesus as ‘child or servant of God'—παῖς Θεοῦ—only
once is the word son—υἱός—used, and that in a quotation from the second
Psalm taken direct from the Epistle to the Hebrews.Ibid. lx. 2. 3, 4, xxxvi. 4; Heb. i. 5. Again as to Clement's references
to the canonical writings of the New Testament, Dr. Lightfoot, though on other
grounds he supports the late date for this Epistle, writes thus—‘one important
test of date in early Christian writings lies in the Biblical quotations—both the
form and the substance. Now the quotations from the Gospels in this letter exhibit
a very early type. They are not verbal; they are fused; and they are not prefaced
by “It is written” (γέγραπται) or “The Scripture saith”
(ἡ γραφὴ λέγει) or the like, but a more archaic form of citation is used, “The Lord spake”
(ὁ Κύριος εἶπεν) or
some similar expression.'Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 353. A very considerable admission. On
the other hand the abundant use that is made of the Pauline epistles, especially
Romans and 1 Corinthians, of 1 Peter, and more than any other of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, is very natural in one who was the disciple and companion of St. Peter
and St. Paul, and whose conversion tradition assigns to St. Barnabas.Of the four epistles named, 1 Corinthians dealt with a situation in some respects
similar to that described by Clement and in the same town. Romans and Hebrews were
addressed to Rome, and 1 Peter written in Rome. The use made by Clement of Hebrews
strengthens the argument for its Barnabas authorship.
It is difficult to see how the evidential value of c. xli. can be explained away.
It is so important as a witness for the early date that it must be given in full.
‘Let each
of you, brethren, in his own order give thanksεὐχαριστείτω, perform his act of Eucharistia. [at the
Eucharist], keeping a good conscience without passing beyond the appointed rule
of his serviceλειτουργία , a word transferred to Christian
ministerial services, especially that of the Eucharist, from the LXX. where it signifies
the ‘ services' of the priests in their Temple duties. with reverence. Not in every place, brethren, are the perpetual
dailyἐνδελεχισμόν . This word is used in the
LXX. to distinguish the sacrifices that were obligatory every day from those of
free will. See Ex. xxix. 42, xxx. 8;
Numbers, xxviii. 6. sacrifices offered, or the free-will offerings or the sin offerings and
the trespass offerings, but in Jerusalem alone, and there not in every place is
it offered, but before the sanctuary in the altar-court; after the victim which
is being offered has been inspected for blemishes by the high priest and the aforesaid
ministry. They then who do anything contrary to the seemly order of His [God's]
will have death as their punishment. Ye see, brethren, how in proportion as we have
been deemed worthy of fuller knowledge, so much the greater is the danger to which
we are exposed.' Those who cling to the Domitianic date for this Epistle are driven
to strange shifts to find any plausible argument for denying to this passage its
obvious sense, that at the time when it was written the Temple at Jerusalem was
still standing, and the daily sacrifice had not ceased. Lightfoot and others bring
forward Josephus' account of the Mosaic sacrifices (‘Ant.' iii. cc. 9, 10) written
in 93 A.D., in which the historic present is freely used. But as HefeleHefele, Patrum Apost. opera (1855), xxxiv.: ‘Sed res
utraque, Iosephi et Clementis, longe dissimilis est. Iosephus, sacros populi sui
ritus describens, per figuram, historicis non inusitatam, praesenti, quod dicimus,
historico utitur. Clemens, autem, ut Corinthos ad ordinem servandum adducat, lectoribus
ordinem Iudaici cultus ante oculos ponit. Quodsi autem templum iam fuisset destructum,
tota S. Patris argumentatio fuisset infirma, ipsaque adversarios invitasset, ut
dicerent: En, eversione templi Hierosolymitani Deus ipse testatus est, talem ordinem
sibi non esse exoptatum.' pointed
out some years ago, there is a wide distinction between the two cases. Josephus,
in describing a ritual system that had passed away, employs a well-known artifice
of the historian in
order to lend vividness to his narrative. Clement on the other hand
brings before the eyes of his readers the fixed order of the Jewish worship with
the purpose of showing to them that the maintenance of such order was a Divine institution.
But if the Temple had been destroyed and that order of worship had been violently
brought to an end, would not his whole argument fall to the ground and his opponents
be able to retort that the complete disappearance of the Jewish sanctuary, its official
hierarchy and ordered ritual was a proof that such a system no longer could claim
the divine sanction?
Once more as to the dissensions at Corinth, little is told as to their cause
and character, except that the action of certain ‘headstrong and reckless persons'
had led to some of the duly constituted presbyters being expelled from their office,
and that the ringleaders were few in number.Clement, 1 Cor. i. 47. Perhaps the example held up before
the authors of the discussion of the hierarchical order of the Mosaic cult at Jerusalem
may point to these ‘headstrong persons' being Judaeo-Christians, who had strong
opinions about the absolute equality of all members of the Christian community,
or possibly without going so far as to object to the existence of the office of
presbyter they may have protested against the appointment of uncircumcised Gentiles
to this office. Moreover, while we have no information to throw light upon the state
of Corinth at the end of Domitian's reign, that town had been the scene of stirring
events and activities some thirty years earlier. In the autumn of 66 A.D. Nero went
to Greece. In November 67 A.D. he witnessed at Corinth the Isthmian games, and in
that city conferred freedom upon Achaia, a privilege which was not revoked until
six years later by Vespasian, because of the disorders that broke out. What is even
more important, Nero at this time seriously set about the formidable engineering
task of cutting a navigable canal through the Isthmus.Henderson, Life and Principate of Nero, pp. 392 ff., 495 ff.; Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana (Bewick), p. 216. For
this purpose no fewer than 6000 Jewish prisoners, captured by Vespasian
in a battle at Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, were sent by that general to Corinth
to carry out the excavations,Josephus, Bell. Iud. iv. 10: ‘Out of the young men he chose 6000 of the strongest
and sent them to Nero to dig through the isthmus of Corinth.' and at the time of Nero's death a considerable part
of the work had been completed. It was, however, then abandoned, with the result
that a very large body of fanatical Jewish Zealots must have remained at Corinth
as slaves or freedmen, their fierce patriotism still glowing unquenched by defeat
and bondage. Here then in 69 A.D. were present all the elements for fomenting such
an out-break of strife and discord as actually took place.
Or take the well-known reference to the story of the Phoenix,Clement, 1 Cor. xxv. and the analogy
that it offers to the Resurrection. In recounting this legend Clement was no more
credulous than his contemporaries, one of whom, Pliny the Elder, tells us in his
‘Natural History' ‘that a phoenix was brought to Rome in the censorship of the
Emperor Claudius (47 A.D.) and that it was exposed to public view in the Comitia,'
adding ‘this fact is attested by the public annals.'Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 3 (Bostock's tr., p. 481); compare Tac. Ann. vi. 28. Pliny
was himself a sceptic—‘there is no one but doubts it was a fictitious phoenix only.' Now Clement, as a boy, may
have actually seen this publicly exhibited wonder, and the vivid impression made
on the youthful imagination here finds expression some twenty-two years later. It
is just one of those little touches that give added life to the narrative and connect
the personality of the writer with the events of his time. It is to be noted that
Clement does not hint at there being anything of a miraculous character in the resurrection
of the Phoenix, he speaks of it as a fact of natural history.
Let us now turn our attention to the passages on which the advocates of a late
date have chiefly relied. The beginning of chapter xliv. runs thus: ‘Our Apostles
also knew through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife about the dignity
of the bishop's
office.1 Pet. v. 1-6; 1 Tim. iii. 5–13;
Tit. i. 5-11; compare 1 Cor. xi. 18, 19;
Rom. xii. 6–8; Eph. iv. 11-12;
Heb. xiii. 17. For this reason then having received perfect
foreknowledge they appointed the aforesaid [bishops and deacons] and then they
further laid down regulationsThe reading here επινομην is probably
corrupt. The translation of I. . . . legem dederunt has been adopted. that if they [any of these bishops and deacons]
should fall asleep, other tried men should succeed to their ministry. Those then
who were appointed by them or afterwards by other men of repute with the approval
of the whole Church, and have ministered unblameably to the flock of Christ in all
humility, peaceably and without arroganceἀβαναύσως , the opposite disposition to those
having βάναυσος , arrogance, pride; compare
1 Pet. v. 3. and who have for many years received
high testimony from allμεμαρτυρημένους πολλοῖς χρόνοις ὑπὸ πάντων —we do not consider it just that these men should be ejected
from their ministration.' Here the words ‘our Apostles' clearly signify St. Peter
and St. Paul, held to be the joint founders of both the Churches of Rome and Corinth.
The careful advice and warnings addressed by both these Apostles to the presbyter-bishops
in their extant writings are a proof of the truth of Clement's assertion as to their
having pre-vision about the difficulties which might arise in the future concerning
the authority and position of these ‘rulers' of the Church. But it does not follow,
because the Apostles laid down regulations for the filling up of these offices,
whenever they became vacant by death, or because, at the time when Clement was writing,
some of the holders of these offices had been appointed by the Apostles, others
by the choice of the presbytery with the consent of the Church, or because among
these were men who for many years had been honoured and respected by all, that there-fore
the Epistle was written some decades after the Apostle's martyrdom. Those who use
this argument overlook the possibility that the first presbyters of the Roman Church
were appointed by St. Peter about 44 or 45 A.D., and those of Corinth by St. Paul
about 51 or 52 A.D. Most of these would be literally ‘elders'—men well advanced in
years when first they took office—and in the interval between these
dates and 70 A.D. there must have been many vacancies by death and fresh appointments,
some directly by the Apostles, others in their absence by the Churches in the manner
ordained by Apostolical authority.
Again in chapter xlvii., after condemning in the strongest terms the strifes,
parties, and divisions which were tearing to pieces the Corinthian Church, Clement
continues: ‘Take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle. What was it that
he first wrote to you in the beginning (ἐν ἀρχῇ) of the Gospel? In truth under
the inspiration of the Spirit he sent you a letter concerning himself and Cephas
and Apollos, because that even then you had given way to party spirit.' Clement
then proceeds to compare the apostles of renown, the great leaders of those days
(just mentioned), with the present instigators of schism and dissension, and he
denounces their conduct in the words ‘It is shameful, beloved, very shameful and
unworthy of Christian conduct that it should be reported that the very steadfast
and primitive (ἀρχαίαν) Church of Corinth should by one or two persons have been
induced to rebel against its presbyters.' Now far too much stress has been laid
by the up-holders of the Domitianic hypothesis upon this word apxaiav as signifying
‘ancient,' and it is said that such a description could not have been given of
a Church only twenty years old. But is it not evident that the word apxaia was suggested
by the previous word apxrj, and that it means no more than that the foundation of
the Church at Corinth took place in the earliest days of the preaching of the Gospel
in Europe?St. Paul (Phil. iv. 15) in his Epistle to the Philippians
writes: ‘and ye yourselves also know, ye Philippians, that in the beginning of the
Gospel (ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ), when I departed
from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me in the matter of giving and receiving,
but ye only.' And in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (xi.
9): ‘when I was present with you and in want, I was not a burden on any
man; for the brethren when they came from Macedonia supplied the measure of my want.'
We thus see that St. Paul himself applies the expression
ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου to his first visit to
Corinth. Compare St. Luke, i. 2
οἱ ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς αὐτόπται.
The following particulars concerning the envoys who were the bearers of this
epistle to Corinth have been held to necessitate a late date. ‘We have sent faithful
and discreet men who have passed their lives blamelessly in our midst from youth
to old age.' And again ‘send back to us quickly in peace and with joy our envoys
Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito together with Fortunatus also.'Clement, 1 Cor. lxiii. and lxv. Now the conjecture
of Lightfoot that the names of Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito point to their
being freedmen of the Imperial household at the time when Messalina was Empress
is probably correct.Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 27 ff. But if they received their manumission about 45 A.D., they
may well have been from thirty-five to forty years of age at that date, and so more
than sixty in 70 A.D. As there is reason to believe that Christianity was first
brought to Rome shortly after the death of St. Stephen, and as St. Peter's first
visit took place at the very time when Messalina was at the height of her power,
there is no difficulty in giving these two men a place among the very first converts
to the faith. Fortunatus is separately mentioned, and we may infer that he was not
a Roman envoy but a Corinthian, and if a Corinthian, then although the name is not
uncommon, his identification with the Fortunatus mentioned by St. Paul in his First
Epistle to the Corinthians is more than a possibility.τοὺς δὲ ἀπεσταλμένους ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν Κλαύδιον Ἔφηβον
καὶ Οὐαλέριον Βίτωνα σὺν καὶ Φορτουνάτῳ. The words
σὺν καὶ place Fortunatus in a different category
from Ephebus and Bito. Th. Zahn (Intr. to N.T. vol. i. p. 269) holds that
Fortunatus was a delegate from Corinth and that it had been he who had brought the
news of the dissensions to Rome. Lightfoot also (part i. vol. i. p. 29 and vol.
ii. p. 187) is of opinion that Fortunatus was a Corinthian and that there is no
improbability in identifying him with the Fortunatus of 1 Cor. xvi. 17. It is, however, extremely
unlikely that the Fortunatus whose coming to Ephesus refreshed St. Paul in 54 A.D., was
still active and travelling to and fro as an emissary between his native town and
Rome in 96 A.D., more than forty years later.
The assumption so commonly made that the Epistle, the actual authorship of which by universal consent is
attributed to Clement, the third in order of succession of the
Roman bishops, must have been written during the period of his episcopate, 92 to
101 A.D.,
has in fact really no justification. There are very strong arguments (besides those
already brought forward) to be urged against it, both negative and positive. The
Epistle is written in the name of the Church of Rome, and is throughout anonymous.
From the first line to the last there is not a single phrase which hints at the
individuality of the writer or gives any indication that he was a man of mark and
authority, the personal pronouns used are always ‘we' and ‘us.' Now such self-effacement
would be perhaps natural in the young Clement of 70 A.D. It is quite in accordance
with what Epiphanius tells us (quoting apparently the lost memoirs of Hegesippus)
about his voluntary refusal to accept the post of presiding-bishop after the death
of the Apostles,See the most interesting chapter on the Hypomnemata of Hegesippus in
Eusebiana, by H. J. Lawlor (Clarendon Press. 1912). Mr. Lawlor produces very
strong arguments and evidence (pp. 73–94) to show that Epiphanius in writing his
Panarion had before him a copy of Hegesippus' Memoirs, and further that those Memoirs
contained a great deal of information about the early history of the Churches of
Jerusalem, Corinth, and Rome: ‘We find that, just as in the case of Jerusalem and
Corinth, so in that of Rome, what he [Hegesippus] wrote was mainly a résumé of the
history of the Christian community, special attention being paid to the circumstances
under which each bishop succeeded to his charges' (p. 85). Among other passages of
Epiphanius that which explains how it was that Clement though appointed bishop by
the Apostles Peter and Paul was not first but third in succession, i.e. the
story of his resignation in favour of Linus and Anencletus, was probably taken from
Hegesippus (p. 9). ‘lest he should cause strife and division,' and of his withdrawal
in favour of his seniors, first of Linus, then of Anencletus. But tradition asserts
with no uncertain voice that Clement held a place apart in the Roman Church as the
first century began to draw to its close. It was not his ‘Epistle to the Corinthians'
which gave him fame, and which caused a plentiful crop of legends to grow up around
his name, but his distinction first as being a personal disciple of St. Peter, by
whom he was ordained to the presbyterate, and also a fellow-worker with St. Paul,
and secondly from the high social position and family connexion which tradition
assigns to him, a tradition which I believe to be in substance correct.See ‘Clementine' Homilies and Recognitions, the Epistles to Virgins,
the Apostolical Constitutions.
The Clement, then, who became bishop in 92 A.D. was an Apostolical man of exceptional
authority, whose personality would not lend itself to concealment. If he wrote the
Epistle in 96 A.D., his name would give added weight to the advice of the Church
over which he presided. Moreover are there not strong grounds for holding that during
the quarter of a century of Flavian rule, at Rome and elsewhere, the office of bishop
had been growing in importance and respect and dignity, and was gradually becoming
monarchical in character? Can any unprejudiced person read the language of Ignatius
without perceiving that the primitive organisation of the Roman and Corinthian Churches,
as depicted in Clement's Epistle, could not have still subsisted unchanged until
96 A.D.? Ignatius, remember, was a contemporary of Clement, his letters were written
not more than seven or eight years after Clement's death, and in these letters the
authoritative and autocratic position of the bishop is set forth again and again
in terms that admit of no qualification. ‘Let no man do aught pertaining to the
Church apart from the bishop'—‘it is not lawful apart from the bishop either to baptise or hold an
Agape'—‘whenever you are subject to the bishop, you appear
to me not to be living the ordinary life of men, but after the manner of the life
of Jesus Christ.' It is quite clear that in such statements as these Ignatius is
not speaking of any new thing. With him the office of bishop is of the very esse
and not merely of the bene esse of the Church. Without the three orders of bishop,
presbyters, and deacons ‘there is' he declares ‘no Church deserving of the name.'
In another passage he speaks of ‘the bishops established in the furthest quarters
as being in the mind of Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ is the Mind of the Father'
and of the ‘presbytery that is worthy of God being fitted to the bishop as the strings
to a harp.'Smyrn. 8; Trall. 2. 3, 4; Eph. 3, 4; Magn. 3, 6,
7; Philad. 4, etc. These words preclude
any mere local reference, and when one considers how close was the
intercourse between Antioch and Rome, it will be seen how extremely difficult it
would be to conceive of the Great Roman Community, for which Ignatius himself expresses
the utmost veneration,Romans (salutation): ἥτις καὶ προκάθηται ἐν τόπῳ
χωρίου Ῥωμαίων, ἀξιόθεος , ἀξιοπρεπής, ἀξιομακάριστος, ἀξιέπαινος, ἀξιεπίτευκτος ,
ἀξίαγνος καὶ προκαταθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης , Χριστώνομος, Πατρώνομος. as not possessing that qualification without which ‘it
would not be deserving the name of a Church.' In other words in the year 96 A.D.
the organisation of the Roman Church was not that which we find in Clement's Epistle,
nor was the position which Clement with his antecedents must at that date have held
consistent with the entire absence of the personal note in the letter which he wrote
to Corinth.
The case in fact against this Epistle having been written by Clement during his
episcopate is very strong. It only remains to draw attention to two pieces of documentary
evidence, both of which indirectly confirm the conclusion at which we have arrived.
In a passage from the letter of Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, to Soter, bishop of
Rome, which has been preserved to us by Eusebius, the words occur ‘to-day we have
spent the Lord's Holy Day, in which we have read your epistle; reading which we
shall at all times receive admonishment, as also [is the case] with the former epistle
written to us by Clement.'Eus. Hist. Eccl. iv. 23. Dr. Bigg in the introduction to his Commentary on the
First Epistle of St. Peter compares the Greek words here used ἡμῖν διὰ Κλήμεντος γραφεῖσαν
with those of St. Peter: ‘I have written to you by Silvanus'—διὰ
Σιλουανοῦ ὑμῖν ἔγραψα, and he holds that the two passages must be understood in
the same way, and he says that Dionysius's words ‘mean clearly that Clement was
the mouthpiece or interpreter of the Church of Rome.'Bigg, 1 Peter, Intr. p. 5. This implies that Clement,
though no doubt a leading official, was in putting into literary form and with a
free hand the general instructions he had received, only the servant, not the head
of the Church acting on his own initiative.
The evidence of Hermas has a double interest from the light that it throws both
on the date of ‘The Shepherd' and upon the position of Clement. With the date
of ‘The Shepherd' I shall deal in the next lecture. I will merely state here that
my contention will be that that part of Hermas' work known as ‘The Visions' and
possibly the whole of it was written in the course of the first decade of Domitian's
reign. The reference to Clement occurs at the close of the Second Vision. In the
Vision an old woman, representing the Church, had given to Hermas a small book containing
a revelation, which at her command he had copied out letter by letter. This done
the aged woman again came to him and asked him if he had already given the book
to the presbyters. On his replying that he had not, the aged woman said—I quote
the exact words—‘Thou hast done well, for I have words to add. When then I shall
have finished all the words, by thee it shall be made known to all the elect. Thou
shalt therefore write two little books and shalt send them to Clement and to Grapte.
Clement will then send to the cities that are without, for to him this [charge]
has been entrusted; and Grapte will admonish the widows and the orphans. But thou
shalt read [the words] unto this city before the presbyters, who preside over the
Church.'Hermas, Vision iii. 4: γράψεις οὖν δύο
βιβλαρίδια καὶ πέμψεις ἓν
Κλήμεντι καὶ ἓν Γραπτῇ. πέμψει
οὖν Κλήμης εἰς τὰς ἔξω
πόλεις, ἐκείνῳ γὰρ
ἐπιτέτραπται· Γραπτὴ δὲ
νουθετήσε ι τὰς χήρας καὶ τοὺς
ὁρφανούς·
σὺ δὲ ἀναγνώσῃ εἰς ταύτην τὴν
πόλην μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τῶν προϊσαμένων τῶς ἐκκλησίας.
This passage has been variously interpreted, but it is allowed by the great majority
of critics that it contains a definite historical allusion to Clement, the author
of the Epistle from the Roman Church to the Corinthians, and the comment of Lightfoot
is perfectly just—‘the allusion in Hermas seems to be an obvious recognition of
the existence of this letter. . . . Clement is represented as the writer's contemporary,
who held a high office, which constituted him, as we might say, foreign secretary
of the Roman Church.'Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 348. Precisely. But such a description surely implies that at
the time Clement was occupying what can only be
described as a subordinate position,
since he was charged with secretarial duties entrusted to him by others. The particular
charge was one that might very well be assigned to a younger member of the presbyterate
distinguished among his colleagues for wider culture and greater familiarity with
literary Greek. The mere fact that his name is here coupled with that of Grapte,
apparently a deaconess, is of itself a proof that the Clement of Hermas' second
Vision had not yet become at the close of a long and honoured career the venerated
bishop of 96 A.D.
Nothing is known of Grapte outside of this reference, and some
critics have supposed that the name was not that of a real woman, but is used here
allegorically. But if so, then is it not reasonable to suppose that the whole passage
is allegorical, not historical? If Grapte be a mere creature of Hermas' imagination,
why not Clement? But those who seek in this way to evade the difficulties attending
this passage, which is so important for fixing the dates both of Clement's Epistle
and of ‘The Shepherd,' have really no justification for taking refuge in allegory.
The names Graptus and Grapte though rare are both of them to be found in contemporary
inscriptions. One of these inscriptions is particularly interesting,C.I.L. xii. 3637:
m. ARRECINO CLEMENTE II
L. BAEBIO HONORATO
cos
IVLIVS.GRAPTUS.MAG.
MAESOLEVM.EXCOLVIT.ET.VT.ESSET.FRVns
ornaviT.POSITIS.ARBORIBVS.VITIBVS.ROSAriis idem
OBLATA.SIBI.A.COLLIBERTIS.IMMVNITATE ET TITVLO.
qVO.BENIVOLENTIA.EIVS.CONTINERETVR
ne.QVA.PARTE.VTILITATIBVS.EORVM.
qvAVIS.VIDERETVR.IMMVNITATEM
reMISIT.ET.TITVLO.QVEM.DE.SVO.
posVIT. CONTENTVS.FVIT.
Emended by Mommsen.
as it brings
into collocation the names of Clemens and Graptus. It tells how a certain Julius
Graptus adorned a mausoleum with plantations in
the year when M. Arrecinus Clemens was consul for the second
time, in other words in the year 93 A.D. Another inscription,1. C.I.L. xii. 4822:
GRAPTE VXOR
a fragment, contains
the words Grapte uxor. This Julius Graptus and Grapte the deaconess may well have
been the children of Nero's freedman Graptus, described by Tacitus as active in
his master's service in the year 59. Arrecinus Clemens was a near relation of the
imperial Flavians; if he were at the same time an elder brother of Clement the
bishop, then at once the mystery of the high family connexion which the Clementine
romances have woven around the name of the bishop disappears and becomes explicable.
That such a relationship existed is no mere random suggestion. It is one which,
as I shall endeavour to show elsewhere, is well deserving of careful examination.See Lecture VIII. pp. 227– 35, and Note D of the Appendix.
LECTURE VIII
Daniel, xi. 3, 6: ‘And the king
shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself
above every god till the indignation be accomplished.'
During the period which followed the accession of the
Flavian dynasty to the Imperial throne the Church in Rome seems to have lived in
comparative repose. For more than a quarter of a century after the martyrdom of
St. Paul there is no record of any violent persecution of the Christians. But there
is no reason to believe that the ban under which those professing the Christian
faith lay since the Neronian persecution of 65 A.D. was in any way lightened or
removed. The Christians were then condemned for crimes which were summed up by Tacitus
as constituting ‘hatred of the human race,' in other words they were condemned
as enemies of the Roman state and people. The mere confession of the Christian name
henceforth in itself entailed punishment. The principle of action, which Tertullian
calls the Neronian Institution, continued to be the settled policy of the Roman
government. This did not mean that the Christian so long as he lived quietly and
did nothing to bring himself under the notice of the police was sought out and dragged
before the magistrate. But it did mean that he was an outlaw, liable as such at
any moment to be dealt with summarily by the authorities, as a mere matter of police
administration. No regular judicial trial was needed, the inquiry (cognitio) was
confined to the establishment of the charge of being a Christian, and once established
by the confession of the accused the death penalty followed.
The policy of the Flavian emperors, Vespasian, Titus,
and—during the first part of his reign—Domitian, was on the whole
both towards Jews and Christians one of singular moderation. After the merciless
suppression of the terrible revolt in Judaea and the destruction of Jerusalem and
its Temple, the position of the Jews in the empire was however no longer the same.
As a political entity, a nation in any sense of the word, they had ceased to exist,
they were but a number of separate communities scattered throughout the Roman world.
But Vespasian granted to them a continuation of the religious privileges they had
hitherto enjoyed on condition that all Jews were registered and paid to Roman officials
as a tax for the maintenance of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus the didrachma
that they had previously contributed for the support of the Temple at Jerusalem.Josephus, Bell. Iud. vii. 6. 6; Dion Cassius, lxvi. 7. This conciliatory attitude
of Vespasian and Titus to the Jewish Diaspora was due in part to the fact that the
non-Palestinian Jews had taken no share in the revolt and that they were financially
useful, in part to the influence of Agrippa II and his sister, who lived at Rome
on terms of close intimacy with the Imperial family. Vespasian had also special
cause to be grateful to the Jew, Tiberius Alexander, who was the first to proclaim
him emperor at Alexandria and who secured the allegiance to him of the legions in
Egypt, 1 July 69. See Tac. Hist. ii. 79.
But the very fact of this registration for fiscal purposes served to accentuate
the distinction between Jew and Christian the more clearly. The Christian Church
could no longer find shelter under the shadow of the privileges of the synagogues.
That Titus was himself well aware of the difference, and that he was personally
hostile to Christianity, is shown by an interesting passage in the fourth-century
historian, Sulpicius Severus, which in the opinion of scholars is generally regarded
as an extract from one of the lost books of Tacitus. It tells of a council held
by Titus at the time of the final storming of Jerusalem to decide whether the Temple
should be destroyed or not. Titus himself, it is reported, with some of his officers
held that it was necessary, ‘so as to abolish more completely the religion both
of Jews and Christians, since these religions, although opposed to
each other, both sprang from the same origin; the Christians had issued
from the Jews; if the root were taken away, the stem would quickly perish.'Sulp. Severus, Chron. ii. 30. 6: ‘Fertur Titus adhibito consilio prius deliberasse
. . . at contra alii et Titus ipse evertendum templum in primis censebant quo plenius
Iudaeorum et Christianorum religio tolleretur; quippe has religiones, licet contrarias
sibi, iisdem auctoribus profectas: Christianos ex Iudaeis extitisse: radice sublata, stirpem facile perituram.' With
the destruction of the Temple and the crushing out of the revolt, however, the situation
was changed, moderate and statesmanlike views prevailed, the Jews secured religious
toleration and lenient treatment, and no systematic persecution was directed against
the Christians so long as Titus lived or for some years after his untimely death.
There is no contemporary Christian writing which throws any light upon the state
of the Church during this time, unless it be ‘The Shepherd' of Hermas. This remarkable
work bears every mark from internal evidence of being a product of the Flavian age.
We have already seen in the last lecture that the author speaks of a certain Clement,
who, if not the well-known writer of the ‘Epistle to the Corinthians,' which is
the general opinion, must be a fictitious personage. Were it not for certain statements
in the documents known as the ‘Muratorian Fragment on the Canon' and the ‘Liberian
Catalogue' probably few would have given to ‘The Shepherd' a later date than the
beginning of the second century. The reference to Hermas and his book by the Muratorian
writer runs thus:
. . . ' pastorem uero
nuperrim e temporibus nostris in urbe
roma herma conscripsit sedente cathe
tra urbis romae aeclesiae pio eps fratre
eius et ideo legi eum quidē oportet se pu
plicare vero in eclesia populo neque jnter
apostolos in fine temporum potest.'
Zahn, Gesch. N.T. Kanons, p. 8; both Zahn and Lightfoot render nuperrime by νεωστί.
‘. . . very lately in our times Hermas wrote “The Shepherd”
in the city of Rome while his brother Pius, the bishop, was sitting in the chair
of the Church of the city of Rome, and therefore it ought to be read; but it
cannot, to the end of time, be placed either among the prophets who
are complete in number, nor among the Apostles for public lection to the people
in church.' Zahn in his ‘Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons' makes this
comment: ‘Careful and impartial reading of “The Shepherd” would have shown the Fragmentist that the same must have been written a considerable time before the
episcopate of Pius. He who holds the book, despite the name of Clement (Vis. ii.
4) and many other signs, as a work dating from about 145, must hold it to be a pseud-epigraphic
fiction, which the Fragmentist throughout does not.'‘Denn aufmerksame and unparteiische Lesung des Hirten würde dem Frg. gezeigt
haben dass derselbe geraume Zeit vor dem Episkopat des Pius geschrieben sein will.
Wer das Buch trotz des Namens Clemens (Vis. ii. 4) and vieler anderer Anzeichen
für ein Werk aus der Zeit vom 145 hielt, musste es für eine pseudepigraphische Fiction
halten, was der Frg. durchaus nicht thut.'—Zahn, Gesch. N.T. Kanons, ii. 113. The statement in the Muratorian
extract quoted above is in fact, from whatever point of view it be regarded, a blunder
of the writer who is called by Zahn ‘the Fragmentist.' The dilemma is one from
which there seems to be no possibility of escape.
Dr. Lightfoot has very convincingly shown that this Muratorian document contains
a literal translation into Latin (somewhat corrupted in transmission) of a Greek
metrical original, and also that there are strong reasons for assigning the authorship
to Hippolytus. The literary activity of this famous Roman writer during the closing
years of the second and the first quarter of the third century was very great. The
‘Muratorian Canon' may probably be dated from 185 to 200 A.D.Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. ii. pp. 405–13. The ‘Liberian
Catalogue,' it is generally agreed, was largely dependent on a later work of Hippolytus,
the ‘Chronology.' Now in the ‘Liberian Catalogue' to the notice of Pope Pius
I the following statement is appended: ‘under his pontificate his brother Hermes
wrote a book in which is contained the Mandate which an angel gave to him, when
he came to him in the garb
of a shepherd.'‘Sub huius episcopatu frater eius Ermes librum scripsit, in quo mandatum continetur,
quod ei praecepit angelus, cum venit ad illum in habitu pastoris.' Lightfoot, Apost.
Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 254. Lelong, Le Pasteur d'Hermas, p. xxvi. Duchesne,
Lib. Pont. vol. i. p. 4. Harnack, Chronologie, pp. 175 and 258–9. The two passages, Muratorian and Liberian, are derived
in fact from a common source, most probably Hippolytean. But an examination of the
character of this source may well make one distrustful of its strict accuracy as
regards names and dates. The ‘Liberian Catalogue' contains a number of strange
errors. The deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul are stated to have taken place in 55
A.D. Clement succeeds Linus in 67 A.D., and Anencletus, the real successor of Linus,
is duplicated and follows Clement, first at Cletus, then as Anacletus. Clement's
death is recorded as having occurred sixteen years before he became bishop according
to the generally received date.In 76 A.D. instead of 92 A.D. Nor were the errors confined to the first-century
episcopates. The Hippolytean source is not even accurate about Pope Pius himself,
who in the words of the ‘Muratorian Fragment' lived ‘very recently in our own
times.' Hegesippus and Irenaeus, both of whom stayed some time in Rome soon after
the death of Pius, both give the order of succession as Pius, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherus.Hegesippus visited Rome when Anicetus was bishop and was acquainted with Soter
and Eleutherus. Eus. Hist. Eccl. iv. 22. Irenaeus also spent some time in Rome,
probably in the episcopate of Soter 169–175. In his work on Heresies he gives the
order of succession of the Roman bishops: ‘ . . . then Pius, then Anicetus, then
Soter; lastly the twelfth in order from the Apostles, Eleutherus, who now holds
the office of bishop.' Eus. Hist. Eccl. v. 6; Iren. Haer. iii. 3.
The ‘Liberian Catalogue' makes Pius the successor of Anicetus instead of the predecessor.
The conclusion then that we are compelled to draw is that this particular piece
of external evidence for the date of ‘The Shepherd' cannot be accepted as authoritative
in face of the internal evidence of the book itself. Probability points to its having
arisen through a confusion between the name of the author and the title of his work.
Bishop Pius according to a very ancient tradition had a
brother named Pastor, who was a presbyter.The Acts of Pastor and Timothy, though apocryphal, are of great antiquity.
The ecclesia Pudentiana, the foundation of which in the Baths of Novatus by Pope
Pius I is recorded in these Acts, still exists as the Church of St. Pudentiana—see
note in Lib. Pontificalis under biographical notice of Pius. ‘Hic ex rogatu beatae
Praxedis dedicavit ecclesiam thermas Novati, in vico Patricii, in honore sororis
suae sanctae Potentianae, ubi et multa dona obtulit; ubi saepius sacrificium domino
offerens ministrabat. Immo et fontem baptismi construi fecit.' According to tradition
Pius erected this Church into a titulus, and appointed as its presbyter his brother
Pastor. The provision of a baptismal font probably means that this church became
at this time the Metropolitan Church of Rome. Inscriptions have been found in which
this church is styled ‘titulus Pudentis.' In the excavations now being carried
out for the building of the new Ministry of the Interior it is hoped that discoveries
may be made throwing further light on these traditions. Galland, Bibl. Patrum, i.
672; De Rossi, Bullettino, 1867, pp. 49–58; Marucchi, Elém. d'Arch. Chrét. ii. pp.
381–3, iii. pp. 364–373; Hefele (Patrum Apost. Op. xcv) quotes from Galland ‘Presbyter
Pastor titulum condidit et digne in Domino obiit.' See Appendix, Note C, The Legend
of Pudens. Now in the Latin version
known as ‘Vulgate,' which probably dates from the end of the second century, the
title of Hermas' book is ‘Liber Pastoris.'Lelong, Le Pasteur d'Hermas (1912), Intr. cv: ‘La Version Vulgate (L') remontant
peut-être a la fin du IIe siècle, en tout cas très ancienne . . . nous est parvenue dans
de nombreux manuscrits.' This version was thus contemporary
with the ‘Muratorian Fragment.' It required but a single step therefore to identify
the presbyter Pastor with the author of the allegory. The ‘Liber Pontificalis,'
while embodying the biographical notice of Pius I which is found in the ‘Liberian
Catalogue,' prefaces it by another paragraph in which this Pope is spoken of as
‘The brother of Pastor.' There is no attempt to fuse this statement with that concerning
Hermas—they are separated from one another by intervening matter. Indeed in the
two earliest forms of the ‘Liber Pontificalis' that we possess, the so-called
‘Felician' and ‘Cononian' abridgements, the compiler of the ‘Cononian,' evidently
perceiving the incongruity of the double reference to a brother, deliberately refuses
to apply the term to Hermas, the words ‘frater ipsius' being omitted.Duchesne, Lib. Pont. p. 58. The passage stands thus in the Felician Abridgement:
‘Pius, natione Italus ex patre Rufino, frater Pastoris, de civitate Aquileia,
sedit ann. xviii, mens. iiii, dies iii. Fuit temporibus Antonii Pii a consulatu
Clari et Severi. Sub huius episcopatu frater ipsius
Hermis librum scripsit in quo mandatum continetur quod praecepit angelus
Domini cum venit ad eum in habitu pastoris et praecepit ei ut sanctum
Paschae die dominica celebraretur.' The Cononian Abridgement
omits frater ipsius. Pius is the first of the Roman bishops after Clement to bear
a Latin name. If he were, as stated above, an Italian by birth, it is in the last
degree unlikely that he was the brother of a slave who had the Greek name Hermas,
and who seems to hint that he was of foreign origin. There is no reference to the
Easter controversy in The Shepherd.
The earliest patristic references to ‘The Shepherd' point to its having been
written considerably before the pontificate of Pius I (140–155 A.D.). Irenaeus,
whose sojourn in Rome took place less than twenty years after the death of Pius,
quotes the opening sentence of the ‘First Mandate' as Scripture—‘Well then spake
the Scripture, which saith.'Irenaeus, Haer. iv. 20. 2: καλῶς οὖν εἶπεν ἡ γραφὴ ἡ
λέγουσα· Πρῶτον πάντων π ίστευσον . . . from Hermas, Mand. i. 1. Before a document could be thus—plainly, simply,
and without periphrasis—accepted as Scripture, it must needs have been of some considerable
antiquity, and indeed it may be regarded as evidence that Irenaeus looked upon Hermas
as an ‘Apostolical man,' the Hermas in fact mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans.
Clement of Alexandria in Egypt and Tertullian in Western Africa, in writings
which date about twenty years later than that of Irenaeus just quoted, and almost
contemporary with the first publication of the ‘Muratorian Canon,' both speak
of ‘The Shepherd' as ‘Scripture.' Of Clement Dr. Salmon saysArticle on ‘Hermas' in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography.
Hilgenfeld in the prolegomena to his edition of Hermae Pastor 1881, p. v), after
giving a list of the passages in which Clement of A. quotes The Shepherd, concludes:
‘. . . Clemens Alex. igitur integro Pastore usus de divinis eius revelationibus ne
dubitavit quidem neque Hermam apostolorum temporibus posteriorem existimasse potest.' :
‘The mutilated
commencement of the “Stromateis' opens in the middle of a quotation from “The
Shepherd” and about ten times elsewhere he cites the book, always with a complete
acceptance of the reality and divine character of the revelations made to Hermas.'
TertullianTertullian, De Oratione, xii.: ‘Quod assignata oratione assidendi mos est
quibusdam, non perspicio rationem, nisi quod pueri volunt. Quid enim, si Hermas
ille cuius scriptura fere Pastor inscribitur, transacta oratione non super lectum assedisset,
verum aliud quid fecisset, id quoque ad observationem vindicaremus?' The actual
words of the Latin version of the Pastor referred to occur at the beginning of the
Fifth Vision: ‘quum orassem domi, et consedissem supra lectum, intravit et quidam
reverenda facie etc.' See Hefele, Patr. Apost. Op. p. 345. Hilgenfeld's comment
is ‘non vero ”scripturae” auctoritatem ipsam sed solum argumentum inde haustum
[Tertullianus] impugnavit.' Proleg. iii. That Tertullian used the Latin version
of Hermas—i.e. the Vulgate version, and that this Liber Pastoris was read publicly
in the Churches of Provincial Africa at the opening of the third century, is the
opinion of Harnack. Introd. to edition of Hermas' Pastor by Gebhardt and Harnack, p. xlviii. before he became a Montanist in his treatise
‘De Oratione' rebukes the custom of sitting down for prayer, the origin of which
he attributes to the opening words of the fifth Vision of ‘The Shepherd.' This
assigns to ‘The Shepherd' an authority which could only belong to a book long
received as the work of an inspired man. OrigenOrigen, Comm. on Rom. xvi. 14: ‘quae scriptura valde mihi utilis videtur
et ut puto divinitus inspirata.' Hefele, Proleg. xciii. Again in his Comm. on Hosea
Origen refers to the building of the tower in Hermas, Vis. iii. ii. 16, 17 in a
passage beginning with καὶ ἐν τῷ Ποιμένι and ending with
σημαίνει ἡ γραφή. See
Hilgenfeld, p. 15. This expresses his attitude to The Shepherd throughout his works. somewhat later in the third century
gives as his opinion (based no doubt on tradition) that the Hermas mentioned in
the Epistle to the Romans was the writer of ‘The Shepherd' and adds ‘this scripture
seems to me very useful and as I think divinely inspired.' Such testimonies—and
there are none of like date (save the ‘Muratorian Fragment') of an adverse character—if
not conclusive, point unmistakeably to the work of Hermas having already about it
the hallowing consecration of age and the reverence due to a sub-apostolic writing.
The contents of this strange book are divided into two parts. The first part
contains a series of five Visions. In the last of these Visions a noble-looking
man in the garb of a Shepherd, and who is named the Angel of Repentance, appears
to Hermas, and bids him write down a series of Precepts or Mandates, and of Parables
or Similitudes,
which he had come to deliver to him. The second part of the work contains
the twelve Mandates and the ten Similitudes, which he received from the mouth of
the Shepherd. It is not my intention to discuss the question whether the autobiographical
details in this book belong to the real life-story of a genuine Hermas, nor again
the question whether the two parts of the work are from the hand of the same author.
There are few in the present day who have doubts on either of these questions, and
I shall assume the unity of authorship of a man, who while conveying instruction
and warning, moral and doctrinal, under allegorical forms is dealing all the time
seriously with the religious experiences and spiritual failings and trials of his
own personal life and of the contemporary life of the Christian Church in Rome.The question of the unity of the work has been set at rest by Link, Die Einheit
des Pastor Hermas, 1888, and Baumgaertner, Die Einheit des Hermas Buchs, 1889.
But these assumptions being granted, it will at once be seen that the use that can
be made of ‘The Shepherd' as an illuminating historical document depends almost
entirely upon its date.
It has already been suggested that the Muratorian Fragmentist blundered in his
assertion that the work of Hermas was written during the episcopate of his brother
Pope Pius I, because he confused the author of ‘The Pastor' with a well-known brother
of the bishop, who actually bore that name. Now the very first line of Hermas' book
compresses into the briefest compass the life-story of the writer's youth. ‘He
who brought-me-up sold me into Rome to a certain Rhoda.'ὁ θρέψας με πέπρακέν με Ῥόδῃ τινὶ εἰς Ῥώμην. Vis. i. 1. θρεττός =
Lat. verna, a slave born and brought up in a house. Hilgenfeld quotes Pliny, ep. ad Traian.
66: ‘quos vocavit θρεπτούς qui liberi nati expositi, deinde sublati a quibusdam
et in servitute educati sunt.' The preposition is here seems to be used as meaning
that Hermas was brought to Rome from elsewhere to be sold. This implies that Hermas
had either been born a slave in the house of the vendor, who did not live at Rome,
or what is from the form of the expression—ὁ θρέψας—quite probable, that he had been
a castaway
child whom the above-mentioned master had taken care of and brought
up as a slave. In the last case his parentage would be unknown and he would have
no brother. If, however, he were born a slave, three things must be postulated
before the Muratorian statement can be accepted: (1) that in this slave household
relationships were recognised; (2) that both Hermas and his brother must have been
sold in Rome and afterwards became freedmen; (3) that the brother laid aside his
original Greek slave name for that of Pius. Negative evidence is never conclusive,
but it is certainly very strange that, if Hermas wrote his book during his brother's
episcopate, there should not be a single reference to that brother's existence in
a work in which the author several times speaks of his family and, as has been said,
repeatedly deals with the condition, organisation, and affairs of the Church.
The allusion to Clement as a living man, entrusted with the task of communicating
with foreign cities, seems to fix the date at which the Visions were written, as
being previous to the accession of the said Clement to the episcopate, i.e. before
92 A.D. How hopeless is the attempt to combine a belief in the historicity of this
personal reference to Clement, as a contemporary occupying an important position
in the Roman Church, with an acceptance even in a modified form of the statement
of the Muratorian Fragmentist is exemplified by Harnack in his ‘Chronologie der
Altchristlichen Literatur.'Harnack, Chronologie, pp. 262–7. Harnack will not admit for a moment that the paragraph
about Clement and Grapte is ‘fiction,'Harnack, Chronologie, p. 265: ‘Dass diese Worte [the passage about Clement
and Grapte] eine “Fiction” seien, ist eine Annahme, die sich nicht begründen
and die sich nicht halten lässt, wenn man sie durchdenkt.' so he meets the difficulty first by extending
the life of Clement to 110 A.D., then by imagining the ‘Shepherd' to have been
written in instalments during a period of some thirty-five years, the original ‘little book'
consisting of a portion of Vision II only. But while admitting that
the work of Hermas shows evident traces of
gradual growth to completion, it seems to me quite clear that no great
interval of time can have separated the first portion written from the last. From
beginning to end the same conditions obtain throughout both as regards Hermas personally
and as regards the internal condition and the trials of the Church. In that very
Vision II which Harnack regards as the oldest part of the book, ‘a great tribulation'
is announced as coming, and in Vision IV the announcement is repeated; but although
past persecutions are described in the earliest ‘Visions' and latest ‘Similitudes,'Compare Vis. ii. 2. 7 and iii. 2. 1, with
Sim. viii. 3. 6, 7, and ix. 28.
they differ in no way in character, and there is nowhere any allusion to the
‘great tribulation' as having come. Again in the ‘Visions'Vis. i. 3, ii. 2. 2-5,
3.1; iii. 6. 7, with
Sim. vii. τῶν οὖν μετανοούντων
εὐθὺς [εὐθέως] δοκεῖς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἀφίεσθαι; ‘Numquid ergo,' ait, ‘protinus putas
aboleri delicta eorum, qui agunt poenitentiam?' Hermas is represented
as having lost his wealth and been ruined because of the wrong-doings of his family.
This punishment has fallen upon him for his neglect in not admonishing his children,
who are invited to penitence and are promised forgiveness, if from their heart they
repent. In ‘Similitude VII' we learn that the children have repented from their
heart, and Hermas complains to the Shepherd Angel that nevertheless his afflictions
have not ceased. The reply is ‘Dost thou think that the sins of those who repent
are straightway remitted?‘ The very essence of this rejoinder lies in the fact
that the time of Hermas' affliction—i.e. the period covered by the book—had been
short.
The past persecutions described by Hermas agree with all we know of the Neronian
persecution and its consequences. In Vision III mention is made of those who have
suffered ‘scourges, imprisonments, great afflictions, crosses, wild beasts for
the Name's sake.'Vis. iii. 2. 1: μάστιγας, φυλακάς, θλίψεις
μεγάλας, σταυρούς, θηρία.. See also Vis. ii. 2. In Sim. IV. we read of ‘sufferers for the sake of the name
of the Son of God, who suffered willingly with their whole heart and gave up their
lives. These when brought before the authority and
questioned did not deny, but suffered readily'; of others as ‘fearful
and hesitating, who reasoned in their hearts whether they should deny or confess
before they suffered'; of others again—‘the double-minded'—who at the first rumours
of persecution ‘through cowardice sacrifice to idols and are ashamed of the name
of their Lord.' We find in these references a remarkable agreement with the references
to the Neronian persecution in 1 Peter, Hebrews, the Apocalypse, 1 Clement and the
‘Annals' of Tacitus, both as to the punishments inflicted, and the various categories
into which the accused were divided, the willing and courageous martyrs, the more
timid and doubtful sufferers, and the renegades and apostates, who denied their
faith.Sim. ix. 28, passim: ὅσοι ἐπ᾽ ἐξουσίαν ἀχθέντες ἐξητάσθησαν καὶ οὐκ
ἡρνήσαντο ἀλλ᾽ ἔπαθον προθύμως . . . ὅσοι δὲ δειλοὶ καὶ ἐν δισταγμῷ ἐγένοντο καὶ
ἐλογίσαντο ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν, πότερον ἀρνήσονται ἢ ὁμολογήσουρι καὶ ἔπαθον
. . . ὑμεῖς δέ οἱ πάσχοντες ἕνεκεν τοῦ ὀνόματος δοξάζειν ὀφείλετε τόν θεὸν . . .
δοκεῖτε ἔργον μέγα πεποιηκέναι ἐάν τις ὑμῶν διὰ τὸν θεὸν πάθῃ. Sim. ix. 19. 1:
ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου ὄρους τοῦ μέλανος οἱ πιστεύσαντες τοιοῦτοί εἰσιν· ἀποστάται καὶ
βλάσφημοι εἰς τὸν Κύριον, καὶ πρόδοται τῶν δούλων τοῦ θεοῦ. τούτοις δὲ μετάνοια
οὐκ ἔστι, θάνατος δὲ ἔστι. Sim. viii.: τινὲς δὲ αὐτῶν εἰς τέλος ἀπέστησαν·
οὗτοι οὖν μετάνοιαν οὐκ ἔχουσιν· διὰ γὰρ τὰς πραγματείας αὐτῶν ἐβλασφήμησαν
τὸν Κύριον καὶ ἀπηρνήσαντο. Compare 1 Pet. iii. 13-17:
ἀλλ᾽ εἰ πάσχοιτε δήὰ
δικαιοσύνην, μακάριοι. τὸν δὲ φόβον αὐτῶν μὴ φοβηθῆτε, μηδὲ ταραχθῆτε· . . .
ἔτοιμοι δὲ ἀεὶ πρὸς ἀπολογὶαν παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντι ὑμᾶς, and iv. 12-19:
εἰ ὀνειδίζεσθε ἐν ὀνόματι Χριστοῦ, μακάριοι. . . . εἰ δὲ ὡς Χριστιανός, μὴ αἰσχυνέσθω,
δοξαζέτω δὲ τὸν Θεὸν ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ. Heb. vi. 4-8: Ἀδύνατον γὰρ τοὺς ἅπαξ
φωτισθέντας . . . καὶ παραπεσόντας, πάλιν ἀνακαινίζειν εἰς μετάνοιαν . . . τὸ
τέλος εἰς καῦσιν. x. 32:
πολλὴν ἄθλησιν ὑπεμείνατε παθημάτων . . . ὀνειδισμοῖς
τε καί θλίψεσι θεατριζόμενοι· . . . τὴν ἁρπαγὴν τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ὑμῶν μετὰ χαρᾶς
προσεδέξασθε. Hermas himself
appears to have been among those who had lost their possessions for their faith.
Vis. ii. 2 (1, 2); iii. 6 (6, 7).
Rev. xii. 11: οὐκ ἠγ̤πησαν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτῶν ἀχρὶ θανάτου.
Also xiv. 9-13, xx. 4, and 1 Clement v. and
vi. Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44: ‘Nero subdidit
reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos
appellabat . . . igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens. . . . It may be gathered also from various passages of ‘The Shepherd' that persecution
was not confined to the one violent outburst, but that at the time when Hermas was
writing those who professed the Christian faith were living if not in peril yet
in continual insecurity, liable at any moment to be called upon to confess or deny
their faith. Such was the state of things which
there is good reason to believe subsisted throughout the first two
decades of Flavian rule.
The constitution of the Church is a subject that has no direct interest for Hermas.
The almost chance references to it in the pages of ‘The Shepherd' are however
of considerable significance and value. The condition of things, we find, has altered
little since Pauline days. The charismatic ministry of apostles, prophets, and teachers
are working side by side with the hierarchical officials—bishops, presbyters, and
deacons. In Vision III. 5, the white stones used for the building of the tower,
which is the Church, are described as being ‘The apostles, bishops, teachers, and
deacons, who have walked in godly gravity, and who have discharged their duties
as bishops, teachers, and deacons for the good of God's elect. Some of these have
fallen asleep, some still are with us.'Vis. iii. 5: οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἀπόστολοι καὶ ἐπίσκοποι καὶ διδάσκαλοι καὶ διάκονοι
οἱ πορευθέντες κατὰ τὴν σεμνότητα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐπισκοπήσαντες καὶ διδάξαντες καὶ
διακονήσαντες ἁγνῶς καὶ σεμνῶς τοῖς ἐκλεκτοῖς τοῦ θεοῦ, οἱ μὲν κεκοιμημένοι, οἱ δὲ
ἔτι ὄντες. Now this passage, which recalls the language
of 1 Cor. xii. 28 and Eph. iv. 11, clearly implies that of the original apostles,
bishops, teachers, and deacons there were some still living when Hermas wrote. It
will be noticed that Hermas omits from this list ‘The prophets,' and elsewhere
throughout this work, but in Similitude XI he treats at length of the difference
between true and false prophets. He was himself a prophet and he is at pains to
claim for himself inspiration and a position of authority. He does not classify
‘The prophets' with the apostles and teachers, because he regards the prophets
apparently as possessing gifts which place them in a category apart. From a number
of passages it may be seen that Hermas, as a prophet, both claimed and exercised
the right of delivering charges and admonitions to the rulers of the Church, and
of speaking publicly in the assemblies.Vis. ii. 2. 6; 4. 2-3;
iii. 8. 11; 9. 7-10;
Sim. ix. 31. 6.
Apostles and teachers are mentioned several times in Similitude IX. In one curious
passage Hermas tells how those of these apostles and teachers ‘who had fallen asleep
in the power and faith of the Son of God preached to those who had
fallen asleep before them and themselves gave them the seal of their preaching,'
i.e. baptised them.Sim. ix. 16. 5: οὗτοι οἱ ἀπόστολοι καὶ οἱ διδάσκαλοι οἱ κηρύξαντες τὸ
ὄνομα τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, κοιμηθέντες ἐν δυνάμει καὶ πίστει τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκήρυξαν
καὶ τοῖς προκεκοιμημένοις καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔδωκαν αὐτοῖς τὴν σφραγίδα τοῦ κηρύγματος.
In this passage the numbers of these ‘apostles and teachers'
is given as forty, and in the previous paragraph (4) the words ἡ σφραγὶς τὸ ὕδωρ ἐστίν
explain the meaning of ‘The Seal.' The ‘apostles' throughout The Shepherd
is used in the wider sense of ‘missionaries' except in Sim. ix. 17. 1. From this it has been inferred that all the Twelve Apostles
were dead when these words were written. But surely this is not so. The ‘apostles'
of Hermas were the whole body of those chosen and sent out as missionaries by
the Churches. Only those who had ‘fallen asleep' could follow in their Master's
steps and preach to the dead. The position of the charismatic ministry in the days
of Hermas seems in fact to have changed little since St. Paul wrote his First Epistle
to the Corinthians.
Very important historically, however, are certain hints which may be found in
‘The Shepherd' about changes at work in the constitution of the official hierarchy.
Twice Hermas refers to the hierarchy under the general title of ‘chiefs of the Church,'οἱ προηγούμενοι. Vis. ii. 2. 6;
iii. 9, 7. Compare 1 Clem. xxi. 6. οἱ ἡγούμενοι
is found 1 Clem. i. 3 and Heb. xiii. 7, 17, 24.
using the same Greek term as is employed in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in
1 Clement. Only once does the word presbyters occur as the designation of this official
class, when the aged woman, the Church, bids Hermas read the book she has given
him—‘to this city with the presbyters that preside over the Church.' And here the
word for ‘those who preside'Vis. ii. 4. 2: οἱ προιστάμενοι; see
1 Thess. v. 12; Rom. xii. 8; 1 Tim. v. 17. is a technical word found several times in the same
sense in St. Paul's epistles. The references of Hermas therefore to the constitution
of the Church are thus thoroughly primitive, and the picture drawn by him of the
local organisation essentially the same as that which we find in the Pauline epistles. It is clear for
instance that the title episcopus was not yet confined to a single
individual, but was still the common designation of all presbyters who were charged
with the cure of souls. Nevertheless there are signs that an evolutionary movement
was already in progress, which was preparing the way for that transformation in
the signification of the word ' bishop,' which we find already accomplished at the
time when Ignatius wrote his epistles towards the end of the first decade of the
second century. This seems to be the fair and legitimate interpretation of certain
passages of ‘The Shepherd,' to which we will now turn our attention.
Sternly does the Prophet in Vision III rebuke the dissensions among those who
sit in the foremost seats.Vis. iii. 7, 9: νῦν οὖν ἱμῖν λέγω τοῖς προηγουμένοις τῆς ἐκκλησίας κ9αὶ τοῖς
πρωτοκαθεδρίταις· μὴ γίνεσθε ὅμοιοι τοῖς φαρμακοῖς . . . βλέπετε οὖν, τέκνα, μήποτε
αὗται αἱ διχοστασίαι ὑμῶν ἀποστερήσουσιν τὴν ζωὴν ὑμῶν . . . Again in Similitude VIII the Shepherd-Angel speaks of
certain men ‘who, though always faithful and good, were jealous one of another
about the first places and a certain dignity'Sim. viii. 7. 4: ἔχοντες ζῆλόν τινα ἐν ἀλλήλοις περὶ πρωτείων καὶ περὶ
δόξης τινός.
Harnack (Gesch. d. Altchrist. Lit. 1, ‘Chronologie,' p. 175) after quoting these
passages writes: ‘die zuletzt angeführten Stellen mögen darauf hinweisen, dass
der monarchische Episkopat damals in Anzug war; aber von diesem selbst ist in dem
Buche keine Spur zu finden.' It is curious that a critic of the calibre of Harnack
should not see that the statement in the last clause does not and cannot weaken
in the very least the force of the admission previously made. Hermas felt it was
his duty to rebuke the rivalries and dissensions to which the growing power of the
bishop gave rise, but why should he, writing for Roman Christians of his own day,
and not for the enlightenment of far distant posterity, inform his contemporaries
of a fact which was a matter of common knowledge? (δόξης τινός).
‘But these,' he continues, ‘are all foolish to contend thus for the first places. Nevertheless,
when they heard my commands, being good men they cleansed themselves and repented
quickly.' Now knowing, as we do, on grounds approaching to historical certainty
that from the time of the deaths of the apostles Peter and Paul a succession of
presbyters occupied a post of pre-eminence and dignity among their fellows—that
of presiding bishop and official head of the local Church—is it not permissible
to read between the lines that, around this office, heart
burnings and jealousies not unaccompanied by cabals and intrigues
had arisen? During the two long episcopates of Linus and Anencletus, each of twelve
years according to tradition, the office that they held had, we can scarcely doubt,
been gradually drawing to itself more and more of initiative and authority, and
becoming more monarchical in character. If then Hermas wrote, as I am now contending
he did, during the closing years of Anencletus, the long immunity from violent persecution
which the Church in Rome had then enjoyed was precisely a period when in such a
large and mixed community, containing unstable and doubtful elements, strifes and
dissensions about precedence might arise, and ambitious presbyters be found ready
to assert with acrimony and self-assertion their equality of privilege with one
who was nominally only one of themselves, primus inter pares it might be, but still
a presbyter like the rest.
The immunity from persecution, to which I have referred, was, however, not long
to endure, and the severe trial through which the Church had to pass before the
end of Domitian's reign would doubtless be more effective in purifying and cleansing
it from those jealous, self-seeking, and factious elements of which Hermas speaks,
than his rebukes and upbraidings. The coming tribulation, which he predicted as
being at hand, was no doubt that tribulationSt. Matt. xxiv. 21, 29; St. Mark, xiii. 24;
compare 2 Thess. 4-10. which first-century Christianity
expected would precede, in accordance with the Lord's words, the Second Advent and
the final consummation of all things. The prophecy proved true, however, though
in a different sense from that which the prophet intended.
Christian writers have been accustomed to couple together the names of Nero
and Domitian, as the first two persecutors of the Church. It has already been shown
that although the attack of Nero on the Christians was but the violent outburst
of a tyrant, anxious to divert public odium from himself against a body of sectaries
who were generally hated and despised, it had permanent results and
marked the real beginning of what was to be the continuous policy
of the Roman State. The persecution of the adherents of the Christian faith by Domitian
was far less direct, and did not, as may be gathered from the letter of Pliny to
Trajan about sixteen years later, establish any fresh precedents; for had such
fresh precedents been established they would not have escaped the notice of this
writer, who was a contemporary and, as his correspondence proves, a close observer
of current events.
The origin of the persecution of Domitian was not so much religious as fiscal.
The Imperial treasury had been emptied by a series of extravagances. In his search
for fresh sources of income, Domitian bethought him of the tax which Vespasian had
in 70 A.D. imposed upon the Jews, commanding them, as a condition for their religious
privileges being respected, to pay henceforth, as already stated, the didrachma
they had become accustomed to contribute for the support of the Temple and its worship
at Jerusalem to the Roman authority for the maintenance of the Temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus. Hitherto the collection of this tax had been leniently carried out
and had been only demanded from those circumcised Jews who were professed members
of the synagogues. Domitian determined that all who lived more Iudaico, including
the large class of ‘Godfearers' and indeed all who to a greater or less extent
followed Jewish customs, should be liable, and a strict inquisition was in consequence
made.Suet. Domitian, 12: ‘Praeter caeteros Iudaicus fiscus acerbissime actus est;
ad quem deferebantur qui vel improfessi Iudaicam viverent vitam, vel, dissimulata
origine, imposita genti tributa non pependissent.' See Martial, vii. 55. 7. The exact date is not accurately known, but what followed was the bringing
to the notice of the Government the existence of a body of people living after the
Jewish fashion but repudiating any connexion with the synagogues and therefore
having no right to shelter themselves behind the Jewish privileges. Against them
the charge of ‘atheism and Jewish manners' was accordingly preferred, and out
of the fiscal demand there came a series of arrests and trials in which many Christians
suffered.
It must, however, be borne in mind that there does not seem to have been any
organised attack upon the Christian faith as such, but rather that a number of individuals,
both of high rank and of low, became for various causes, during the reign of terror
which marked the closing years of Domitian's rule, suspect to the government, and
paid by their lives or their exile, and in both cases by the confiscation of their
property, the penalty for exciting the fears, the jealousy, or the rapacity of the
tyrant.Suet. Domitian, 3: ‘Virtutes quoque in vitia deflexit; quantum coniectare
licet, super ingenii naturam inopia rapax, metu saevus.' Orosius, vii. 10: ‘Nobilissimos
e senatu, invidiae sirnul et praedae causa . . . interfecit.' Moreover to a man whose proclamations began with the words ‘our God and
Lord Domitian,' and who ostentatiously made the restoration of the national religion
one of the aims of his policy, it was easy under the charges of ‘atheism and Jewish
manners' or ‘of being movers of innovations'Ibid. 10: ‘molitores novarum rerum.' to strike at those who held aloof
from taking part in Caesar-worship or in the religious festivals and spectacles.
Very little, practically nothing, is known of the extent to which the general
body of Christians suffered under Domitian. In as far as persecution fell upon the
humbler classes, it arose, as I have pointed out, not as part of a systematic attack
on the Christian religion as such, but as a result of the stricter exaction of the
didrachma tax. And it was by no means confined to Rome. Wherever colonies of Jews
were settled the fiscal inquisition would be made, and thus the presence of Christian
communities brought to the official notice of the magistrates. In their case the
procedure would be summary. The mere confession of the Name was sufficient to place
the Christian outside the law. He would be asked either to deny the faith or to
suffer martyrdom, and among the large number of those who were but half and half
Christians, doubtless very many conformed to the request and saved their lives.
Eusebius in his ‘Chronicle' quotes the historian Bruttius as stating that many
Christians suffered under Domitian, but the expression
is a very vague one,According to the Latin Hieronymian version (ed. Schöne, ii. p. 163): 'Scribit
Bruttius plurimos Christianorum sub Domiciano fecisse martyrium, inter quos et
Flaviam Domitillam Flavii Clementis consulis ex sorore neptem in insulam Pontianam
relegatam quia se Christianam esse testata sit.' See Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers,
part i. vol. i. p. 108. and obviously the chief interest
of the passage to Eusebius, as it is to us, is its reference to the important fact
that among the many high and influential persons whom the tyrant visited with death
or banishment were certain of his own near relatives who were Christians. It is
around the names of a very small group of individuals that the chief interest of
the Domitianic persecution centres, an interest which has been greatly increased
by recent archaeological discoveries.
The passage from the ‘Chronicle' of Eusebius merely tells us the name of one
of these relatives of Domitian who, according to his authority Bruttius, suffered
banishment because she was a Christian. Her name was Flavia Domitilla, and she
is described in Jerome's Latin version as ‘being a niece of Flavius Clemens the
consul by his sister.' Her place of banishment was the island of Pontia. The Armenian
version of the ‘Chronicle' suggests that there may be in this passage some corruption
of the text,In the Latin translation of the Armenian version of the Chronicle (ed. Schöne,
ii. p. 160) we find: ‘refert autem Brettius, multos Christianorum sub Dometiano
subiisse martyrium; Flavia vero Dometila et Flavus Clementis consulis sororis filius
in insulam Pontiam fugit quia se Christianum esse professus est.' Lightfoot, ibid.
p. 105. In the Syrian Epit. (ed. Schöne, p. 214): ‘Flaviam Domitillam, filiam sororis
Clementis consulis.' nevertheless its general correctness is confirmed strongly by the
parallel passage from the ‘History' of Eusebius, where that writer basing his
statement on the evidence of heathen historians, prominent amongst whom would be
the Bruttius named in the ‘Chronicle,' states that ‘in the fifteenth year of Domitian
amongst many others who suffered persecution was Flavia Domitilla, a daughter of
the sister of Flavius Clemens, one of the consuls at Rome at that time, who for
her witness to Christ was banished as a punishment to the island of Pontia.'Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 18.
Now this evidence of Eusebius, when compared with certain passages in the pages
of Dion Cassius and Suetonius, requires very careful attention. Dion writes (I quote
the abridgement of Xiphilinus)—‘in this year (95 A.D.) Domitian put to death Flavius
Clemens, being then consul, his cousin, and Flavia Domitilla, his relation and the
wife of the same [Clemens]. Both were condemned for the crime of “atheism.” On
this charge were condemned many others who had adopted Jewish customs; some were
put to death, others punished by confiscation. Domitilla was only transported to
the island of Pandateria.'Dion Cassius, lxvii. 14: κἀν τῷ αὐτῷ ἔτει ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸν
Φλαούϊον Κλήμεντα ὑπατεύοντα, καίπερ ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα καὶ γεναῖκα καὶ αὐτὴν συγγενῆ
ἑαυτοῦ Φλαουΐαν Δομιτίλλαν ἔχοντα, κατέσφαξεν ὁ Δομετιανός· ἐπηνέχθη δὲ ἀμφοῖν
ἔγκλημα ἀθεότητος, ὑφ᾽ ἧς καὶ ἄλλοι ἐς τὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἔθη ἐξοκέλλοντες πολλοὶ
κατεδικάσθησαν, καὶ οἱ μὲν ἀπέθανον, οἱ δὲ τῶν γοῦν οὐσιῶν ἐστερήθησαν· ἡ δὲ
Δομιτίλλα ὑπερωρίσθη μόνον ἐς Πανδατερίαν. Now the relationship of this Domitilla to Domitian
is revealed to us plainly by Quintilian,Quint. Inst. Orat. iv. prooem.: ‘Cum mihi Domitianus Augustus sororis suae
nepotum delegavit curam.' who was tutor to the sons of Flavius Clemens
and who states that they were the grandchildren of the Emperor's sister, who also
bore the name of Flavia Domitilla. This daughter of Vespasian died before her father,
but the name of the grand-daughter appears on several extant inscriptions, from
which we learn that the Christian catacomb in which many members of the Flavian
family were buried, and which dates from the first century, was excavated on her
property.See Appendix, Note F, The Cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla. C.I.L. vi. 948, 949, 8942, 16246. There can be no doubt that she was a Christian and that the faith of
Christ had been adopted by others closely related to Domitian. Whether Flavius Clemens
himself was actually a baptised Christian and suffered martyrdom, it is very difficult
to say. The complete silence of Eusebius and of Christian legend and tradition would
rather lead to the conclusion that, though the consul may have been well-disposed
towards Christianity and even lived after the Christian manner, and so have incurred
the charge of ‘atheism,' yet this was not the real cause which
led to his being executed. Like his brother Flavius Sabinus before
him he stood too near the throne for the suspicious and childless tyrant to endure
the presence in Rome of those whose blood-relationship made them possible rivals
and successors. This is borne out by the statement of Suetonius, who after describing
the morbid state of fear and suspicion, amounting almost to semi-madness, in which
Domitian spent his last years, living in constant dread of conspiracy and assassination,
proceeds—‘finally he suddenly put to death on the faintest suspicion, when he had
only just ceased to be consul, Flavius Clemens, his cousin-german, a man of the
most contemptible inactivity, whose sons, then of very tender age, he had openly
destined for his successors, and, discarding their former names, had ordered one
to be called Vespasian, the other Domitian. By this violent act he very much hastened
his own destruction.'Suetonius, Domitian, 15–17: ‘repente ex tenuissima suspicione tantum non
in ipso eius consulatu interemit.' It was in fact by the hand of Stephanus, a freedman and
steward of Domitilla, Flavius Clemens' wife, that the tyrant was stabbed a few months later.
Now Suetonius had previously given an account of the murder of Flavius Sabinus,
the elder brother of Flavius Clemens, by his cousin Domitian for no other reason
than a mistake of a herald, who on Sabinus being chosen at the consular election,
inadvertently proclaimed him to the people not as consul but as imperator,Suetonius, Domitian, 10. and
in the passage quoted above the historian clearly implies that it was on some similar
very slender ground of political suspicion that Flavius Clemens fell a victim to
Domitian's jealousy. Possibly his Christian principles, however laxly held, may
have compelled him during his tenure of office to hold aloof from certain religious
ceremonies and spectacles, thus bringing down upon him the imperial anger. The words
of Suetonius that he was ‘a man of most contemptible inertia'‘Contemptissimae inertiae.' Compare Tacitus' words in reference to his father,
Hist. iii. 65: ‘mitem virum abhorrere a sanguine et caedibus'; 73: ‘Flavium Sabinum
inermem neque fugam coeptantem circumsistunt'; 75: after stating that Flavius Sabinus
had served the state in thirty-five campaigns and with distinction at home and abroad,
Tacitus proceeds: ‘in fine vitae alii segnem, multi moderatum et civium sanguinis
parcum credidere.' It was a change of disposition that was observed at the close
of the life of this tried servant of the State. See Allard, Hist. d. Persécutions, i. pp. 81–115 (ed. 1892). represent a
charge which was frequently brought against the Christians, because
their religious scruples prevented them from taking an active part in the political
life and still more in the cruel and vicious amusements of their time. The same
charge is brought by Tacitus against Flavius Sabinus, the City Prefect during the
latter years of Nero. He was the elder brother of Vespasian and the father of the
Sabinus and Clemens put to death by Domitian. He perished in defending the Capitol
against the German mercenaries of Vitellius in 69 A.D. Tacitus describes him as
at the close of his life ‘mild in character, averse to bloodshed, and sluggish.'
He must in his official capacity have taken part in the persecution of 65 A.D.,
and the effect of what he witnessed may well have been the conversion wholly or
in part of the unwilling persecutor.
The theory of the identity of Flavius Clemens the consul put to death in 95 A.D.
with Clement who was bishop of Rome at that period was at one time seriously put
forward by a number of eminent German scholarsLipsius, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, Erbes, at one time Harnack. but it has now been generally abandoned.
It was pointed out with a certain amount of plausibility that the later Clementine
legend ascribing to the bishop a close connexion with the imperial family was due
to the fact that he was a mere duplication of the consul, and that it was unlikely
that there should be at once in Rome two persons bearing the same name, one of whom
occupied one of the highest official positions in the state, and the other was the
official head of the Christian community. Dr. Lightfoot was able to show conclusively
that this theory of duplication had no foundation and was untenable, but his own
solution of the mystery surrounding Clement the bishop's personality, ‘that he
was a man of Jewish descent, a freedman or the son of a freedman
belonging to the household of Flavius Clemens,'Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i, pp. 59–61. is equally if not
more impossible. Dr. Lightfoot seems to have forgotten that Flavius Clemens was
quite a young man, probably not more than thirty, when he died.Tac. Hist. iii. 69: ‘eoque, concubia nocte, suos liberos Sabinus, et Domitianum,
fratris filium in capitolium accivit.' The children of Sabinus were quite young
in 70 A.D., and Clemens was younger than Sabinus. His own sons were children under
a tutor in 95 A.D. The fact that he did not become consul till that date is of itself
a proof of his youth. The Flavian emperors as a rule reserved the consulships for
members of their own family. Clement the bishop,
unless all that tradition relates of him be false, must have been at least fifty
in 95 A.D. He could not in any case have been the son of a freedman of the younger
man. Again if a freedman he would not have adopted his master's cognomen, but would
have retained his own slave name as cognomen, preceded by the nomen Flavius.
It is somewhat strange, however, that while so many attempts have been made either
to identify the two Clements mentioned above or at least to connect them in some
way with each other, the presence of a third contemporary Clement, who undoubtedly
played a much larger part in Roman public life than either of the other two, has
been overlooked. Yet I am now going to ask you to fix your attention upon this man
and his family relationships, for I believe that by doing so we shall find the clue
to the solution of many difficulties and shall be able to clear up a number of doubtful
points in the history of Roman Christianity at the end of the first century. Here
in the lecture itself I can only indicate briefly and in outline the hypothesis
which I am putting forward, and am perforce reserving for a special note in the
Appendix the fuller discussion of details and of the authorities on which the various
statements and suggestions are based.Appendix, Note D, The Family of Clement the Bishop.
M. Arrecinus Clemens was the son of M. Arrecinus Tertullus Clemens, Praetorian
Prefect under Caligula. From Josephus we learn that this Tertullus Clemens was privy
to the conspiracy which resulted in the murder of that Emperor, and connived at
it. From the same authority comes the information that after the assassination Herod
Agrippa was allowed to act as an intermediary between the Praetorian
troops and the soldiery who obeyed the Senate. The result was that Claudius who
had been acclaimed Emperor in the camp became quietly possessed of the reins of
power without bloodshed. He owed thus his peaceful accession to the throne in no
small measure to the authority exercised by the Praetorian Prefect. How great that
authority and influence was may be gathered from the fact that his son thirty years
later was welcomed by the guards as their Prefect because the memory of his father
was still fresh among them.
It should be noted that it is from the Jewish historian, Josephus, only that
the information comes as to the parts played by Arrecinus Tertullus Clemens and
Herod Agrippa before and after Caligula's death, and it seems to me a perfectly
legitimate inference that the Prefect was a friend of Agrippa and may indeed like
many other well-to-do Romans have felt the attraction of the synagogue and to a
greater or less extent been a ‘God-fearer.' Be this as it may, it is certain that
Titus Flavius Vespasianus was a relative of Tertullus Clemens. Vespasian, Suetonius
tells us, was brought up from early childhood by his grandmother Tertulla, a name
which suggests not merely the bond of kinship between the Prefect and the future
Emperor but the likelihood that in their youth they were closely associated. Evidence
of the friendliness of the relations which continued to subsist between the two
men in later life is not wanting. Titus, the son of Vespasian, was born in 39 A.D.
in very poor circumstances, but shortly after the accession of Claudius both Vespasian
himself and his elder brother T. Flavius Sabinus obtained commands in the expedition
to Britain under Aulus Plautius. In his father's absence we find Titus at Court,
as the companion of Britannicus, the son of Claudius. Can we not see here signs
that Clemens to whom Claudius owed so much had used his influence with the Emperor
on behalf of his kinsmen? As a further mark of the closeness of the relations between
them we find that Titus, while still little more than a boy, was married to Arrecina
Tertulla, daughter of Clemens. Domitian, the
younger son of Vespasian, was not born until 51 A.D., after his father's
return from Britain, and he seems to have found a home with his uncle, T. Flavius
Sabinus, during the years 57–69 A.D., when Vespasian was abroad and Sabinus filled
the post of Prefect of the City. This elder brother of Vespasian did not marry till
late in life, probably not until after he settled in Rome in 57 A.D. at the close
of his governorship of Moesia, for, as we have already seen, his children were
still young when he was murdered in December 69 A.D. Domitian, then aged eighteen,
was with his uncle in the Capitol, when it was stormed by the Vitellian troops,
and narrowly escaped with his life, to be immediately afterwards saluted as Caesar
and invested with consular authority. One of his first acts was the appointment
of his relative, M. Arrecinus Clemens, who is described by Tacitus as being in very
great favour with Domitian, to the post of Praetorian Prefect, formerly held by
his father. This younger Arrecinus Clemens was afterwards twice consul (suffect)
in 73 A.D. and 94 A.D., and from 8z A.D. onwards a member of the Imperial Council.
Shortly after his second consulship he was suddenly condemned and put to death by
Domitian, who, as Suetonius tells us, treated him with every mark of regard up to
the last. The death of this active and prominent man can therefore have occurred
only about a year before that of Flavius Clemens.
It is not surprising that there should be confusion and mistake on the part of
later Christian writers, who knew nothing of Clemens the consul of 94 A.D., the
man of twenty-five years official experience, but attributed all references in
heathen writers to a consul of that name to Flavius Clemens, thereby creating entanglements
and difficulties. For instance it has been seen that Eusebius, referring to BruttiusAt Torre Marancia, on the Via Ardeatina, on a plot of land adjoining the entrance
to the cemetery of Domitilla, a burial place of the Bruttian gens has been discovered.
The historian was probably Bruttius Praesens, the friend of Pliny the Younger. De
Rossi, Bull. Arch. crist. 1865, p. 24; 1875, p. 74. Marucchi, Roma Sotterranea Cristiana,
N.S. tone. i. 22–23, 29–30. See also App. Note F, Cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla.
as his authority, both in his ‘History' and in his
‘Chronicle,' states that Flavia Domitilla, the niece [the sister's
child] of Flavius Clemens, one of the consuls at that time, had been exiled because
of her profession of the Christian faith to the island of Pontia. There is no mention
in either passage of the death of Flavius Clemens. Further, Jerome, in one of his
epistles giving a description of the visit of a certain Paula in 385 A.D. to the
island of Pontia, declares that she saw there the cells in which Flavia Domitilla
had spent a long exile.
On the other hand Suetonius and Philostratus record the death of Flavius Clemens
without any hint of any punishment falling upon any Flavia Domitilla. Dion Cassius,
however, declares that both Flavius Clemens and his wife Flavia Domitilla were accused
of the crime of ‘atheism' and that he was executed, while his wife was banished
to the island not of Pontia but of Pandateria.
This is all very puzzling, but there is yet another source of information available
to us—the legendary ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles.' These ‘Acts,' though late in
date and as regards many details pure fiction, rest nevertheless on a solid basis
of real fact, for a memorial of Nereus and Achilles (according to the story the
martyred chamberlains of a Flavia Domitilla, whose mother Plautilla was the sister
of Clemens the Consul) has been found in the cemetery of Domitilla, where the
‘Acts' tell us the bodies were laid. Flavia Domitilla herself, so runs this narrative,
had been banished to the island of Pontia because as a Christian she wished to live
in virginity, and had refused to marry in accordance with the Emperor's commands.
To say that such an incident is one common to early Christian hagiography is no
argument against its authenticity in this or any particular instance. It is a simple
matter of fact that the precepts of St. Paul on the subject of virginity had a far-reaching
influence, and that during the age of persecution many Christian women did regard
the state of life commended by the Apostle as the highest ideal of discipleship.
Plautilla's name, I can see no reason to doubt, was found in the original source
which furnished the
materials for the sixth-century ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles.' I
am inclined, however, to connect the disobedience and banishment of Domitilla the
virgin with the sudden disgrace and execution of Arrecinus Clemens, she being his
niece and Plautilla his sister. Eusebius states that the Domitilla banished to the
island of Pontia was the niece of Flavius Clemens, and he quotes the contemporary
historian Bruttius as his authority. Apart from other reasons for believing that
Eusebius must have made a mistake, to which I shall refer directly, I think it more
than likely that he never saw the original narrative of Bruttius at all, but only
some Greek extract from it at second hand, in which the mother of Domitilla was
described, just as she is in ‘The Acts of Nereus and Achilles,' simply as the sister
of Clemens the consul. He naturally would interpret this as a reference to Flavius
Clemens. The same error was committed by the author of the ‘Chronicon Paschale,'
who records that Flavius Clemens was consul both in 93 A.D. and 95 A.D., whereas
it is certain that he was consul for the first time in 95 A.D., the consul in 94
A.D. being Arrecinus Clemens.
There is every mark (except the duplication of names) that the account given
by Dion Cassius of the execution of Flavius Clemens and the condemnation of his
wife, Domitian's niece, to exile in the island of Pandateria is quite distinct
from that recorded by Eusebius on the authority of Bruttius, and with fuller detail
in ‘The Acts of Nereus and Achilles.' Eusebius in mentioning the name of Flavius
Clemens could surely not have refrained from speaking of his fate had the passage
from Bruttius that was before his eyes made any allusion to this last and crowning
act of Domitian's cruelty. No, the incidents connected with the sentences on the
two Flavia Domitillas seem to have been separated by an interval of some twelve
months or more from each other.
Circumstantial evidence is in favour of the conclusion I have adopted. In 95
A.D. Flavius Clemens was, as I have said, still quite a young man. It is therefore
extremely
improbable that he should have had a niece of sufficient age and standing
to have aroused the resentment of Domitian, or that she should have been accompanied
into exile by two soldier-chamberlains, the historical reality of whose martyrdom
and subsequent burial in the cemetery of Domitilla extant memorials testify. Dr.
LightfootLightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. p. 51. sees a discrepancy in the representation of these two men both as soldiers
of the guard and as chamberlains of Domitilla. It is rather an undesigned piece
of confirmatory evidence, if, as I am assuming, this Domitilla were the niece and
the granddaughter of two Pretorian Prefects, one of whom had just served the office
of consul.
But further light may, I think, be thrown upon her personality, which will reveal
still more clearly the causes for the confusion of names to which I have referred.
It never seems to have struck any of the numerous critics and commentators who have
dealt with these questions, that ‘Clemens' was not a cognomen in use among the
Flavian family. If the second son of T. Flavius Sabinus received the cognomen Clemens,
the inference is that he derived it from his mother.
The name of the wife of Flavius Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian, is not recorded,
but he married late in life, and if that wife were Plautilla, daughter of the Praetorian
Prefect, Tertullus Clemens, and sister of Arrecinus Clemens the consul of 93 A.D.,
it seems to me that not merely the difficulties attaching to the scanty
historical references to the Domitianic persecutions, but also those connected
with the more or less legendary traditions relating to the same period, will be
largely removed. Let us examine some of the consequences of the hypothesis that
I have put forward as to Plautilla having been the wife of Titus Flavius
Sabinus, the Prefect of the City from 57 to 69 A.D. According to ‘The Acts of Nereus and Achilles' she was
a Christian convert and died the same year that St. Peter was martyred. Sabinus
was murdered in 69 A.D. and as I have already pointed out there are hints in the
narrative of Tacitus that he,
too, may in his last years have imbibed Christian principles. The
natural guardian of his orphan children would be their uncle M. Arrecinus CIemens,
the Praetorian Prefect of 70 A.D. The two sons as they grew up would no doubt pass
under the direct care of Vespasian himself, but the daughter, Flavia Domitilla,
would remain with her uncle, and would thus be rightly described not as the sister
of Flavius Clemens but as the niece of Arrecinus.
Again, the name Plautilla suggested to De Rossi that her mother's name was likely
to be ‘Plautia.' This suggestion I shall adopt by the further assumption that
the wife of Tertullus Clemens was a sister of Aulus Plautius the conqueror of Britain,
and therefore a relative of Plautia Urgulanilla the second wife of Claudius and
sister-in-law to Pomponia Graecina, whose conversion through Judaism to Christianity
may be dated as having taken place early in Claudius' reign. That Tertullus Clemens
either personally or through his wife had some special Jewish connexion has already
been suggested as an explanation of the particular knowledge shown by Josephus
about the part played by this Praetorian Prefect at the time of the assassination
of Caligula; and if his wife were the sister of Aulus Plautius not only is there
a possibility that she may have shared the religious views of Pomponia Graecina,
but a further reason is adduced for the appointment of both Vespasian and his brother
Sabinus to posts in the army of Britain under that general.
Thus a scheme of relationship between the Flavian and Arrecinian families has
been drawn up, which has at least the not inconsiderable merit of co-ordinating
a number of isolated facts and bringing them into harmony with one another. It will
be found that it is able to answer to a further and still more trying test of its
general accuracy. I have suggested at the close of the last lecture that Clement
the Bishop was a younger brother of M. Arrecinus Clemens the consul. It will be
found, as I then said, that such a suggestion was in no way a random conjecture.
The high position which the famous bishop held, according to
all the traditions that have come down to us, in the estimation of
later generations was due not to his being the author of the Epistle sent by the
Roman Church to the Church at Corinth, but to his being a personal disciple of St.
Peter and at the same time a man of distinguished birth and family connexion. In
the ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles' The bishop is described as being ‘the son of
a brother of Clemens the consul.' The relations between him and St. Peter, the evidence
for which is strong and convincing, render it more probable that he was the younger
brother of Arrecinus. This would be in accordance with what we find in the Clementine
‘Homilies' and ‘Recognitions.' In their accounts of the early life of the bishop,
which are derived from a common earlier source, Clement is represented as the youngest
of his family. In these romances, the biographical chronology is hopeless. The names
of the parents and brothers of the bishop belong to the period of Hadrian and the
Antonines, while his conversion takes place in the reign of Tiberius. The statement,
however, that the father of Clement was a near relative and foster-brother of an
emperor and that his mother was likewise a kinswoman of Caesar can scarcely be the
pure invention of a writer of fiction. There could be no object in a romancer going
out of his way to make such an assertion unless it had behind it a genuine historical
tradition. If Clement, however, were the son of Arrecinus Tertullus Clemens and
of Plautia the sister of Aulus Plautius, his father was a relative and possibly
the foster-brother of Vespasian, his mother a kinswoman of Claudius. It is an interesting
thought that with such parentage he may have gained his early knowledge of the Jewish
scriptures and of the principles of Christianity at the feet of Pomponia Graecina.
Among the victims of Domitian in 95 A.D. was a member of one of the most illustrious
families in Rome—M' Acilius Glabrio.Gsell, Le Règne de l'Empereur Domitien, pp. 294–6; Allard, Hist. des Persécutions, pp. 111–115. While he was consul in 91 A.D. as the colleague
of M. Ulpius Trajanus, the future emperor, he appears to
have excited the suspicion and dislike of Domitian, who in order to
humiliate and degrade him compelled Glabrio to fight with wild beasts in the amphitheatre
adjoining the imperial villa at Albanum. He was victorious but was afterwards exiled.
This punishment did not, however, satisfy the vindictive spirit of the Emperor.
Dion Cassius, after telling of the execution of Flavius Clemens and the banishment
of his wife upon the charge of ‘atheism and Jewish manners,' says that he also
caused Acilius Glabrio to be put to death for the same crimes. Suetonius likewise
states that Acilius Glabrio in his place of exile and several others of senatorial
and consular rank were executed as ‘instigators of novelties'—molitores rerum
novarum.Dion Cassius, lxvii. 12, 14; Suet. Domitian, 10, 19; Juvenal, iv. 93–103;
Fronto, Ep. ad M. Caesarem, v. 23. The character of these charges had for some time given rise to something
more than a suspicion that this M' Acilius Glabrio may have been a Christian. This
suspicion has been converted almost into certainty by the discovery in 1888 by De
Rossi in the first-century cemetery of Priscilla of a gamma-shaped crypt formerly
richly adorned with frescoes, now in a state of ruin, but containing many fragments
of inscriptions showing that this was a burial place of the Acilii Glabriones and
other members of the Acilian Gens.De Rossi, Bull. di Arch. Crist. 1888–89, pp. 15–66, 103–133; Roma Sotterranea,
p. 319; Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, pp. 4–8; Wahl, Römische Quartalschrift,
1890, iv. pp. 305 ff; Marucchi, Arch. Chrétienne, ii. pp. 422–7. See App. Note F,
Cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla. It has been a great misfortune that in this
catacomb, as in that of Domitilla, so much wanton destruction should have been wrought
by the searchers for relics (especially at the beginning of the seventeenth century)
in ignorant disregard of the inestimable historical value of these precious archaeological
records of primitive Roman Christianity. The name Priscilla was not uncommon in
the Acilian family, and it is thought that the particular Priscilla from whom the
catacomb derives its name may have been the mother of M' Acilius Glabrio, the consul
of 91 A.D. These two cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla even in their present
devastated
condition bear witness, which cannot be gainsaid, to the hold which
Christianity had obtained among the upper classes in the reign of Domitian.
This account of the Church in Rome in the first century has had to be compressed
into eight lectures. Now compression implies that certain matters have been passed
over lightly, others selected for special and detailed treatment. This is a true
description of the method that I have followed, and it has consisted in choosing
for more exhaustive and careful examination precisely those questions and subjects
round which controversies have arisen and on which there have been and are strong
differences of opinion. It is, for instance, of vital importance to a right understanding
of the growth of Christianity in the centre of the empire, that the contemporary
documents which throw light upon it should be correctly dated, and to this question
of dates much attention, perhaps some may think a disproportionate amount of attention,
has been given. That, however, depends entirely upon the results achieved by arguments
whose force and validity rest upon the patient unravelling and disentanglement of
a quantity of involved, obscure, and sometimes apparently contradictory evidence.
This I will venture to say, that while only too deeply conscious of the limitations
of my knowledge, it has been my endeavour in these lectures freely, and without
prejudice, to give expression to the conclusions which close personal study of the
documentary and epigraphic evidence has led me to form, in the hope if not of convincing
or converting those who have adopted different views, at least of stimulating inquiry
and arousing fresh interest in some questions that have been regarded as choses
jugees, and to remind those who may do me the honour of reading these pages, that
experience has taught that there are very few indeed even of the so-called ‘accepted
results of criticism' which can be received without the mental reservation of a
note of interrogation.
APPENDICES
NOTE A.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS MENTIONED IN THE LECTURES.
The Crucifixion |
Passover, 29 A.D. |
Martyrdom of St. Stephen |
33 A.D. |
Accession of Claudius |
January 24, 41 A.D. |
Imprisonment of St. Peter |
Passover, 42 A.D. |
St. Peter's 1st visit to Rome |
Summer, 42 A.D. |
Death of Herod Agrippa |
Spring, 44 A.D. |
Prophecy of Agabus |
44 A.D. |
Famine in Judaea |
45–46 A.D. |
Queen Helena in Jerusalem |
45 A.D. |
St. Mark's Gospel written at Rome |
44–45 A.D. |
St. Peter with St. Mark leaves Rome |
45 A.D. |
St. Peter at Jerusalem |
Spring, 46 A.D. |
Barnabas and Saul bring
alms from Antioch to Jerusalem (visit of Gal. ii. 1-10)
|
Pentecost, 46 A.D. |
Barnabas and Saul with
Mark sail from Antioch to Cyprus
|
Spring, 47 A.D. |
St. Peter makes Antioch
the centre of his missionary work
|
47–54 A.D. |
Barnabas and Saul return
from their missionary journey
|
Autumn, 49 A.D. |
Encounter of St. Peter
and St. Paul at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11-14)
|
49 A.D. |
Council at Jerusalem |
late 49 A.D. |
Jews expelled from Rome
by Claudius St. Paul starts from Antioch on his 2nd Missionary Journey
with Silas
|
after Passover, 50
A.D. |
St. Barnabas and St. Mark go to Cyprus |
” ” 50
A.D. |
St. Paul at Corinth |
Summer, 51
A.D.–Spring, 53
A.D.
|
Gallio arrives in Achaia |
April or May, 52 A.D. |
St. Paul at Jerusalem |
Passover, 53 A.D. |
Accession of Nero |
October 13, 54 A.D. |
St. Peter and St. Barnabas at Corinth |
late 54 A.D. |
St. Peter and St. Barnabas in Rome and Italy |
early 55 A.D.–56
A.D. |
St. Paul at Ephesus |
Autumn 53 A.D.–Spring
A.D. |
1st Epistle to the Corinthians from Ephesus |
Autumn 55 A.D. |
St. Paul in Greece |
early summer, 56
A.D.–Passover, 57
A.D.
|
Epistle to the Romans from Corinth |
early in 57 A.D. |
St. Paul at Jerusalem |
Pentecost, 57 A.D. |
St. Paul's imprisonment at Caesarea |
57 A.D.–59
A.D. |
St. Luke's Gospel |
58 A.D.–59
A.D. |
St. Paul arrives in Rome |
February, 60 A.D. |
St. Paul's captivity in Rome |
60 A.D.–62
A.D. |
The Acts of the Apostles |
before 62 A.D. |
Death of Festus |
Summer of 62 A.D. |
St. Peter in Rome (3rd visit) |
63 A.D.–65
A.D. |
The Great Fire of Rome |
July, 64 A.D. |
Persecution of the Christians by Nero |
Spring, 65 A.D. |
The Vatican fête |
May, 65 A.D. |
1st Epistle of St. Peter |
June, 65 A.D. |
Martyrdom of St. Peter |
Summer, 65 A.D. |
Apollonius of Tyana in Rome |
66 A.D. |
Epistle to the Hebrews |
late in 66 A.D. |
Martyrdom of St. Paul |
67 A.D. |
Death of Nero |
June 9, 68 A.D. |
Burning of the Capitol and storming of Rome |
Dec. 19–21, 69 A.D. |
Domitian in power at Rome |
January–June, 70 A.D. |
Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians |
February, 70 A.D. |
St. John exiled by Domitian to Patmos, where he writes the Apocalypse |
Spring, 70 A.D. |
Destruction of the Temple by Titus |
September 7, 70 A.D. |
Nerva consul |
January to April, 71 A.D. |
St. John released from Patmos |
Spring, 71 A.D. |
Anencletus succeeds Linus as 2nd bishop of Rome |
80 A.D. |
Domitian becomes emperor |
September 13, 81 A.D.. |
“The Shepherd” of Hermas |
about 90 A.D. |
Clement becomes 3rd bishop of Rome |
92 A.D.–101
A.D. |
M' Acilius Glabrio consul |
91 A.D. |
M. Arrecinus Clemens consul suffect |
94 A.D. |
T. Flavius Clemens consul |
95 A.D. |
Domitianic persecution |
94 A.D.–96
A.D. |
Assassination of Domitian |
September 18, 96 A.D. |
NOTE B
AQUILA AND PRISCA OR PRISCILLA
In 1888 G. B. de Rossi discovered in the Coemeterium
Priscillae a crypt belonging to the Acilian gens dating from the first century,
but in a very ruinous condition. Among the broken inscriptions of many members of
this noble family one finds the names of Acilius Glabrio and of Priscilla. Both
Priscus and Priscilla or Prisca are cognomina used by this family, as may be seen
by a reference to Pauly's ‘Real-Encyclopädie' under Acilius. The existence of
this elaborately decorated burial-place containing a large number of sarcophagi
seems to point to M' Acilius Glabrio, the Consul of 91 A.D. who was accused of
‘atheism and Jewish
manners' and put to death by Domitian, having been a Christian. It has been conjectured
therefore that the Priscilla after whom the cemetery is named, and who must have
been the owner of the property beneath which the excavations were made (property
which was part of the extensive possessions of the Acilii Glabriones) was a near
relative—aunt or sister—of the victim of Domitian. In this cemetery, according to
the witness of the ‘Liberian Calendar,' of the ‘Itineraries' and of the
‘Liber
Pontificalis,' reposed the bodies of Aquila and Prisca (Marucchi, ‘Eléments d'Archéol.
Chrét.' ii. p. 385) with many other saints and martyrs. The biographical notice
of Leo IV (847–55 A.D.) in the
‘Liber Pontificalis'
states that that Pope removed many bodies within the walls to save them from possible
desecration by the Saracens (Duchesne, ii. p. 115), among these the bodies of Aquila
and Prisca.
The supposition that these two companions of St. Paul were freedmen of the family
of the Acilii Glabriones or connected with them by ties of clientship is highly
probable. Prisca or Priscilla appears to have been a Roman and by the precedence
of her name over that of her husband, as already stated, it has been assumed that
she was of higher position and that the house at Rome was her property. This suggests
that she may have been a daughter of a freedman of the Acilian Priscilla who was
the founder of the cemetery. The Priscilla of the Acts was so named after her. Aquila
was a Jew and a native of
Pontus. Of his Jewish name we are ignorant. He may have been taken
to Rome as a slave and been a freedman of one of the Acilii. Quite possibly, however,
he may have settled in Rome, like so many others, as a craftsman and trader, and
his connexion with the powerful family, perhaps through the influence of Priscilla,
have been one of clientship. As to the name Aquila, the following quotation from
a poem of Ausonius with the title ‘Acilio Glabrioni, grammatico Jun. Burdigalensi'
[214. 3. 4] may explain its origin:
Stemmate nobilium deductum nomen avorum
Glabrio Aquilini Dardana progenies.
The contention of De Rossi, Marucchi and others that the ancient church of St.
Prisca on the Aventine covers the site of the church in the house of Prisca and
Aquila will not bear serious investigation. Of the St. Prisca, virgin and martyr,
who gave her name to the church nothing is really known, but she was a different
person from the Prisca of the Acts and the Pauline epistles. From the fourth to
the eighth century the church is always described as titulus Priscae (Duchesne,
‘Lib. Pont.' i. 501, 517). It was not until the Pontificate of Leo III (795-816
A.D.) that the name titulus Aquilae et Priscae
first appears (Duchesne, ii. p. 20): ‘fecit in titulo beatis Aquile et Priscae
coronam ex argento pens. lib. VI.,' but in this same notice of Leo III occur the
words basilica beate Priscae' and Duchesne remarks that Prisca was still ordinary
at this time (p. 42).
In a MS. preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (Cod. lat. 9697 p.
78) an account is given of the discovery in 1776 of the ruins of a Roman house and
Christian oratory close to St. Prisca with frescoes of the fourth century, but this
ruin was unfortunately destroyed and no trace of it remains. In Bianchini's edition
of the ‘Liber Pontificalis' (P.L. cxxvii. col. 1315) mention is made in the notice
of Pope Zephyrinus (198–217) of a Christian ‘glass'The words of the Lib. Pont.
itself ‘Et fecit constitutum in ecclesia et patenas
vitreas ante sacerdotes in ecclesia, et ministros supportantes, donec episcopus
missas celebraret, ante se sacerdotes adstantes, sic missae celebrarentur,' are
an interesting reference to the rites attending the celebration of the Mass at Rome
in early times: Duchesne, L.P. i. p. 140, makes the comment ‘la mention de patènes
de verre est à remarquer; elles n'étaient certainemeut plus en usage à la fin du
Ve siècle,' found ‘intra antiquae ecclesiae
rudera prope S. Priscam' (de Rossi in ‘Bull. di Arch. Crist.' 1867, p. 48). These
things prove the existence on this spot of a very ancient Christian place of worship,
but nothing more.
NOTE C
THE PUDENS LEGEND
The name of a certain Pudens occurs in St. Paul's Second
Epistle to Timothy (iv. 21):
‘Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens and Linus and
Claudia.' He is not mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, but a large number
of traditions have grown up about him, which connect him with St. Peter rather than
with St. Paul; and in these traditions there is in all probability a basis of historical
fact. In modern times the theory met with strong support, especially among English
writers, that Pudens was the husband of Claudia. They were identified with the Pudens
and Claudia of Martial's ‘Epigrams' (iv. 13, xi. 53), and Claudia was held to be
a British maiden and a daughter of a British chief named Cogidubnus (Martial, xi.
53, ‘CIL.' vii. 11). But it is needless to discuss this hypothesis, for it has
been conclusively shown that the ‘Epigrams' were not written until many years
after the death of St. Paul. The name Claudia moreover was then not uncommon, and
the fact that the names Pudens and Claudia in the salutation are not coupled together,
but separated by the name Linus, is a strong objection prima facie to their being
husband and wife.See Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, part i. vol. i. pp. 76–79.
The ground document for the Pudens Legend is the very ancient ‘Acts of SS. Pudentiana
and Praxedis,' or as it is sometimes called ‘the Acts of Pastor and Timothy.'Bollandist Acta SS. Maii, iv. 297–301.
These ‘Acts' consist of a letter from a presbyter named Pastor (this Pastor appears
in the ‘Liber Pontificalis' as brother of Pope Pius I) to another presbyter named
Timothy and the reply of the latter. The letters are followed by a short appended
narrative. The date of these ‘Acts' is uncertain, and the letters in their present
form are undoubtedly fictitious, but they embody, as can be proved by existing memorials,
a genuine tradition treated as to its details with the usual inventive freedom and
chronological inexactitude.
The story as told in these ‘Acts' is as follows: a certain Pudens, whose mother
was named Priscilla, a Christian of property, who had shown great zeal in entertaining
Apostles and strangers, after the death of his wife consecrated his house as a church
of Christ. This church in the house of Pudens in the Vicus Patricius was erected
into a Roman parish under the name of titulus Pastoris (the Pastor who wrote the
letter being the presbyter placed in charge of this parish). Here with his two daughters
Praxedis and Pudentiana, who as chaste virgins spent their lives in prayer, fasting,
and charitable deeds, Pudens passed his remaining days. The daughters after his
death not only obtained the consent of Pope Pius to the building of a baptistery
adjoining the church, but the bishop drew the plan with his own hand, and frequently
visited the church and offered there the sacrifices to God. On the decease of Potentiana
the letter of Pastor informs us that he and the surviving sister Praxedis placed
the body by the side of that of her father in the Cemetery of PriscillaIt is evidently intended that the Priscilla who gave her name to the cemetery
was the mother of Pudens. on the
Via Salaria.
Here begins what in some MSS. is called the ‘Acts of Praxedis.' Many noble Christians
including Pope Pius came to console Praxedis on her loss, among them a certain Novatus,
described as the brother of Timothy, but nowhere in these ‘Acts' as the brother
of Praxedis and Pudentiana. This is an important point to remember, for most modern
writers following later Martyrologies describe Novatus and Timothy as sons of Pudens.A note in the Bollandist Acta SS. Maii, iv, p. 301, states for instance: Colitur
S. Novatus 20 Iunii etiam Martyrologio Romano adscriptus et dicitur
‘filius S.
Pudentis Senatoris et frater Sancti Timothei Presbyteri et Sanctarum Virginum Praxedis
et Potentianae, qui ab Apostolis eruditi sunt in fide,' quorum nihil probamus.
Novatus having fallen ill, Praxedis and Pastor visited him in his sickness, and
the issue was that he left to them the whole of his property. The letter containing
all this information was sent to Timothy to know what he would wish that they should
do in the matter of his brother's estate. Timothy replies that he is rejoiced at
what his brother has done, and leaves the entire disposition in the hands of Praxedis
and Pastor. The contents of these letters in fact make it absolutely clear that
there was no relationship between the sisters Praxedis and Potentiana and the brothers
Novatus and Timothy.
After the letters comes a narrative by the hand of Pastor of what followed, Praxedis
asked Bishop Pius that the Baths of
Novatus, which at that time were not in use, should be consecrated
as a church. Pius consented and dedicated in the name of Praxedis the Baths, as
a church, within the city in the Vicus Lateranus and he erected it into a Roman
parish, titulus, and consecrated a baptistery to it. That this is the true meaning
of the original and that the words in brackets are a later gloss interpolated by
the writer to explain the existence in his days of a church of St. Pudentiana in
the Vicus Patricius as well as a church of St. Praxedis in the Vicus Lateranus
is almost self-evident. It runs thus: ‘Quod et placuit Sancto Pio Episcopo; thermasque
Novati dedicavit ecclesiam sub nomine beatae Virginis [Potentianae in vico Patricio.
Dedicavit autem et aliam sub nomine sanctae Virginis] Praxedis infra urbem Romam,
in vico qui appellatur Lateranus.' The ‘Acts' had already given an account of
the dedication of the church in the Vicus Patricius at a much earlier period before
the death of Novatus. The ‘Acts' conclude with an account of the burial of Praxedis
by Pastor in the cemetery of Priscilla by the side of her father and sister.
The mistake, which led to the interpolation above mentioned caused the following
note to he appended to the biography of Pope Pius in two MSS. (and their derivatives)
of the ‘Liber Pontificalis': ‘Hic [Pius] ex rogatu beate Praxedis dedicavit
aecclesiam thermas Novati in vico Patricii, in honore Sororis suae sanctae Potentianae,
ubi et multa dona obtulit; ubi saepius sacrificium Domino offerens ministrabat';
Duchesne commenting on this writes: ‘L'auteur de la note paraît avoir mal compris
le texte des Acta, car il ne parle que de l'une des deux églises, rapportant à celle
du Vicus Patricius ce qui est dit de l'intervention de Praxède et des thermes de
Novatus' (Duchesne, ‘Lib. Pont.' i. 133). This note has also misled most modern
writers on the subject.See De Rossi, Bullettino di Arch. Crist. 1867, pp. 49–65; Marucchi, Eléments
d'Arch. Chrét. ii. 364 ff.; Mem. degli Apost. Pietro e Paolo, pp. 110–116;
Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, pp. 110–115; Barnes, St. Peter in Rome, pp.
72–78; Spence-Jones, Early Christians in Rome, pp. 263–7, &c. The two Churches of St. Pudentiana and St. Praxedis are
at this day two of the most interesting churches in Rome, and undoubtedly stand
on the sites of those mentioned in the ‘Acts,' and there is a record of St. Pudentiana
having been restored by Pope Siricius (384–398 A.D.).
It is quite certain, however, that this church was not named after a daughter of
Pudens but after Pudens himself. An inscription ‘Hic requiescit in pace Hilarus
Lector tituli Pudentis' bears the date 528 A.D.
and shows that this was
the correct style. Another inscription of 384
A.D. is ‘Leopardus Lector de Pudentiana
‘ and in the mosaic of the apse (the oldest mosaic in a Roman church) the
Saviour holds an open volume with the words ‘Dominus conservator ecclesiae Pudentianae.'
As Lanciani remarks (‘Pagan and Christian Rome,' p, 112): ‘In course of time
the ignorant people changed the word Pudentiana, a possessive adjective, into the
name of a Saint; and the name Sancta Pudentiana usurped the place of the genuine
one. It appears for the first time in a document of the year 745.' An inscription
of 491 A.D. speaks of certain presbyters
‘Tituli Praxedis.'
The existence, however, of both sisters receives substantiation from the fact
that their tombs and that of Pudens are mentioned in the ‘Liberian Calendar' and
in the ‘Pilgrim Itineraries' as existing in the fourth and fifth centuries in the
Cemetery of Priscilla, where according to the ‘Acta' they were buried. Paschal
I in his great translation of the remains of saints from the catacombs into the
city in 817 A.D. brought the sarcophagi of
SS. Pudentiana and Praxedis from the catacomb to the Church of St. Praxedis, and
the names of both are recorded on a catalogue inscribed on a marble slab to the
right of the altar and their portraits appear in the mosaics of this date, which
adorn the Church (Marucchi, ‘Elém. d'Arch. Chrét.' iii. 325–332).
It is thought that Justin Martyr, when on his trial in 160 A.D. he declared, being interrogated by the
Judge as to his dwelling place, that he lived close to the baths called ‘the Timotine,'
may have been referring to the baths of Novatus as the place where he was accustomed
to worship. As Timothy was the brother of Novatus it is a possible supposition.
The question now arises, was this Pudens of the ‘Acta' identical with the Pudens
of the 2nd Epistle to Timothy. The Bollandists say No. De Rossi, Marucchi, and many
others say Yes, and they get over the chronological difficulty by urging that Pudentiana
and Praxedis may have lived to a very advanced age. But the probabilities against
such a view are almost insuperable. It is much more likely that the Pudens of the
Epistle and the Pudens of the ‘Acta' were father and son. At one time it was the
opinion of De Rossi and his school that the first-century cemetery of Priscilla
was the property of the family of Pudens. He and his daughters were buried in the
cemetery and his mother's name is given in the ‘Acta' as Priscilla. But the discovery
of the crypt of the Acilian gens in this catacomb seemed to render it almost certain
that the cemetery must have
belonged to the family of Acilius Glabrio, the Consul of 91
A.D., in which the names of Priscus, Priscilla
and Prisca are found. De Rossi therefore suggested that Pudens may have himself
been an Acilius. I have however already made another suggestion, i.e. that Priscilla
the mother of Pudens according to the ‘Acta' was an Acilia, and perhaps the aunt
or sister of M' Acilius Glabrio.
The traditions which connect the name of Pudens with the early history of the
Church in Rome are persistent and numerous quite apart from what is recorded in
the ‘Acta' that we have been considering. It is said that the house of Pudens
(the elder Pudens mentioned by St. Paul) was during his stay in Rome the home of
St. Peter. The sella gestatoria, or St. Peter's chair, the oak framework of which
is of great antiquity, is said to have been originally the senatorial chair of Pudens.
The wooden altar at the St. John Lateran again has been in continuous use there
since the fourth century, when it was removed from St. Pudentiana, and that despite
the fact that Pope Sylvester in 312 A.D.
ordered that all altars should henceforth be of stone. Many indeed had been so before,
for the word titulus which signifies a consecrated parish church implies its possession
of a stone altar. In the Church of St. Pudentiana at the present time there is preserved
within the altar a single wood plank reputed to have been left at that church as
a memorial when the altar itself was removed. When Cardinal Wiseman was titular
cardinal of St. Pudentiana he had the plank examined and found that the wood was
identical with that of the altar at the Lateran Church. The reason of its preservation
was the tradition that this altar had been used by St. Peter when he celebrated
the Eucharist in the oratory in Pudens' house. When St. John Lateran replaced St.
Pudentiana as the Cathedral Church of Rome the bishop and the altar moved there
together.Concerning the term titulus, Barnes (St. Peter in Rome, p. 75) writes:
‘A great deal has been written on the origin and use of this word, but it is probable
that it is really derived from its occurrence in the Old Latin version, in the account
of the setting up by Jacob of the altar at Bethel after his wonderful dream: an
account which to this day is read in the service for the consecration of an altar
in a church. “And Jacob said: How terrible is this place; this is no other but
the house of God and the gate of heaven. And Jacob arising in the morning took the
stone which he had laid under his head and set it up for a title (erexit in titulum),
pouring oil upon the top of it.” A “title' therefore, in early Christian usage,
came to be nothing else but a stone altar duly consecrated, and, in a wider sense,
the church that contained that altar and drew its own sanctity from it.'
In the Liber Pontificalis (Duchesne, torn. i. p. 126) of Evaristus, the successor
of Clement as bishop in 101 A.D., it is
recorded ‘hic titulos in urbe Romae dividit presbyteris.'
These
traditions have historically small value in themselves, but it may
safely be said that they could never have arisen and obtained the vogue which we
find them to have had in comparatively early times, had not the Pudens of Apostolic
times and his family after him been active and leading members of the primitive
Christian community in Rome.Bianchini in his Anastasius Bibliothecarius (edn. of Liber Pontificalis in
1718) made the suggestion that Pudens was a member of the Gens Cornelia. In 1778
in the primitive Christian oratory discovered in immediate proximity to the Church
of St. Prisca (supra, p. 243) a bronze tablet was found to one Caius Marius Pudens
Cornelianus offered to this man by a town in Spain expressing gratitude for services
rendered during the time when he filled the office of legate, and stating that he
(Pudens) had been chosen as ‘patron' by the citizens. The date of this tabula patronatus
is 222 A.D:, and its presence gives strong grounds for assuming that the house containing
the Christian place of worship was his property.
The following inscription is of great interest as it belongs to the reign of
Vespasian and contains the names of an Amaranthus, a T. Flavius, a Q. Cornelius
Pudens, and a Chrestus. Marucchi (Rom. Sott. N.S. i. p. 30) states that immediately
adjoining the Cemetery of Domitilla excavated beneath Flavian property lies a property
known as Tor Marancia from a certain Amaranthus; on this are a number of pagan sepulchres
belonging to the Bruttian family; while Eusebius tells us that he derived his information
about the Flavian Christians from an historian named Bruttius [see Note D, p. 256,
and Note F, p. 279).
HILARITATI PVPLIC · · ·
IMP · CAES · VESPASIANI · · ·
SACRVM
TRIBVL · SVCC · CORP · IVN *
· · · · ·
T : COMINIVS AMARANTH : : : ·
T : FLAVIVS · T : F : LVSCV : : : ·
Q : CORNELIVS · Q : F : PVDENT : : ·
CVRATORES : LIBEROR : TRIB : SVC : COR : IVNIOR : : · ·
On the other face occur the words:
PONEN · CVR ·
C · NYMPHIDIVS · CHRESTVS ·
· · · · · ·
DEDIC · XVII K · DEC ·
L · ANNIO · BASSO ·
C CAECINA · PAETO · COS · (i.e. 70 A.D.)
* Tribules succussani. Corpus juniorum.—Muratori, tom. i. p. cccviii.
THE FAMILY CONNEXION OF CLEMENT THE BISHOP.
A Tabular Statment of the Scheme of Relationship (set forth in Lecture VIII) between the
Arrecinian and Imperial Flavian Families.
(1) M. Arrecinus Tertullus Clemens, Prefect of the Praetorian Guard in 41
A.D. (Josephus, ‘Ant.' xix. 1. 6, 7, and
Tac. ‘Hist.' iv. 68.) It is from Josephus that we learn that Clemens was privy to
the conspiracy of Chaerea and others against Caligula and connived at his assassination.
It appears from Josephus that Herod Agrippa came to the Praetorian camp, where troops
had acknowledged Claudius as emperor, and successfully acted as mediator between
them and that portion of the army that obeyed the Senate (Josephus, ‘Ant.' xix.
3. 1, 3; 4. 1, 2, ff.). This information exclusively reported by Josephus may be
taken to imply that Clemens had some connexion, possibly as a ‘God-fearer,' with
the Jewish community at Rome, and that he was a friend of Herod Agrippa.
From Tac. ‘Hist.' iv. 68 it appears that this Prefect was so much beloved by
his troops that his son's appointment as Prefect in 70
A.D. was hailed with joy in the camp, because
the father's memory after so long an interval of time was still held in regard.
Suetonius (‘Titus' 4) tells us that his name was Tertullus, that he belonged
to the Equestrian order, and that his daughter Arrecina Tertulla was the first wife
of the Emperor Titus. An inscription ‘CIL.' vi. 12355 gives his praenomen as Marcus.
(2) Plautia. The name of the wife of (1) is actually unknown. The reasons for
assigning to him, as his wife, a sister of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain,
are stated in Lecture VIII. Plautia would be the sister-in-law of Julia Pomponia
Graecina, and a relative of Plautia Urgulanilla, the second wife of Claudius.
(3) M. Arrecinus Clemens, son of (1), described by Tacitus ‘Hist.' iv.
68 as ‘domui Vespasiani per adfinitatem innexum et gratissimum Domitiano, Praetorianis
[Domitianus] praeposuit, patrem eius, sub Caio Caesare, egregie functum ea cura,
dictitans, laetum militibus idem nomen.' The relationship
with the Imperial Flavian House may be traced back to (8) Tertulla,
the grandmother of Vespasian, by whom from childhood he was brought up. Tertullus
Clemens (1) the Prefect was probably Vespasian's cousin and the companion of his
boyhood. Arrecina Tertulla (5), daughter of (1) and sister of (3), married Titus
(19). She died while Titus was quite young.
M. Arrecinus Clemens (3) was Consul Suffectus in 73
A.D. (‘CIL.' vi. 2016 and xiv. 2242) and
a second time with L. Baebius Honoratus (‘CIL.' xii. 3637). This second consulship
appears to have been most probably in 94 A.D.
The Fasti Consulares are admittedly imperfect with regard to the names of the consuls
suffect. But the names of both the ordinary Consuls Collega and Priscus and of the
three suffects for 93 A.D. have been preserved.
In 94 A.D. Asprenas and Lateranus were ordinary
consuls.The most complete Fasti Consulares for the Flavian Period are found in a contribution
by Asbach in Jahrbücher des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande [Bonn]
vol. 79, p. 6o ff. Asbach has only discovered the name of one Suffectus in 94
A.D., but he quotes Prosper as making Clement
the colleague of Asprenas. It is almost certain that in a year when the Emperor
did not assume the consulship there would be several Suffecti. In Muratori, Nov.
Thes. Vet. Inscr. tom. i. p. cccxlv, the full list for 93 A.D. is preserved. Consules 93.
Pompeius Collega, Cornelius Priscus, quibus suffecti fuerunt. M. Lollius Paullinus, Valerius
Asiaticus Saturninus. Horum uni suffectus erat, C. Antistius Iulius Quadratus. So
in 94 A.D. M. Arrecinus Clemens and L. Baebius
Honoratus were suffecti to Asprenas and Lateranus. The suffect mentioned by Asbach—Silius
Italicus—may have taken the place of Clemens in the last months of 94 A.D. In some lists Arrecinus Clemens appears, however, as the colleague of
Asprenas (see Dion Cassius, ed. Lipsiae, 1829, iv. p. 84). The ‘Chronicon Paschale'
(extract given in Lightfoot, ‘Clement of Rome,' i. p. 110) has the following entries:
93 A.D. Domitian Augustus XIII and Flavius
Clemens, 94 A.D. Asprenatus [Asprenas] and
Lateranus, 95 A.D. Domitian Augustus XIV
and Flavius Clemens II. This is an instance of that confusion of Arrecinus Clemens
with Flavius Clemens which has been the fruitful source of difficulties. Flavius
Clemens was consul only once and in 95 A.D.,
Arrecinus Clemens for the second time in 94 A.D.
He was a member of the Imperial Council from 82
A.D. and also Curator Aquarum. His name appears ‘CIL.' vi. 199 xi. 428
and xv. 7278. He was put to death by Domitian 94
A.D. or 95 A.D. (Suet. ‘Domitian,' 11.)
(4) Plautilla. The ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles' represent these martyrs as
at first servants of Plautilla, the sister of Clement the Consul, and afterwards
of her daughter Domitilla the virgin. The ‘Acts of Petronilla,' which are incorporated
with those of Nereus and Achilles, state that these three saints were
all buried in the crypt of Domitilla. That they were real historical persons has
been proved in recent years by the discovery by De RossiDe Rossi, Bull. di Arch. Crist. 1874, pp. 5 ff., 68 ff., 122 ff. &c. Roma
Sotterranea, tom. i. pp. 130 ff. See also Lipsius, Apokryphen Apost. Geschicht.
II. i. p. 205. of their memorials in
the cemetery of Domitilla. It is at least possible, therefore, that Plautilla is
likewise an historical person, and the presumption is increased by the fact that
she is definitely in these Acts represented as the sister of Clement the Consul.
De Rossi himself believed in her real existence, and many others have followed him
in the assumption, which I have adopted, as also his suggestion that her mother's
name was Plautia. I differ, however, in my interpretation of the words ‘sister
of Clement the Consul' in making her the sister not of Flavius but of Arrecinus
Clemens. If the historicity of the statement of the ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles‘
about Plautilla be accepted, it should be accepted as a whole. Now stress is laid
on the fact that the Plautilla of these Acts died in the same year as St. Peter
suffered martyrdom. The words are explicit: ‘eodem anno dominus Petrus apostolus
ad coronam martyrii properavit ad Christum et Plautilla corpus terrenum deseruit.'
Plautilla therefore could not well be the sister of Flavius Clemens, the younger
of the two sons of Flavius Sabinus, as these sons are described as children at the
time of their father's murder in December 69 A.D.
The hypothesis that she was the daughter of M. Arrecinus Tertullus Clemens the Praetorian
Prefect of 41 A.D., and therefore sister
of M. Arrecinus Clemens the Consul of 73 A.D.
and 94 A.D., and that she was the wife and
not the daughter of her cousin Flavius Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian, and that,
through her, T. Flavius Clemens, her son, Consul in 95
A.D., obtained his cognomen, has about it
impress of verisimilitude.
(5) Arrecina Tertulla.—The first wife of the Emperor Titus. She died quite
young. See ‘CIL.' vi. 12355, 12357.
(6) Clement the Bishop.—In the ‘Clementine Homilies' and
‘Clementine Recognitions,'
which are in reality Petrine romances derived from a common original and dating
from the beginning of the third century, Clement is represented as a Roman by birth
and of the kindred of Caesar. His father is a relative and foster-brother of an
emperor, and his mother likewise connected with Caesar's family. The name of the
father is Faustus (‘Homilies'), Faustinianus (‘Recognitions'),
Faustinus (‘Liber
Pontificalis'), of two elder brothers Faustinus and Faustinianus
(‘Homilies'), Faustinus and Faustus (‘Recognitions'), of the mother Mattidia.
Now these names belong to the period of Hadrian and the Antonines. Faustina (died
141 A.D.) was the wife of the Emperor Antoninus
Pius, and her daughter of the same name (died 175
A.D.) was the wife of his adopted son and
successor, Marcus Aurelius. Mattidia was the niece of Trajan, and her daughter Sabina
the wife of the Emperor Hadrian. As the romances throughout make Clement to have
been the disciple and companion of St. Peter and he is spoken of as being already
grown up at the time of the Crucifixion, it will be at once perceived that the compilers
of this Clementine literature were, in the use that they made of tradition, absolutely
indifferent to chronological considerations. That they gave voice to a genuine tradition
both as regards Clement's discipleship to St. Peter and his relationship to the
family of the reigning Caesars is rendered in the highest degree probable from the
fact that the Clementine story is merely a framework for the Ebionite or Helchasaite
version of Peter's travels, preaching and controversies with Simon Magus, which
forms the real subject-matter of this literature. [Hort, ‘Clementine Recognitions.']
M. Arrecinus Tertullus Clemens was the kinsman of Vespasian, and as that emperor
was brought up not in his paternal home but by his grandmother Tertulla, it is quite
possible that they were actually foster-brothers. Tertullus was one of the Flavian
cognomina. Q. Flavius Tertullus was consul suffect. in 133
A.D. (‘CIL.' vi. 858). Plautia was a relative
of Plautia Urgulanilla, the second wife of Claudius, her daughter Arrecina Tertulla
the wife of Titus.
In the ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles' Clement the Bishop is addressed as the
nephew of Clement the Consul: ‘patris tui fuisse germanum.' In the Clementines
he is represented as considerably the youngest of his family. It is for various
reasons more probable that he was the younger brother than the nephew of M. Arrecinus
Clemens, and such I have assumed him to be.
(7) T. Flavius Petro.—The name of the famous saint, Petronilla, who was buried
in the Flavian cemetery of Domitilla, was probably derived from this Flavian cognomen.
A crop of legends grew up around her name, as being a daughter of St. Peter. It
is possible that she may have been a spiritual daughter of the Apostle, as having
been converted and baptized by him.
(8), (9), (10). Titus Flavius Sabinus and his wife, according to Suetonius, left
Italy to live among the Helvetii; their son Vespasian was educated by his grandmother
Tertulla upon a family estate at Cosa in the Volscian territory. (Suet. ‘Vespasian,'
2, 3.)
(11) T. Flavius Sabinus, the elder son of (9) and (10). After serving the State
in thirty-five campaigns with distinction (Tac. ‘Hist.' iii. 75) and having been
Governor of Moesia for seven years, Sabinus was appointed in 57
A.D. Prefect of the City. He held this important
office for twelve years continuously save for a brief interval in the short reign
of Galba. As Prefect of the City he must have taken part (perhaps passively) in
the persecution of the Christians in 65 A.D.
and been the witness of the courage with which so many martyrs faced torture and
a horrible death. Some have supposed that in his latter years he may to a greater
or less extent have fallen under the influence of the Christian Faith. His whole
career proclaims him to have been during the greater part of his life a man of
action. Tacitus speaks of his being ‘invalidus senecta' and describes him at this
stage as ‘mitem virum abhorrere a sanguine et caedibus' (‘Hist.' iii. 65). When
the Vitellians stormed the Capitol, ‘Flavium Sabinum inermem neque fugam coeptantem
circumsistunt' (‘Hist.' iii. 73). And again after his murder, ‘in fine vitae
alii segnem, multi moderatum et civium sanguinis parcum credidere' (‘Hist.' iii.
75). All these traits do not prove much in themselves, but the fact that several
of his descendants and relatives were undoubtedly Christians lends a certain probability
to the supposition that this mildness, sluggishness, and unwillingness to resist
arms in hand may have been due to the acceptance of Christian principles. Sabinus
apparently did not marry till late in life, possibly not till after he settled at
Rome in 57 A.D., as his children were quite
young at the time of his murder in December 69 A.D.
If Plautilla were his wife, she died four years before her husband, leaving two
sons and a daughter, the younger son receiving his grandfather's cognomen Clemens.
(12) The Emperor Vespasian appears to have been in considerable poverty at two
periods of his life. His eldest son, Titus (19), was born December 30, 39
A.D.: ‘prope Septizonium sordidis aedibus
cubiculo vero perparvo et obscuro.' (Suet. ‘Tit.' 1.) Yet a few years later we find
him being educated in the palace with Britannicus. It is suggested that this change
may have been partly brought about by the influence
on behalf of his kinsman of the Praetorian Prefect Arrecinus Tertullus
Clemens. At a later period, before he went as Proconsul to Africa in 61 or 62
A.D., he was in such bad circumstances that
he had to mortgage his entire property to his brother in order to raise money. (Tac.
‘Hist.' iii. 73.) His wife (13) and his daughter (22), both named Flavia Domitilla,
predeceased him. His younger son Domitian (25) seems when Vespasian was abroad in
Africa and Judaea to have lived with his uncle Sabinus and to have been under his
care. Titus (19) was, while still a youth, married to his relative Arrecina Tertulla
(5). Domitian (25), born October 25, 51 A.D.,
was twelve years younger than his brother. From the end of December 69
A.D. to the following June as Praetor with
full consular power he with Mucianus exercised in the absence of Vespasian in Egypt
and Titus in Judaea the imperial authority at Rome.
(15) Flavia Domitilla, spoken of by Eusebius, ‘Chronicon' (Jerome's Lat. vers.
ed. Schöne ii. p. 163), thus:—‘Scribit Bruttius . . . Flaviam Domitillam Flavii
Clementis consulis ex sorore neptem in insulam Pontianam relegatam, quia se Christianam
esse testata est.' A similar reference derived no doubt from the same source is
found in ‘Hist. Eccl.' iii. 18, where the meaning of the word neptem is made clear:
Φλαυΐαν Δομετίλλαν . . . ἐξ ἀδελφῆς γεγονυῖαν Φλαυΐου
Κλήμεντος, ἑνὸς τῶν τηνικάδε ἐπὶ Ῥώμης ὑπάτων. Eusebius states that this took place in the fifteenth year
of Domitian, but, as I have pointed out in Lecture VIII, it is almost certain that
Eusebius has here misread his authority and that the Consul to whom Flavia Domitilla
was niece was Arrecinus Clemens the Consul of 94
A.D., and not Flavius Clemens the Consul of 95
A.D. The family of Flavius Sabinus (11)
were children in 70 A.D.; it is scarcely possible
therefore that this Flavia Domitilla should have been old enough to occupy such
a position of importance as is here assigned to her, and still more so in the ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles.' In those ‘Acts' she appears as the daughter of Plautilla,
sister of Clement the Consul, and is clearly a woman of property with chamberlains
of her own. In the ‘Chronicon Paschale' the same passage of Bruttius, about the
persecution of the Christians by Domitian, as Eusebius quotes is referred to, but
the notice of it appears under the fourteenth year of Domitian, which began in September
94 A.D. The banishment of this Domitilla
to the island of Pontia I believe to have taken place at the end of 94
A.D., after Arrecinus Clemens was Consul
and before Flavius Clemens entered on his consulship.
The fact that Eusebius neither in the ‘Chronicle' nor ‘Ecclesiastical
History' makes any mention of the execution of Flavius Clemens or the banishment
of his wife seems to me inferential evidence that his authority Bruttius did not
here record an event which Eusebius could scarcely have overlooked in one or other
of his two historical works. In my Table of the Flavian Family I have made Flavia
Domitilla [the virgin] the daughter of FIavius Sabinus (15) and of Plautilla (4),
the sister of Arrecinus Clemens (3). I have further suggested in Lecture VIII that
after the murder of Sabinus, Plautilla being already dead, the maternal uncle (3)
undertook the charge of the orphan children. The two sons as they grew up would
in due course be cared for by the Emperor Vespasian, as being the nearest male representatives
of his family, his own two sons having no male heirs, the daughter remaining still
in the wardship of the maternal uncle who had brought her up. It would be only natural
therefore in such circumstances for Bruttius to speak of her as the niece of Arrecinus,
rather than as the sister of Flavius.
The sudden condemnation to death of Arrecinus Clemens by Domitian, as recorded
by Suetonius (‘Domit.' 11), may well have been connected with the same causes which
led to his niece Domitilla's banishment, i.e. her profession of the Christian faith
and her contumacy in refusing to marry at the Emperor's bidding.
(22), (23), (24) Dion Cassius (lxvii. 14) relates that Domitian put to death
his cousin Flavius Clemens while consul [Suet., ‘Domit.' 15, says almost before
his consulship had ended] and that he sent his wife Flavia Domitilla, also a relative,
into exile on the island of Pandateria. Suetonius does not mention the wife's banishment,
but remarks that ‘this violent act—i.e. the execution—very much hastened his own
destruction' and then tells us of the tyrant's assassination by Stephanus the steward
of Domitilla. Philostratus (‘Apollonius,' viii. 25) in his account says that Stephanus
was the freedman of Flavius Clemens' wife. Quintilian, who was the tutor of Flavius
Clemens' young sons (of very tender age, Suet. ‘Domit.' 15), makes it clear that
their mother was the daughter of Domitian's sister: ‘cum vero mihi Domitianus
Augustus sororis suae nepotum delegaverit curam' (‘Inst. Orat.' Prooem. 2). This
sister of Domitian died before her father Vespasian became Emperor in 70 A. D. For
epigraphic evidence of the existence of this Flavia Domitilla, wife of Flavius Clemens,
see ‘CIL.' vi.
948, 8942 and 16246. The first of these as restored by Mommsen stands:
Flavia Domitilla FILIA.FLAVIAE.DOM.ITILLAE.
Imp. Caes. VespasiANI.NEPTIS.FECIT.GLYCERAE.L.ET.
· · · ·
· · ·
The name of the NEPTIS is given in ‘CIL.' vi. 8942:
FLAVIAE.DOMITIL
VESPASIANI.NEPTIS
There were thus four Flavia Domitillas: the wife of Vespasian (13), her daughter
(22), her granddaughter (24), and her niece (15).
NOTE E
THE TOMBS OF THE APOSTLES ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL
‘If thou wilt go to the Vatican or to the Ostian road
thou wilt find the trophies of the Apostles who founded this Church.' These words
of the Roman presbyter Gaius (identified by Dr. LightfootApost. Fathers, part i. vol. ii. pp. 318, 377–83. with the well-known Hippolytus
bishop of Portus) in his treatise against the heretic Proclus are a positive testimony
to the existence at the end of the Second Century of trophies or memoriae—i.e.
small oratories—over the graves of the Apostles Peter and Paul. It further indicates
in what localities these visible monuments were to be found. Eusebius, to whom we
are indebted for the preservation of this piece of valuable evidence, makes the
further statement that the names of the Apostles were to be seen in the cemeteries
of Rome in his day.Hist. Eccl. ii. 25.
The ‘Liber Pontificalis' contains what appears to be an authentic record of
the construction of one of these memoriae. Of bishop Anacletus (Anencletus) it is
said ‘Hic memoriam Beati Petri construxit et composuit.' The erection of these
monuments may therefore be placed in the early years of Domitian's reign.
The evidence from traditional sources as to the exact position of the spots where
the two Apostles were martyred and afterwards buried is very detailed and complete,
and, as is usual in topographical references, is accurate, even though the narratives,
in which these references occur, are in the main apocryphal fictions of a late date.
The principal authorities in the case of St. Peter are as follows:
‘Liber Pontificalis': [Petrus] ‘sepultus est via Aurelia in templum Apollinis,
iuxta locum ubi crucifixus est, iuxta palatium Neronianum, in Vaticanum, iuxta territorium
Triumphale.'
Jerome, ‘De Viris Illustribus': ‘Sepultus est in Vaticano iuxta viam triumphalem
totius orbis veneratione celebratur.'
‘Martyrium Beati Petri Apostoli': ‘Ad locum qui vocatur Naumachiae iuxta obeliscum
Neronis in montem.'
‘Acta Petri': ‘Apud palatium neronianum iuxta obeliscum inter duas metas.'
‘Liber Pontificalis': [Cornelius] ‘posuit iuxta locum ubi crucifixus est,
inter corpora sanctorum episcoporum, in templum Apollinis, in monte aureo, in vaticanum
palatii neroniani.'
‘De locis S.S. Martyrum': ‘Petrus in parte occidentali civitatis iuxta viam
Corneliam ad milliarium primum in corpore quiescit.'
From these notices it will be seen that three roads are mentioned—the Via Aurelia
(Nova), the Via Triumphalis, and the Via Cornelia. These three roads met at a point
close to the Pons Neronianus or Triumphalis. Between the Via Aurelia Nova and the
Via Cornelia stood the Circus of Nero, between the Via Cornelia and the Via Triumphalis
the Vatican hill. The Circus of Nero was the scene of the Games at which a multitude
of Christians perished by horrible tortures in the spring of 65
A.D., and here according to the ‘Acta Petri'
suffered St. Peter ‘iuxta obeliscum inter duas metas'—that is on the spina at
a point equidistant from the two goals, where the obelisk stood, the same obelisk
removed in 1586 to the front of the Basilica. The palatium Neronianum and the Naumachia
were appellations given in later days to the remains of the Circus, which was destroyed
when Constantine built the first Basilica above St. Peter's tomb. The Mons Aureus
(a corruption of Aurelius) was so called from its proximity to the Via Aurelia Nova,
later the name was extended to the Janiculum also, the southern part of which is
still called Montorio.For the tradition connected with S. Pietro in Montorio and its origin see
Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, p. 128; Barnes, S. Peter in Rome, p. 98.
Templum Apollinis. Duchesne writes (‘Lib. Pont.' i. 120): ‘Quant au temple
d'Apollon, il y a, clans cette désignation, un souvenir du célèbre sanctuaire de
Cybèle, qui s'élévait tout près du cirque et de la basilique, et qui fut, jusqu'aux
dernières années du ive siècle, le théâtre des cérémonies sanglantes du taurobolium
et du criobolium . . . Le Collège des xv. viri sacris faciundis, qui était chargé du
culte de cette déesse, étaient aussi directeurs du culte d'Apollon.' In any case
there was a building on this spot popularly known as the templum Apollinis, witness
the notice in the ‘Liber Pontificalis' of Pope Silvester (314–335
A.D.): ‘eodem tempore Augustus Constantinus
fecit basilicam
beato Petro apostolo in templum Apollinis.' (Duchesne, ‘Lib. Pont.' i. 176.)
The body of St. Peter then was buried in a small cemetery on the Vatican hill
close to the place where he was crucified. Over this tomb Anencletus erected his
memoria, and in the immediate vicinity the first twelve bishops of Rome, with
the exception of Clement and Alexander, were according to the ‘Liber Pontificalis' laid to rest—in each case the phrase recurs
‘sepultus est iuxta corpus beati Petri
in Vaticanum.' In time the entire space available was filled up. Zephyrinus was
the first to be buried in 217 A.D. on the
Appian Way, and his successor Calixtus created the crypt in the great subterranean
cemetery called after his name, where he himself and a number of his successors
were interred. The crypt of the Popes was discovered in 1854 by De Rossi, and the
inscriptions on the broken coverings of the Sarcophagi of several of the bishops
may still be seen. Excavations made near the Great Altar of St. Peter's in the early
seventeenth century by Paul V and Urban VIII revealed many interesting facts. A
large coffin was found made of great slabs of marble containing a mass of half-charred
bones and ashes, pointing to the probability that Peter was interred close by the
remains of the martyrs who had perished as living torches at the Neronian Vatican
fête. All round the ‘Confessio' in which the Apostle's relics were supposed to
rest were placed coffins side by side against the ancient walls, containing bodies
swathed in Jewish fashion. On the slabs that covered them were no inscriptions,
save in one case where the name Linus could be deciphered.The evidence of Torrigio (but see below Drei's plan) is not clear, whether
the name Linus was a separate word, or the termination of such a name as Marcellinus.
The tomb of Linus appears however to have been known in the ninth century according
to the poet Rhabanus Maurus. Acta Sanct. 6 Sept. p. 543. Whether these were the
bodies of the earliest bishops of Rome it is impossible to say, but the discovery,
taken in conjunction with the statements of the ‘Liber Pontificalis' which topographically
are so often correct, makes the supposition credible. The evidence is far from complete,
but it is weighty. The historical character of the notices relating to the Vatican
interments in the ‘Liber Pontificalis' is borne out by the remarkable omission
of Clement and also of Alexander. The legend of Clement's martyrdom in the Chersonese
is fictitious. It may be taken as certain that he did not die in Rome. In the ‘Liber
Pontificalis' we read concerning Alexander—‘sepultus est via Numentana, ubi decollatus
est, ab urbe Roma
non longe, miliario VII.' In the Itinerary or Pilgrim Guide of William
of Malmesbury: ‘In septimo miliario eiusdem viae [Nomentanae] s. papa Alexander
cum Eventio et Theodulo pausant' (De Rossi, ‘Rom. Sott.' i. 179).There is some doubt about Alexander. Marucchi, Elém. d'Arch. Chrét. i. p. 28. Again the later
notices as to the burials of Zephyrinus, of Callistus and their successors not on
the Vatican but upon the Appian Way have been verified by De Rossi and other modern
archaeologists. The statements as to the discoveries made in the excavations of
1615 and 1626 rest on contemporary authorities. Francesco Maria Torrigio, who was
with Cardinal Evangelista Pallotta an eye-witness of the exhumations of 1615, has
given an account of them in his work ‘Le sacre Grotte vaticane,' 1639, and Giovanni
Severano also relates what he had heard in his ‘Memorie sacre delle sette chiese
di Roma,' 1629. The master mason Benedetto Drei, who was likewise an eye-witness
of the discoveries made in 1615, has left an engraved plan originally intended for Torrigio's book; one copy of this, in the British Museum, is of exceptional interest,
for it is covered with autograph MS. notes in the handwriting of Drei himself.An excellent reproduction of this will be found in Barnes's St. Peter in Rome,
facing p. 304. Drei's MS. notes confirm the reading Linus.
In this one can see how the tombs are so arranged round the central shrine that
the bodies seem to surround that of St. Peter ‘like bishops assisting at a council.'
An account quite as circumstantial and authentic is given by a certain R. Ubaldi,
canon of the basilica, of the excavations made in 1626. The MS. containing this
narrative lay forgotten in the Vatican Archives until it was discovered by Professor
Gregorio Palmieri in recent years and was transcribed and published by Cavalicre
Mariano Armellini in his work ‘Le Chiese di Roma,' 1891. An English version may
be found in A. S. Barnes, ‘St. Peter in Rome,' pp. 315–338, a work full of interesting
material and valuable research.
Let us now turn to the tomb of St. Paul on the Ostian Way. The Apocryphal Acts
all declare that St. Paul as became his status as a Roman citizen suffered martyrdom
by decapitation—honestiores capite puniantur, and that he was led out to a place
known as Aquae Salviae, near the third mile-stone on the Ostian Way. This tradition
has not been seriously disputed. In the Greek Acts the addition is made that the
Apostle suffered under a pine-tree—εἰς μάσσαν καλουμένην
Ἀκκούαι Σαλβίας πλησὶ τοῦ δένδρου τοῦ στροβίλου.
An extant inscription of Gregory the
Great, 604 A.D., records the
gift by him of a piece of land at the Aquae Salviae to the basilica of St. Paul—‘Valde
incongruum ac esse durissimum videretur ut illa ei specialiter possessio non
serviret in qua palmam sumens martyrii capite est truncatus ut viveret, utile iudicavimus
eandem massam quae Aquas Salvias nuncupatur . . . cum Christi Gratia luminaribus
deputare.'Marucchi, Elém. d'Arch. Chrét. ii. p. 74; De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, i. p.
182; Bullet. di Arch. Crist. 1869, pp. 81 ff.; Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, pp. 156–7. A memorial chapel was built here in the fifth century, whose remains
were discovered in 1867 under the present Church of S. Paolo alle Tre Fontane, and
in 1875 in the course of some excavations for a water tank behind this church a
number of coins of Nero were found together with several pine-cones fossilised by age.
The body of St. Paul according to tradition was buried by a Christian matron
of the name of Lucina in a plot of ground, which was her property, about a mile
nearer to Rome. It was not a subterranean cemetery but one on the surface, and the
piece of land was confined, being hemmed in between the Ostian Road and another
road, which has since disappeared, known as the Via Valentiniana.Stevenson, ‘L'area di Lucina sulla Via Ostiense' in Nuovo Bullet:. di Arch.
Crist. 1898, pp. 68 ff. This spot in
the time of the presbyter Gaius, about 200 A.D.,
was marked like that of St. Peter on the Vatican by a memorial oratory (trophy)
probably erected by Anencletus at the same time as the Petrine memoria already referred to.
That the bodies of the Apostles did not continuously remain undisturbed in their
first resting places is one of those traditions which can be supported by a body
of evidence, leaving indeed some points doubtful and obscure, but as regards the
main fact almost conclusive. In that Kalendar of the Church known as the ‘Feriale
Philocalianum' (about 354 A.D.) under the
heading ‘Depositio Martyrum' occurs the following entry:
‘III. Kal. Iul. Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostense—Tusco et Basso cons.'
The names of the Consuls fix the date as 258
A.D. and show that this entry is taken from some official source. It is clearly
unintelligible as it stands. De Rossi however discovered at Berne a Codex of the
‘Martirologium Hieronymianum' which exhibits the same entry in a fuller form:
‘III. Kal. Iul. Romae natale apostolorum sanctorum Petri et Pauli—Petri in Vaticano
via Aurelia Pauli vero in Via Ostensi,
utrumque in Catacumbis, passi sub Nerone, Basso et Tusco consulibus.'Duchesne, Lib. Pont. i. p. cv.
This can only mean that on June 29 the Feast of the Apostles was kept in three
places or stations—at the Vatican, on the Ostian Road, and in a place known as the
Catacombs in memory of some event which took place in the consulate of Tuscus and
Bassus, 258 A.D. The words bassi sub Nerone
must be regarded as a parenthesis. The existence of these three stations is proved
by a hymn of pseudo-Ambrose for June 29, as these lines show:
Tantae per urbis ambitum
Stipata tendunt agmina;
Trinis celebrator viis
Festum sacrorum Martyrum.
Now it can be proved that these consular dates in the
Kalendar signify in other cases a translation of remains, and the conclusion is
that a translation of the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul to the Catacombs took
place in 258 A.D.
There are many testimonies to the fact that the bodies of the two Apostles did
actually rest in the cemetery ad Catacumbas, but the authorities differ as to the
period at which the translation took place and also as to the duration of time during
which the relics remained in their temporary tomb. The story contained in the Apocryphal
‘Acta Petri et Pauli' speaks of certain unknown people from the East who after the
Apostles' martyrdom attempted to carry off the bodies to their own
country, but being overtaken by an earthquake the people of Rome took the bodies
from them at the third milestone on the Appian Way at the place called ad Catacumbas. Here
the remains were deposited for one year and seven months until tombs were built
for them on the Vatican and the Ostian Way. Now this story, of which there are several
slightly differing versions, is almost certainly based upon a real historical event,
the translation which took place in 258. The late writers of the ‘Acta' were utterly
indifferent to chronology, and the deposition in the cemetery on the Appian Way
when Tuscus and Bassus were consuls was associated with the martyrdoms and relegated
with the accompaniment of many confused and legendary details to the time of Nero.
All probability is against the story of the ‘Acta.' Even if the Apostles were put
to death at the same time, and I have shown that there is a very strong presumption
that St. Peter's death preceded that of St. Paul by two years, nothing could be more
unlikely than the bringing back of their bodies to be interred in
the vicinity of their places of execution when once they had been laid safely to
rest in the cemetery on the Appian Way. There were as yet no sacred associations
connected with the Vatican Hill and the Ostian Way to move the Roman Christians
to act in the manner described in these apocryphal narratives.A letter of Gregory the Great to the Empress Constantina about 600
A.D. shows that the legend of the early translation
was current in his time and accepted by him. Opp. St. Greg. ii. ep. 30.
The cause of the translation of 258 A.D.
is not difficult to divine, for this was the year of the outbreak of the persecution
of Valerian. An Edict had been issued against the Christians, forbidding their meetings
in the cemeteries. It might well be that fears were aroused lest the sacred tombs
of the Apostles should be desecrated, and so the bodies were removed to a place
of greater safety. The researches of archaeologists have shown that the cemetery
ad Catacumbas must in those days have been admirably adapted for the purpose. It
was ancient already, it lay apart from other cemeteries, and it resembled rather
a pagan than a Christian place of burial (Duchesne, ‘Lib. Pont.' cvii). It has
been in recent years most carefully examined and studied and in the chamber known
as the Platonia or Platoma a double tomb may still be seen, said to be that in which
the bodies were placed.Dr. A. De Waal, Die Apostelgruft ad Catacumbas an der Via Appia; Marucchi,
Le Merorie degli Apostoli Pietro e Paolo in Roma, 1903, pp. 75–92. Here Damasus (366–387 A.D.)
built a basilica, which until the eighth century was known as the Basilica of the
Apostles, and on the walls of the Chamber he placed an inscription in verse. In
the ‘Liber Pontificalis' we read—‘Hic fecit basilicas duas: una beato Laurentio
iuxta theatrum . . . et in Catacumbas ubi iacuerunt corpora sanctorum apostolorum
Petri et Pauli, in quo loco platomam ipsam, ubi iacuerunt corpora sancta, versibus
exornavit.' This poem of Damasus has fortunately been preserved. The text runs thus:
Hic habitare prius sanctos cognoscere debes
Nomina quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris
Discipulos oriens misit quod sponte fatemur
Sanguinis ob meritum Christum qui per astra secuti
Aetherios petiere sinus regnaque piorum
Roma suos potius meruit defendere cives
Haec Damasus vestras referat nova sidera laudes.De Rossi, Inscr. Crist. ii. p. 52.
Those words discipulos oriens misit may possibly have given rise to the later
apocryphal fictions about the unknown men from the East, who tried to carry off
the bodies of the Apostles.
Damasus however here clearly means by these words the Apostles themselves,
the word discipulos being used instead of Apostolos through the exigencies of the
metre. He says in effect that though the East had sent the Apostles, Rome, which
had been the scene of their labours and their deaths, had the best claim to retain them.
But even if it be granted that the notices in the ‘Feriale Philocalianum' and
the ‘Hieronymian Martyrology' contain an official authentic statement that a translation
of the relics to the cemetery ad Catacumbas took place in 258
A.D., as such authorities as the Abbé Duchesne,
Monsignor de Waal, Professor Marucchi, and Father A. S. Barnes admit, there are
other difficulties to be overcome, and they differ from one another in their interpretation
of documentary evidence, and in their views as to whether there were two translations
or one only, and as to the duration of the sojourn of the relics in the Platonia.
The Apocryphal ‘Acta' say that the bodies were taken to the Catacombs immediately
after the martyrdom of the Apostles and were removed to the tombs that had been
prepared on the Vatican and on the Ostian Way one year and seven months afterwards.
The Itineraries or Pilgrim Guides of the fifth and sixth centuries make the sojourn
to be forty years: ‘Et iuxta eandem viam (Appiam) ecclesia est S. Sebastiani martyris,
ubi ipse dormit, et ibi aunt sepulchra Apostolorum Petri et Pauli; in quibus xl
annos requiescebant (‘De locis S.S. Martyrum'); ‘Postea pervenies via Appia ad
S. Sebastianum martyrem, cuius corpus iacet in inferiori loco, et ibi sunt sepulchra
Apostolorum Petri et Pauli in quibus xl annos requiescebant' (‘Salzburg Notitia').
As Duchesne and Barnes say, the term forty years is here undoubtedly intended
as a round number, though the former is inclined, it seems to me, to extend it too
widely.Duchesne (Lib. Pont. cv and cvii) suggests a date after 313
A.D., Barnes (St. Peter in Rome) 308 or 309 A.D. The exact number of forty years would bring us to an impossible date, the
height of the fiercest persecution which the Christian Church had to endure—that
of Diocletian. The period of one year and seven months mentioned in the Apocryphal
‘Acta' has, I have little doubt, some historical basis, which now it is impossible
to discover,See suggestion infra, p. 269. but that the relics of the Apostles remained in the Platonia at least
until the year 284 the ‘Acta' of St. Sebastian testify. According to these ‘Acta
' the Saint was buried in the Catacomb which still bears
his name close to the Platonia because he had in a vision expressed
the wish that his body might lie near the vestigia of the holy Apostles.Acta Sanctorum, Jan. 2, p. 622. There
is another difficulty to be surmounted. In the biography of Pope Cornelius, 251–253
A.D., in the ‘Liber Pontificalis' the statement
is made that at the request of a certain matron Lucina by name the bodies of the
blessed Apostles Peter and Paul were taken up by night; and that Lucina first buried
the blessed Paul in her own ground (in praedio suo) on the Ostian Road and then
that Cornelius placed the body of Peter close to the spot where he was crucified
among the bodies of the holy bishops—‘in templum Apollinis, in Monte Aureo in Vaticanum
palatii Neroniani iii Kai. Iul.' Now it is clear that if the bodies of the Apostles
were only brought to the cemetery ad Calacumbas in 258 A.D., they cannot have been restored to their
former tombs some years earlier. Duchesne, Marucchi, and Barnes are all of opinion
that this paragraph in the notice of Cornelius has been somehow misplaced.Duchesne, Liber Pont. i. p. 151; Marucchi, Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro
e Paolo, p. 56; Barnes, St. Peter in Rome, pp. 116 ff. Further
it is stated that after the martyrdom of this Pope this same Lucina gathered together
his remains (cuius corpus noctu collegit) and buried it in her own ground (praedio
suo) in a crypt close to the Cemetery of Callistus. Apparently therefore Lucina
had property, which she converted into a cemetery, both on the Ostian and the Appian Way.
Now Barnes has proposed a solution of this difficulty which is both ingenious
and well worthy of consideration.St. Peter in Rome, pp. 119–127. He suggests that in some worn MS. the name Marcellus
has been read as Cornelius and that the passage relating to the restoration of the
bodies of the Apostles to their original tombs belongs to the biography of Marcellus.
The Pontificate of Marcellus is separated from that of his predecessor Marcellinus
by an interregnum due to the persecution of Diocletian, and its date was probably
306–309 A.D. In the biography of this Pope
there is again mention of a certain matron, Lucina, the widow of a man named Marcus.
On the martyrdom of Marcellus she gathered together his remains (cuius corpus collegit)
and buried it in the Cemetery of Priscilla. Lucina, it is said, gave all her property
to the Church, and a comparison of the various documents seems to point to that
portion of the cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria Nova, where Marcellus and
his successors were
buried, having been the property of this Lucina. By the time of the
accession of Marcellus the bodies of the Apostles had been in the Platonia nearly
50 years. The abdication of Diocletian in 305 A.D.
led to peaceGibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. ii. p. 161: ‘The revolt of Maxentius immediately
restored peace to the Churches of Italy and Africa, and the same tyrant who oppressed
every other class of his subjects showed himself just, humane, and even partial
towards the afflicted Christians.' being restored to the Christian Church in Rome by the advent of Maxentius
to power. This then would be a very fitting time for a new pope to prepare the removal
of the Apostolic relics from the catacomb to their original tombs. There is extant
an inscription of DamasusDe Rossi, Inscr. Crist. ii. pp. 62, 103, 138. which tells us that the severity of Marcellus to those
who had lapsed in the persecution stirred up violent strife and discord leading
to sedition and the shedding of blood.
Veridicus rector, lapsos quia crimina fiere
Praedixit, miseris fuit omnibus hostis amarus;
Hinc furor, hinc odium sequitur, discordia, lites,
Seditio, caedes; solvuntur foedera pacis.
Crimea ob alterius, Christum qui in pace negavit,
Finibus expulsus patriae est feritate tyranni.
Haec breviter Damasus voluit comperta referre
Marcelli ut populus meritum cognoscere posset.
This inscription contains no reference to Marcellus having brought back the bodies
of St. Peter and St. Paul to the Vatican and the Ostian Way, but the brevity of
the poetical encomium of Damasus, as he himself states, made him confine himself
to praising those actions of the bishop which were the cause of the suffering and
exile that befell him.That there is confusion in the traditions relating to Cornelius and Marcellus
is evident from the fact that in the Liber Pontificalis Cornelius is beheaded in
Rome, in the Liberian Catalogue in exile at Centumcellis, cum gloria dormitionem
accepit. Damasus makes Marcellus apparently die in exile. In the Liber Pontificalis
he is condemned to tend horses in stables at Rome and dies of ill-usage. The inscription
of Damasus is however authentic, as is the extant slab containing the words Cornelius
Martyr, in the crypt where this Pope was buried. I would suggest, however, that in these discords and tumults,
to which the inscription refers, may be found perhaps an explanation of the delay
of one year and seven months in the entombment of the Apostles of which the Apocryphal
‘Acta' (Passio Petri el Pauli) speak. The strange passage, which tells of how
‘while the bodies of the Apostles were being carried off by the Greeks to be taken
to the East, there was a great earthquake and the Roman people ran out and seized
them in the place which is called Catacumba
at the third milestone on the Via Appia, and the bodies were kept
there for one year and seven months, until the places were built in which their
bodies were placed, and then they were brought back with glory of hymns and were
deposited that of St. Peter in the Vatican and that of St. Paul on the Ostian Way
at the second milestone,' may well be a distorted and misdated version of events
that really took place in the days of Marcellus. Let us suppose that on the first
anniversary day of the Apostles, June 29, after the accession of Maxentius an attempt
was made to remove the relics from the Catacombs, but that it was frustrated by
the sudden attack of a hostile crowd, from whose hands the bodies were with difficulty
rescued and taken back to the Platonia. Then about a year and a half later after
all preparations had been carefully made the translation was successfully carried
out. Now in the ‘Liberian Catalogue' under the heading depositio martyrum the
entry occurs ‘viii. kl. Martias fatale Petri de Cathedra,' and this commemoration
Professor Marucchi states was according to ancient documents observed from the Fourth
century with such feasting that it gained the popular name of ‘dies sancti Petri
epularum.'Marucchi, Elém. d'Arch. Chrét. ii. pp. 453–6; De Rossi, Bullett. d. Arch.
Crist. 1890, p. 72 ff. Further in the Laterculum of Silvias, 448
A.D., it is said that in earlier times this
commemoration, held on February 22, was a joint festival of SS. Peter and Paul.Blunt, Annot. Book of Common Prayer (‘The Conversion of St. Paul')
Was it not then on this date that after a year and seven months the actual translation took place?
What may be called the Marcellus hypothesis remains however little more than
a plausible conjecture, for no positive evidence can be brought forward to establish its truth.
Nevertheless an examination of the Apocryphal ‘Acta' reveals the fact that
a certain Marcellus was supposed to be the writer of the ‘Passio Petri et Pauli'
from which the extract quoted above about the attempt to carry off the Apostles'
bodies, and about their lying for a year and seven months in the Catacombs, is taken.
Marcellus it is who after the martyrdom takes the lead in burying St. Peter ‘near
the Naumachia in the place called the Vatican.' Lipsius in his work on the Apostolic
legends devotes a whole section to what he styles ‘der sogenannte Marcellustext.'Lipsius, Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, 2er Band 1e
Hälfte, pp. 284–386. One MS. Cod. Urbin. is headed—‘III. Kl. Iulii Passio beatorum
Petri et Pauli a Marcello discipulo Petri edita quique idem interfuit passioni.'
Nor is this all. On late authority
St. Paul was said to have been buried by a certain matron Lucina in
her own property (in praedio suo) on the Ostian Way,De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, ii. p. 262; Stevenson, ‘L'area di Lucina sulla
Via Ostiense,' Nuovo Bullett. 1898, p. 60 ff. In the ‘Liber Pontificalis'
the Lucina of the Cornelius biography buries St. Paul on the return from the Catacombs
on the Ostian Way ‘in praedio suo.' The Lucina of the Marcellus biography is the
widow of Marcus, in the ‘Passio Petri et Pauli' Marcus is the father of Marcellus.
In all probability the three Lucinas are one and the same person, whose activity
was connected with the life of Pope Marcellus. If this should be so, it will at
once appear that a strong case is made for placing the return of the relics from
the Platonia in the pontificate of Marcellus, about 307
A.D.
That the bodies of the Apostles were believed to lie in the tombs on the Vatican
and on the Ostian Way when Constantine determined to erect basilicas over their
remains is certain. The exact year in which these were built is unknown, except
that it was in the Pontificate of Pope Silvester, 314–335. The words of the
‘Liber Pontificalis' (Duchesne, 176 and 178) tell us that the object of the Emperor was
to do honour to the sacred tombs of the Apostles. The sarcophagus which contained
the body of St. Peter he enclosed in bronze from Cyprus and fixed it at the central
point of a cubical chamber of masonry—‘cuius loculum undique aere Cypro conclusit,
quod est immobile; ad caput, pedes V; ad pedes, pedes V; ad latus dextrum, pedes
V; ad latus sinistrum, pedes V; subter, pedes V; supra, pedes V; sic inclusit
corpus beati Petri et recondit.' He then placed on the coffin a cross of gold (with
an inscription)—‘super corpus Petri, supra aera quod conclusit, fecit crucem ex
auro purissimo, pens. lib. cl. in mensuram loci, ubi scriptum est hoc CONSTANTINVS
AVGVSTVS ET HELENA AVGVSTA HANC DOMVM REGALEM SIMILI FVLGORE CORVSCANS AVLA CIRCVMDAT,
scriptum ex litteris nigellis in cruce ipsa.'
Constantine likewise built a basilica on the Ostian Way to the memory of St.
Paul, whose sarcophagus was, like St. Peter's, enclosed in bronze and a cross of
gold placed over it ‘cuius corpus ita recondit in aere et conclusit sicut beati
Petri . . . et crucem auream super locum beati Pauli apostoli posuit pens. lib. cl.'
The scrupulous care that was taken not to disturb the tombs in any way was conspicuously
shown in the instance of the Constantinian basilica of St. Paul. It was the custom
in the early basilicas that the altar upon the tomb of the saint or
martyr to whom the church was dedicated should be placed at the west
end at the central point of the chord of an apse round which the clergy sat on either
side of the bishop or other dignitary. The Celebrant stood with his back to this
apse facing eastward with the congregation before him in the nave. Now the tomb
of St. Paul lay so near to the Ostian Way, one of the main roads from Rome, that
this first basilica was of diminutive proportions. Before however many years were
past it was felt that so small a church was unworthy of St. Paul, and another basilica
on the same scale as that of St. Peter was erected in 386
A.D. To effect this without touching the
tomb and altar led to a completely new departure in the internal arrangements of
the basilica, a new departure that was to have permanent results by being generally
adopted.Barnes, St. Peter in Rome, p. 215 ff.; Belloni, Della grandezza et la disposizione
della primitiva Basilica Ostiense. The church was reversed, the apse was now placed at the east end, but
the celebrant still stood on the west side of the altar facing eastwards, with result
that he looked towards the clergy in the apse and had his back to the congregation
in the nave: a custom which has since become universal. Another innovation arose
from the desire to cover all the consecrated ground, where the first basilica had
stood, and a transverse nave at right angles to the main nave was built, and thus
came into existence in 386 A.D. the earliest
known example of a cruciform church. No stronger evidence could be brought forward
to show the scrupulous and reverential care with which the early Christians cherished
and guarded the burial places of their dead. In this they were aided by the laws
of the State, which declared every tomb to be ‘locus sacer, locus religiosus,'
and there is seen to be no impossibility in the assumption that the sarcophagi which
Constantine enclosed in bronze really contained the bodies of the Apostles. Whatever
care was bestowed on other tombs, those of St. Peter and of St. Paul would from
the first be regarded with exceptional veneration, and be watched over and tended
with peculiar devotion, so that it would be most unlikely that those who translated
the relics to the catacombs in 258 A.D. should
have made any mistake.
The question whether these sarcophagi encased in bronze by Constantine are still
in existence, or whether they were destroyed by the Saracens in 846
A.D. or by the soldiery of Bourbon in 1527,
can only be answered positively by excavations which it may safely be said will
never be undertaken. Probability on the whole seems to be that, though the shrines
were
plundered and destroyed, the tombs themselves were untouched. If the
story told by Bonanni,Bonanni, Temp. Vatic. Historia, published in 1696, p. 149. who professes to be giving from the MS. of a contemporary
of the event (Torrigio) the evidence of eyewitnesses, be true, then in some alterations
that were being made in 1594 by the orders of Pope Clement VIII to the altar of
the Confession an aperture was opened through which the sarcophagus of St. Peter
with the gold cross gleaming upon it was seen by the Pope himself, and Cardinals Bellarmine, Antoniano and Sfondrato. By Clement's command the aperture was filled
up with cement and has not been opened since. Further in the excavations by Paul
V in 1615 and by Urban VIIl in 1626, in the immediate vicinity of the shrine, conclusive
evidence was obtained that the early Christian sepulchres which clustered round
the sacred resting place of the Apostle had never been disturbed.
In the case of St. Paul's shrine a very interesting discovery made in 1835, when
the basilica was being rebuilt after the great fire of 1823, points to the conclusion
that the tomb had not been interfered with since the fourth century. A slab of marble
measuring seven feet by four feet was uncovered with the simple inscription
The opinion of archaeologists who have examined the slab is unanimous that the
character of the inscription and the form of the letters fix the date as belonging
to the age of Constantine. Under the nameThere are also two square apertures of later date, purpose unknown. is a round aperture, the ancient billicum
confessionis, sometimes called the fenestrella or little window, through which handkerchiefs
or other objects were lowered so as to be hallowed by contact with the sarcophagus.
NOTE F.
The Roman Catacombs.
The Cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla.
During the first century of our era the Romans almost
universally practised cremation for the disposal of their dead. The law of the XII
Tables supposes inhumation as well as cremation to be in use; but cremation gradually
became the vogue and it was not until the age of the Antonines that, largely through
the influence of Christianity and other Oriental cults, a reversion to the practice
of inhumation began to take place. The early Christians from the first adopted the
Jewish custom of burial, and their tombs were, whenever circumstances permitted,
fashioned after the likeness of those in Palestine, sepulchres like that of the
Lord Jesus Christ. No burials were permitted within the city of Rome; but the beds
of soft volcanic tufa which lay beneath the soil of the suburban area afforded easy
facilities for the excavation of subterranean galleries, vaults, and crypts in which
to lay the dead. Hence gradually in the course of the first four centuries came
into existence that vast underground city of the dead, often incorrectly spoken
of as the Roman Catacombs. The word Catacombs strictly applies to one small cemetery
only, the locus ad catacumbasThe meaning of the term is uncertain. De Rossi gives it a hybrid derivation
from κατά and cubitorium, but this is very doubtful. where the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul in 258
A.D. found a temporary resting-place. The
first Christian cemeteries differed in no way from those of the Jewish community,
three of which have been discovered and explored.Raffaele Garrucci, Cimeteri degli antichi Ebrei; Orazio Marucchi, Elém. d'Arch.
Chrét. ii. 208–226, 259–276. There has been much written
on the subject of the Roman Catacombs which does not need consideration here. The
cemeteries of the first century, whatever may have been the case later, were the
property of private persons of rank and wealth, and were intended in the first place
for the use of the family to which the owners belonged, also for that of their clients,
freedmen and slaves, and by permission
for other poor persons belonging to the Christian brotherhood. As
yet there was no question of the formation of Collegia funeratica or Burial Guilds,
though it is regarded as highly probable that such organisations with their collective
ownership and special privileges did exist in the third century; indeed it is known
that the several cemeteries were each attached to a titulus—or parish church. But
this was not the case in the period with which we are dealing, when the places of
assembly for congregational worship were still private houses—ecclesiae domesticae.
The most ancient parts of the cemeteries of Priscilla and DomitilIa and the crypt
of Lucina, which date from Apostolic times, were family vaults constructed beneath
the property of the person after whose name they are called, and granted by that
person, as a ‘locus sacer' placed under the protection of the Roman Law (lex monumenti).
Henceforward the tomb was held inviolable, whatever might be the religion of those
interred in it. The plot of ground (area) was often enclosed by walls, or its dimensions
were engraved on boundary stones. Sometimes the inscription is found ‘Sibi suisque,
libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum,' sometimes the letters H.M.H.N.S.—‘hoc
monumentum haeredem non sequitur.' The administration of the leges monumentorum
lay within the jurisdiction of the pontifices, who were thus the legal guardians
of the inviolability of the burial-places thus granted, and their leave was required
for the deposition of the bodies in the tombs or their translation, or indeed for
the holding of anniversary festivals or rites or for any changes in the construction
or character of the monuments. These powers do not seem to have been arbitrarily
or vexatiously used, but it must always be remembered that they did exist and that
the catacombs were in no sense secret and unknown hiding-places of the early Christians,
but, with the exception perhaps of a few small subterranean crypts carefully concealed,
like the Platonic chamber in which the bodies of the Apostles for awhile were laid,
were registered and thus known to the magistrates.
The Roman Catacombs are one of the wonders of the world. It has been calculated
that the length of the galleries in the cemeteries excavated within three miles
of the Gates of Servius amounts to 540 miles, the quantity of material removed by
excavation 96,000,000 cubic feet, and the number of bodies interred at the very
least 1,700,000.Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome, pp. 320–1. The estimate is that of Michele
Stefano de Rossi made in 1860. Of this vast network
of subterranean galleries only a comparatively small portion has been
explored, though progress is being made year by year, and unfortunately all the
cemeteries as they have been opened out have been found to be in a miserable state
of ruin and devastation. Nevertheless, the Catacombs even in their present condition
contain in the inscriptions and frescoes that still cover the walls, and in the
remains of the shrines of saints and martyrs, a most precious record not merely
of the names of the Christians who in the ages of persecution found their last resting-place
in the loculi arranged along the walls of these crypts and galleries, but of their
beliefs, prayers, rites, worship, and modes of thought. Historically we are here
in the presence of a crowd of witnesses who though dead yet speak to us, of a mass
of evidence that is incontrovertibly authentic.
By far the larger part of the tombs in the Catacombs belong to the century and
a half which preceded the peace of the Church under Constantine, 313
A.D. But after the middle of the fourth century,
although by the care of Pope Damasus (366-384 A.D.)
and others basilicas were erected over the most venerated remains of famous martyrs,
and the chapel-crypts in which the bodies actually lay were adorned with rich shrines
and mural decorations, subterranean interment gradually ceasedNo inscription has been found of a later date than 410 A.D. and in the fifth
century the Catacombs had become simply sanctuaries, whither pilgrims resorted to
pray before the tombs of the martyrs. For three centuries a continual stream of
pilgrims made their way, to Rome for this purpose, and some of the Itineraries or
guide-books that they used still exist. Meanwhile the cemeteries were already in
the seventh century beginning to be robbed of their precious contents, as in 645
A.D. and in 652
A.D. a number of the bodies of martyrs were
removed from the Catacombs into Rome in order to save them from pillage and desecration
at the hands of barbarian invaders. Finally in the time of Paschal I (817–824
A.D.) this translation to churches within
the city walls was carried out on an extraordinary scale. It is said that the remains
of no fewer than 2300 martyrs were deposited in one single church, that of St. Praxedis.
Henceforward the pilgrimages came to an end, the Catacombs were deserted, and in
time their very existence was forgotten. The accidental re-opening of a Christian
cemetery by some workmen in the Vigna Sanchez on the Via Salaria in 1578 led to
a revival of interest. It was part of what is now known as the Catacomb of the Jordani,
but a landslip, owing to the rough carelessness of those who first examined these crypts,
completely destroyed them and no trace of them now remains. It was
fortunate that at the beginning of the seventeenth century a really intelligent
and scientific exploration of the Catacombs was undertaken by Antonio Bosio, died
1629 A.D., who devoted thirty years to the
study of the subject and was the real founder of Christian archaeology. He had great
difficulties in his way owing to lack of resources for the purposes of excavation,
but his ‘Roma Sotterranea,' published after his death in 1632, is of very great
value owing to the wanton destruction during the next two centuries of monuments
and works of art, which had survived as memorials of early Christianity in Rome.
The one object of the exploration of the Catacombs, even on the part of those who
did seriously study Christian archaeology and whose writings are a proof of the
interest they felt in their subject—Aringhi, Boldetti, BottariAringhi, Roma Sotterranea, 1651; Boldetti, Osservazioni sopra i cimeteri di
santi martiri ed antichi cristiani di Roma, 1720; Bottari, Sculture e pitture sacre
extratte dai cimeteri di Roma, 1757. and others—was
the discovery of the relics of saints. To effect this purpose the cemeteries were
pillaged and ravaged, the loculi broken open, their contents carried away, the inscriptions
broken to pieces or removed wholesale, the precious works of art found in the tombs—gold
and silver vessels, lamps, medallions, engraved seals, precious stones, and personal
ornaments—stolen and scattered far and wide. Some of these are to be seen to-day
in museums and private collections, but the greater part have disappeared. Not until
the middle of the nineteenth century was a successor found who approached the study
of the Catacombs in. the scientific spirit of Bosio, and with far greater genius.
Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–94), whose early interest in the subject of Christian
archaeology had been aroused by the labours of P. Marchi,I monumenti delle anti cristiane primitive ne11a metropoli di Cristianesimo, 1844. whose pupil indeed he
was, gave his whole life with a thoroughness and industry which could not be surpassed
to the investigation of all known sources which threw light upon the topography
and history of subterranean Rome. He possessed in a peculiar manner a special combination
of gifts—patience, imagination and insight, and the results of his labours have
been not merely fruitful in discovery and in additions to our knowledge of early
Christianity, but they have proved that the so-called legends of the ‘Acta Sanctorum,'
though late in date, are never to be regarded as simply fictitious romances, the
efforts of imaginative invention. On the contrary, however great the accretion of
legendary details, largely thaumaturgic, these stories deal with
real historical persons and have been built up on a basis of genuine
fact. Of De Rossi's method of working and the materials that he used in his researches—i.e.
the Pilgrim Itineraries of the seventh century, five of which are still preserved
in monastic libraries, the ancient topographies, the ‘Sillogae Epigraphicae' drawn
up in the eighth and ninth centuries, the famous Monza papyrus containing a list
of the sacred oils from the various shrines sent by Gregory the Great to the Lombard
Queen Theodelinda, the notices in the ‘Liber Pontificalis,' the Hieronymian Martyrology,
the lists in the Liberian Catalogue entitled ‘Depositio Episcoporum' and ‘Depositio
Martirum,' and the ‘Acta Sanctorum' themselves—a full account is given by himself
in his published works,Roma Solterranea Cristiana, 1864–77. Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae
VIIº saeculo antiquiores, 1861–88. Il museo epigrafico cristiano pro-laterense,
1878. Musaici delle chiese di Roma anteriori at seculo XV, 1872. Especially Bullettino
di Archeologia cristiana, 1863–94. The Bullettino has been continued with the title
Nuovo Bullettino under the editorship of Professor O. Marucchi, the pupil and
fellow-worker cf De Rossi. which should be consulted. References have already been
made to the most important of the discoveries which have in recent years rewarded
the explorers of the first century cemeteries of Priscilla and Domitilla under De
Rossi's inspiring guidance, and it is unnecessary to restate at length what has
been written. The bearing however of these and other discoveries in the same localities
on the history of the Christian Church in Rome during the second half of the twelfth
century is of such an interesting character that a brief recapitulation of results
may be of service.
The vast cemetery of Priscilla lies on the Via Salaria Nova on the north side
of the city. It consists of two stories, in each of which is found a network of
galleries and crypts. The present entrance is modern (1865), the ancient door stands
on the opposite side of the road, above which can be still read the inscription
in the red letters which denote great antiquity, COEM. PRISCILLAE. It was in 1888
that De Rossi in the course of excavations discovered the crypt and chapel of the
Acilian gens. The explorers first came across a broken marble slab containing the
words ACILIO GLABRIONI FILIO, and afterwards the ruined crypt was unearthed and
other fragments of inscriptions to members of various branches of the Acilian family.
Formerly the walls had been encrusted with marble or coated with fine plaster and
covered with frescos and mosaics, but everything had been smashed to pieces by the
hands of relic and treasure hunters in the middle of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless
the historical value of this signal find is great. It may be held
to establish the fact that M' Acilius Glabrio, the consul of 91
A.D., who was put to death by Domitian accused
of following ‘Jewish manners and strange superstitions' and of being ‘an inciter
of innovations,' was a Christian, and not merely so but that in the second century
many members of this distinguished family belonging to the high aristocracy of Rome
had embraced the Christian faith. It seems to follow that this cemetery was excavated
under property belonging to the Acilian House. The names of Priscilla and Prisca
are found on inscriptions as in use among members of this family, and the Priscilla
who was the donor of the ground and founder of the cemetery was doubtless a near
relative of the Consul. In the preceding Note on the ‘Legend of Pudens' it has
been pointed out that there is no necessary inconsistency in the two statements
that Priscilla was mother of Pudens and sister or aunt of M' Acilius Glabrio. Indeed
there are signs that the Acilian crypt and the primitive cemetery of Priscilla,
though closely adjoining, were originally separated, the crypt being approached
by a distinct staircase. If so, it is quite possible, as the ‘Acta' seem to indicate,
that the cemetery may have been through his mother the property of Pudens, the crypt
at its side constructed beneath land belonging to Glabrio. Above the cemetery of
Priscilla, after the peace of the Church, was built a basilica, afterwards known
as St. Sylvester,The basilica of St. Sylvester suffered complete destruction during the period
of the Barbarian invasions. Its very existence had for long centuries been forgotten,
until De Rossi unearthed its ruins in 1889. into which the bodies of many martyrs and saints were translated
from the crypts below in the fourth century. The bodies however of Pudens and his
daughters and of Aquila and Prisca were left undisturbed until the time of Leo IV
in the middle of the ninth century. Leo IV appears to have made a careful exploration
of the cemetery, but after his days it fell into disuse and complete abandonment.
Beneath the story where these bodies lay is a second story, consisting of a long
gallery out of which open some twenty transversal galleries as yet very imperfectly
explored. Of this second story deep down below the surface and approached by two
or more staircases from the upper galleries Marucchi writes: ‘On peut dire sans
exaggération que c'est la region cimetériale la plus vaste et la plus régulière
de toute la Rome souterraine. Ses inscriptions gravées sur marbre, ou peintes en
rouges sur des tuiles comme au premier étage, attestent qu'au moins en partie elle remonte
à la plus haute antiquité. A mon avis, il y eut là un noyau cimetérial
dès le Ile siècle.'Marucchi, Elém. d'Arch. Chrét. ii. 459. One of the most remarkable features of the cemetery of Priscilla
is the existence of two large tanks, one on each floor, besides several smaller
ones. These two large tanks were almost certainly ancient baptisteries. Marucchi
has written learnedly, and with a considerable measure of success, to identify the
cemetery of Priscilla with the ‘Cymiterium Ostrianum, ubi Petrits apostolus baptizavit'
of the apocryphal ‘Acta Liberii.' This cemetery also was called ad Nymphas or
ad Fontes S. Petri, names which might well be derived from the tanks just mentioned.
One of the principal pieces of evidence adduced by Marucchi is found in the Catalogue
of Monza containing a list of the phials of sacred oil taken from the different
shrines and sent to Queen Theodelinda by the direction of Gregory the Great. Under
the heading ‘Salaria Nova' follows: ‘Sedes ubi sedit Scs Petrus ex oleo Sci
Vitalis Scs Alexander Scs Martialis Scs Marcellus
Sci Silvestri Sc Felicis
Sci Filippi et aliorum multorum Scorum. . . .' All these saints mentioned were buried
either in the Cemetery of Priscilla or its immediate vicinity.Marucchi, Di un antico battistero recentemente scoperto nel cimetero apostolico
di Priscilla a delta sue importanza storica, 1901. Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro
e Paolo in Roma, 1903, pp. 93–108. In Roma Sotterranea Cristiana, nuova serie, tom.
i. p. 10, Marucchi writes ‘Spero di pubblicare un nuovo lavoro su questo stesso
argumento.' In any case we are
in the presence here of the most ancient of Roman baptisteries.
The Cemetery of Domitilla lies to the west of the Via Ardeatina (a road which
ran parallel to the Via Appia) close to the point where it is crossed by the modern
Via delle Sette Chiese. The cemetery extends under a property known as the Tor Marancia,
a name doubtless derived from a certain Amaranthus.Supra, p. 249. In excavations made on this
property a number of pagan tombs were found, which gave the clue to De Rossi that
he was seeking in order to locate the cemetery of Domitilla mentioned in the
‘Acts
of Nereus and Achilles.' One of these discovered in 1772 contains the words
FLAVIAE · DOMITILLAE
VESPASIANI · NEPTIS
EIVS · BENEFICIO · HOC · SEPVLCRVm
MEIS · LIBERTIS · LIBERTABVS · POsuit.
Another found in 1817 records how a certain Calvisius Philotas
made this tomb for his brother Sergius Cornelius Julianus, for his
wife Calvisia, and for himself
EX INDVLGENTIA FLAVIAE DOMITILL.
In close vicinity to these were discovered four inscriptions to members of the
Bruttian gens. One of these makes mention of a Bruttius Praesens.
D M.
BRVTIO · VENVSINO
C · BRVTTIVS · PRAESENS
PATRONVS · LIBERTO
BENE · MERENTI · FECIT.
Now Eusebius in his ‘Chronicle' tells us that he derived his information about
the Domitianic persecution and the banishment of Flavia Domitilla to the island
of Pontia from an historian named Bruttius, who may possibly be identified with
C. Bruttius Praesens, who was consul for the second time in 139
A.D. This group of indications led Dc Rossi
to suspect that the cemetery which lay beneath the Tor Marancia was none other than
the Cemetery of Domitilla, in which, according to the ‘Acts of Nereus and Achilles,'
those martyrs were buried.
Acting on this hypothesis the Commission of Sacred Archaeology under the direction
of De Rossi began a systematic exploration of the cemetery in 1852. At first progress
was but slow, owing to the difficulties placed in the way of research by the then
proprietor of the property. Tor Marancia was however in 1873 purchased by Monsgr.
Francesco de Merode, with the aim of forwarding the work by every means in his power.
Already in 1865 De Rossi had re-discovered the original entrance to the Catacomb
hewn out of the side of a low cliff. It must always have been a conspicuous object
to the passer-by, and is a proof of the great security which was felt in the protection
and immunity from disturbance afforded by the law to all places of burial. This
entrance opened into a vestibule adorned with biblical frescoes, which were plainly
visible from outside through the door. To this vestibule De Rossi gave the name
of Il vestibule dei Flavi; its construction is assigned to the first century. The
inscription above the entrance was missing, but in 1874 in the ruins of the basilica
of St. Petronilla only a very short distance from the entrance was a fragment of
marble
containing a portion of a title, which De Rossi has restored thus:
SepulcRVM
FlaviORVM
Below this is the Christian symbol, an anchor. In 1873
De Rossi was rewarded by the discovery of the basilica of Nereus and Achilles, which
had been one of the special objects of his search. There could be no doubt on the
matter, for a portion of an inscription of Pope Damasus was found, the contents
of which are known, for a copy exists in the Pilgrim Itinerary of Einsiedeln, and
a small column was unearthed on which is represented a scene of martyrdom and above
it the word ACILLEVS. According to the ‘Itineraries' the tomb of the famous martyr
Petronilla lay behind the altar which covered the remains of Nereus and Achilles.
The explorers were able to verify this indication. In a cubiculum behind the apse
of the basilica, and approached by a short passage, a fresco was discovered on the
wall filling the front of the arcisolium where the sarcophagus had lain; the painting
showed two female figures standing, art elder and a younger woman with their names
inscribed
VENERANDA · DEP · VII · IDVS · IANVARIAS ·
PETRONELLA MARTYR.
In or close by this cubiculum was therefore, it may
be safely inferred, the burial place of PETRONILLA. Her sarcophagus was actually
removed to the Vatican at the request of the King of France at a time when many
such translations were made by Pope Paul I (755–756).
The inscription on the sarcophagus.
AVRELIAE · PETRONILLAE · FIL · DVLCISSIMAE ·
may be taken as indicating that she belonged to the Aurelian
gens, several of whose members are buried in this cemetery, and that she was related
to the Flavian imperial family, one of whose cognomina was Petro.
The legend that she was the daughter of St. Peter has no foundation other than
the name.
One of the most ancient portions of the cemetery situated in the immediate vicinity,
and to the south of the remains of the basilica of Nereus and Achilles (or as it
is sometimes called of Petronilla), is that styled the Region of the Flavii Aurelii.
It contains the inscription ΦΛ. SABEINOS · ΚΑΙ ΤΙΤΙΑΝΗ
ADELΦΗ not
improbably the grandchildren of Flavius Clemens and of Flavia Domitilla the founder
of the crypt.
Another of the earliest and most interesting crypts in this Catacomb was discovered
in 1881. The decorations of this sepulchral chamber are elaborate and rich, resembling
those of a room in a Pompeian house, and belonging to the same period. Above the
arcisolium inscribed on marble is the single word AMPLIATI. ‘Les lettres de cette
courte épitaphe,' remarks Marucchi, ‘sont très soignées et d'une forme paléographique
certainement antérieure à la seconde moitié du IIe siècle; on peut la juger sans
témérité de la fin du premier.'Elém. d'Arch. Chrét. ii. 118. It is remarkable too that such prominence should
be given to a single name bespeaking probably a man of servile origin. A further
mark of the regard in which this tomb was held is the existence of a staircase of
later date, cut through the rock to provide a direct way of approach from the Via
Ardeatina to the pilgrims. That the man thus honoured was the Ampliatus mentioned
by St. Paul in the salutation in chapter xvi. of the Epistle to the Romans is therefore
not an unreasonable supposition. A later inscription in the same crypt records that
a certain Aurelius Ampliatus with Gordianus his son have erected a memorial to Aurelia
Bonifatia, his incomparable wife. This Aurelius Ampliatus may have been a descendant
of the Ampliatus who was a contemporary of the Apostles, and very probably a freedman
of the Aurelian family, many members of which family, as this Catacomb bears witness,
had been among the early converts to Christianity.
The precious medallion in bronze, containing the earliest representation in existence
of the heads of the two Apostles Peter and Paul, now in the Sacred Museum of the
Vatican Library, was found by Boldetti in the Cemetery of Domitilla.Osservationi sui cimeteri, 1720, p. 192.
Indexes
Index of Scripture References
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
- Ἐλαίας:
1
- ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟ:
1
- Ατομον:
1
- Ατομος:
1
- Αὐγουστησέων:
1
- Ετοικος:
1
- Ετοιμος:
1
- ΚΑΙ ΤΙΤΙΑΝΗ:
1
- Καμπησίων:
1
- Περιστεφανων:
1
- Περίοδοι:
1
- Περίοδοι Βαρνάβα:
1
- Περίοδοι Πέτρορ:
1
- Περίοδοι Πέτρου:
1
- Πορκίου δὲ Φήστου διαδόχου Φήλικι πεμφθέντος ὑπὸ Νέρωνος, οἱ πρωτεύοντες τῶν κατὰ τὴν Καισάρειαν κατοικούντων Ἰουδαίων εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἀναβαίνουσι Φήλικος κατηγοροῦ_τες· καὶ πάντως ἂν ἐδεδώκει τιμωρίαν τῶν εἰς Ἰουδαίους ἀδικημάτων, εἰ μὴ πολλὰ αὐτὸν ὁ Νέρων τῷ ἀδελφῷ Πάλλαντι παρακαλέσαντι συνεχώρησε, μάλιστα δὴ τότε διὰ τιμῆς ἔχων ἐκεῖνοι:
1
- Ποίμαινε τὰ πρόβατά μοῦ—βόσκε τὰ προβάτιά μου:
1
- Πρεσβυτέρους οὖν ἐν ὑμῖν παρακαλῶ ὁ συμπρεσβύτερος . . . ποιμάνατε τὸ ἐν ὑμῖν ποίμνιον τοῦ Θεοῦ :
1
- Πέπεισμαι δέ, ἀδελφοί μου, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ περὶ ὑμῶν, ὅτι καὶ αὐτοὶ μεστοί ἐστε ἀγαθωσύνης, πεπληρωμένοι πάσης γνώσεως, δυνάμενοι καὶ ἀλλήλους νουθετεῖν.:
1
- Σιβουρησίων:
1
- Σίμονα:
1
- Σὺ εἶ Πέτρος καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν:
1
- ΤΕΡΤΙΑΔΕΛΦΕ ΕΥΨΥΧΙΟΥΔΙ:
1
- Τιγελλῖνος γάρ, ὑφ᾽ ᾧ τὸ ξίφος ἦν τοῦ Νέρωνος, ἀπήλαυνεν αὐτὸν τῆς Ῥώμης . . . ἀπαγγελθέντος δὲ τῷ Τιγελλίνῳ τὸν λόγον τοῦτον πέμπει τοὺς ἄξοντας αὐτὸν ἐς τὸ δικαστήριον ὡς ἀπολογήσαιτο μὴ ἀπέβειν ἐς Νέρωνα:
1
- Τιμοθέῳ γνησίῳ τέκνῳ ἐν πίστει.:
1
- ΦΗ:
1
- ΦΛ.:
1
- Φεύξεται ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος:
1
- Φεύξεται ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἄναξ φοβερὸς καὶ ἀναιδής.:
1
- Φλαυΐαν Δομετίλλαν . . . ἐξ ἀδελφῆς γεγονυῖαν Φλαυΐου Κλήμεντος, ἑνὸς τῶν τηνικάδε ἐπὶ Ῥώμης ὑπάτων:
1
- βάναυσος :
1
- γνήσιε σύνζυγε:
1
- γράψεις οὖν δύο βιβλαρίδια καὶ πέμψεις ἓν Κλήμεντι καὶ ἓν Γραπτῇ. πέμψει οὖν Κλήμης εἰς τὰς ἔξω πόλεις, ἐκείνῳ γὰρ ἐπιτέτραπται· Γραπτὴ δὲ νουθετήσε ι τὰς χήρας καὶ τοὺς ὁρφανούς· σὺ δὲ ἀναγνώσῃ εἰς ταύτην τὴν πόλην μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τῶν προϊσαμένων τῶς ἐκκλησίας:
1
- γέγραπται:
1
- δεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἐπίσκοτον ἀνέγκλητον εἶναι, ὡς Θεοῦ οἰκονόμον.:
1
- διὰ Σιλουανοῦ ὑμῖν τοῦ πιστοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, ὡς λογίζομαι, δἰ ὀλίγων ἔγραψα.:
1
- διὰ Σιλουανοῦ ὑμῖν ἔγραψα:
1
- διὰ ζῆλον καὶ φθόνον:
1
- διὰ ζῆλος καὶ φθόνον:
1
- διὰ ζῆλος καὶ ἔριν:
1
- διὰ πυρὸς δοκιμαζομένου:
1
- διὰ τὰς αἰφνιδίους καὶ ἐπαλλήλους γενομένας ἡμῖν συμφορὰς καὶ τεριπτώσεις, ἀδελφοί, βράδιον νομίζομεν ἐπιστοφὴν πεποιῆσθαι περὶ τῶν ἐπιζητουμένων παῤ ὑμῖν πραγμάτων.:
1
- διὰ φθόνον καὶ ἔριν:
1
- διήγησις:
1
- διὸ καὶ ἐνεκοπτόμην τὰ πολλὰ τοῦ ἐλθεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς. τὰ πολλὰ:
1
- δόξης τινός:
1
- επινομην:
1
- ετοιμος:
1
- εἰ ὀνειδίζεσθε ἐν ὀνόματι Χριστοῦ, μακάριοι. . . . εἰ δὲ ὡς Χριστιανός, μὴ αἰσχυνέσθω, δοξαζέτω δὲ τὸν Θεὸν ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ.:
1
- εἰς μάσσαν καλουμένην Ἀκκούαι Σαλβίας πλησὶ τοῦ δένδρου τοῦ στροβίλου.:
1
- εὐχαριστείτω:
1
- εὕρομεν πλοῖον Αἰγύπτιον καὶ ἀνελθόντες εἰς αὐτὸ κατήχθημεν ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ κὰκεῖ ἔμεινα ἐγὼ διδάσκων τοὺς ἐχομένους ἀδελφούς . . . . .:
1
- ζητήματά τινα περὶ τῆς ἰδίας δεισιδαιμονίας.:
1
- ηὐχόμην γὰρ ἀνάθεμα εἶναι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ἀπὸ τοῦ χριστοῦ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου, τῶν συγγενῶν μου κατὰ σάρκα, οἵτινές εἰσιν Ἰσραηλῖται:
1
- θ ί α σ ο ι :
1
- θρεπτούς:
1
- θρεττός:
1
- καθ᾽ ὅλης τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ Γαλιλείας καὶ Σαμαρείας:
1
- κακοῦργος:
1
- καλῶς οὖν εἶπεν ἡ γραφὴ ἡ λέγουσα· Πρῶτον πάντων π ίστευσον:
1
- κατακυριεύοντες:
1
- καταστήσω τοὺς ἐπισκόπους αὐτῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ τοὺς διακόνους αὐτῶν ἐν πίστει.:
1
- κατεψεύσαντο ἡμῶν Θυέστεια δεῖπνα καί Οἰδιπεδείους μίξεις:
1
- κατὰ σάρκα:
1
2
- κατά:
1
- καὶ (τ)ῶν δώδεκα (εἷς) ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτοῦ π(αραδ)οθήσεται:
1
- καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγώ:
1
- καὶ μαρτυρήσαςm ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων οὕτως ἀπηλλάγη τοῦ κόσμου:
1
- καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν:
1
- καὶ ἐν τῷ Ποιμένι:
1
- κλητὸς ἀπὸστολος, ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ:
1
- κλήρων:
1
- κἀν τῷ αὐτῷ ἔτει ἄλλους τε πολλοὺς καὶ τὸν Φλαούϊον Κλήμεντα ὑπατεύοντα, καίπερ ἀνεψιὸν ὄντα καὶ γεναῖκα καὶ αὐτὴν συγγενῆ ἑαυτοῦ Φλαουΐαν Δομιτίλλαν ἔχοντα, κατέσφαξεν ὁ Δομετιανός· ἐπηνέχθη δὲ ἀμφοῖν ἔγκλημα ἀθεότητος, ὑφ᾽ ἧς καὶ ἄλλοι ἐς τὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἔθη ἐξοκέλλοντες πολλοὶ κατεδικάσθησαν, καὶ οἱ μὲν ἀπέθανον, οἱ δὲ τῶν γοῦν οὐσιῶν ἐστερήθησαν· ἡ δὲ Δομιτίλλα ὑπερωρίσθη μόνον ἐς Πανδατερίαν.:
1
- κήρυγμα:
1
- λειτουργία :
1
- λόγος παρακλήσεως:
1
2
- μαρτυρούντων αὐτῶν ἐκείνων τῶν κατ᾽ ὔψιν Ἰωάννην ἑωρακότων. . . .:
1
- μαρτυρήσας:
1
- μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων:
1
- μεγάλη, θαυμασία, ἀνωμολογημένη παρὰ πᾶσιν:
1
- μεμαρτυρημένους πολλοῖς χρόνοις ὑπὸ πάντων:
1
- μηδ᾽ ὡς κατακυριεύοντες τῶν κλήρων:
1
- μάστιγας, φυλακάς, θλίψεις μεγάλας, σταυρούς, θηρία.:
1
- μὲν οὖν:
1
- νεωστί:
1
- νῦν οὖν ἱμῖν λέγω τοῖς προηγουμένοις τῆς ἐκκλησίας κ9αὶ τοῖς πρωτοκαθεδρίταις· μὴ γίνεσθε ὅμοιοι τοῖς φαρμακοῖς . . . βλέπετε οὖν, τέκνα, μήποτε αὗται αἱ διχοστασίαι ὑμῶν ἀποστερήσουσιν τὴν ζωὴν ὑμῶν . . . :
1
- ξενία:
1
- οἱ προηγούμενοι:
1
- οἱ προιστάμενοι:
1
- οἱ ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς αὐτόπται:
1
- οἱ ἡγούμενοι:
1
- οὐ θέλω δὲ ὑμῠς ἀγνοεῖν, ἀδελφοί, ὅτι πολλάκις προεθέμην ἐλθεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς καὶ ἐκωλύθην ἄχρι τοῦ δεῦρο.:
1
- οὐ μὴν εἰς μακρὸν αὐτῷ ταῦτα προὐχώρει. Παρὰ πόδας γοῦν ἐπὶ τῆς αὐτῆς Κλαυδίου βασιλείας, ἡ πανάγαθος καὶ φιλανθρωποτάτη τῶν ὅλων πρόνοια τὸν καρτερὸν καὶ μέγαν τῶν ἀποστόλων, τὸν ἀρετῆς ἕνεκα τῶν λοιπῶν ἁπάντων προήγορον, Πέτρον, ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥώμην ὡς ἐπὶ τηλικοῦτον λυμεῶνα βίου χειραγωγεῖ, ὃς οἷά τις γενναῖος Θεοῦ στρατηγὸς τοῖς θείοις ὅπλοις φραξάμενος, τὴν πολυτίμητον ἐμπορίαν τοῦ νοητοῦ φωτὸς ἐξ ἀνατολῶν τοῖς κατὰ δύσιν ἐκόμιζεν, φῶς αὐτὸ καὶ λόγον ψυχῶν σωτήριον, τὸ κήρυγμα τῆς τῶν οὐρανῶν βασιλείας εὐαγγελιζόμενος:
1
- οὐδένα γὰρ ἔχω ἰσόψυχον, ὅστις γνησίως τὰ περὶ ὑμῶν μεριμνήσει:
1
- οὐκ ἠγ̤πησαν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτῶν ἀχρὶ θανάτου.:
1
- οὐχ ὡς Πέτρος καὶ Παῦλος διατάσσομαι ὑμῖν· ἐκεῖνοι ἀπόστολοι, ἐγὼ κατάκριτος.:
1
- οὓς ἰδὼν ὁ Παῦλος εὐχαριστήσας τῷ θεῷ ἔλαβεν θάρσος· :
1
- οὕτω μὲν δὴ τότε ἡ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχὴ δύο αὐτοκράτορσιν ἅμα ἐδούλευσε, Νέρωνι καὶ Ἡλίῳ· οὐδὲ ἔχω εἰπεῖν ὁπότερος αὐτῶν χείρων ἦν:
1
- οὗτοι οἱ ἀπόστολοι καὶ οἱ διδάσκαλοι οἱ κηρύξαντες τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, κοιμηθέντες ἐν δυνάμει καὶ πίστει τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκήρυξαν καὶ τοῖς προκεκοιμημένοις καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔδωκαν αὐτοῖς τὴν σφραγίδα τοῦ κηρύγματος.:
1
- οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἀπόστολοι καὶ ἐπίσκοποι καὶ διδάσκαλοι καὶ διάκονοι οἱ πορευθέντες κατὰ τὴν σεμνότητα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐπισκοπήσαντες καὶ διδάξαντες καὶ διακονήσαντες ἁγνῶς καὶ σεμνῶς τοῖς ἐκλεκτοῖς τοῦ θεοῦ, οἱ μὲν κεκοιμημένοι, οἱ δὲ ἔτι ὄντες.:
1
- παρακλήσεσι δὲ παντοίαις Μάρκου, οὗ τὸ Εὐαγγελίον φέρεται, ἀκόλουθον ὄντα Πέτρου λιπαρῆσαι, ὡς ἂν καὶ διὰ γραφῆς ὑπόμνημα τῆς διὰ λόγου παραδοθείσης αὐτοῖς καταλείψοι διδασκαλίας, μὴ πρότερόν τε ἀνεῖναι, ἢ κατεργάσασθαι τὸν ἄνδρα, καὶ ταύτῃ αἰτίους γενέσθαι τῆς τοῦ λεγομένου κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίου γραφῆς. Γνόντα δὲ τὸ πραχθὲν φασὶ τὸν ἀπόστολον, ἀποκαλύψαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ πνεύματος, ἡσθῆναι τῇ τῶν ἀνδρῶν προθυμίᾳ, κύρωσαί τε τὴν γραφὴν εἰς ἔντευξιν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις.:
1
- παρακάλει πάντας.:
1
- παράκλητος:
1
- παῖς Θεοῦ:
1
- παῤ οἷς καὶ ξενίζομαι:
1
- παῤ οἷς καί ψενίζομαα:
1
- ποιμαίνειν:
1
- πολλάκις:
1
- πολλὴν ἄθλησιν ὑπεμείνατε παθημάτων . . . ὀνειδισμοῖς τε καί θλίψεσι θεατριζόμενοι· . . . τὴν ἁρπαγὴν τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ὑμῶν μετὰ χαρᾶς προσεδέξασθε.:
1
- ποίμενες καὶ ἐπίσκοποι:
1
- πρεσβύτεροι:
1
- προεβάλλοντο ἄλλους Σίμωνα μὲν καὶ Μένανδρον ἀπὸ Σαμαρείας οἳ καὶ μαγικὰς δυνάμεις ποιήσαντες πολλοὺς ἐξηπάτησαν καὶ ἔτι ἀπατωμένους ἔχουσι. καὶ γὰρ παῤ ὑμῖν, ὡς προέφημεν, ἐν τῇ βασιλίδι Ῥώμῃ ἐπὶ Κλαυδίου Καίσαρος γενόμενος ὁ Σίμων καὶ τὴν ἱερὰν σύγκλητον καὶ τὸν δῆμον Ῥωμαίων εἰς ποσοῦτο κατεπλήξατο ὡς θεὸς νομισθῆναι, καὶ ἀνδριάντι, ὡς τοὺς ἄλλους παῤ ὑμῖν τιμωμένους θεούς, τιμηθῆναι.:
1
- προηγούμενοι:
1
- πρότερον:
1
- πρῶτον:
1
- πάντες δὲ διεσπάρησαν κατὰ τὰς χώρας τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ Σαμαρείας πλὴν τῶν ἀποστόλων:
1
- πάρεδροι:
1
- σεβόμεηοι:
1
- σεβόμενοι:
1
- σεβόμενοι τὸν Θεόν:
1
- σημαίνει ἡ γραφή:
1
- σπεῖρα Σεβαστή:
1
- συγγενεῖς:
1
- συλλαλήσας μετὰ τοῦ συμβουλίου:
1
- συναχθῆναι ἐν τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ.:
1
- σὺν καὶ:
1
- σύνεργος:
1
- ταῦτα καὶ ὑμεῖς διὰ τῆς τοσαύτης νουθεσίας τὴν ἀπὸ Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν γενηθεῖσαν Ῥωμαίων τε καὶ Κορινθίων συνεκεράσατε.:
1
- ταῦτα καὶ ὑμεῖς διὰ τῆς τοσαύτης νουθεσίας τὴν ἀπὸ Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν γενηθεῖσαν Ῥωμαίων τεκαὶ Κορινθίων συνεκεράσατε. Καὶ γὰρ ἄμφω καὶ εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν Κόρινθον φυτεύσαντες ἡμᾶς, ὁμοίως ἐδίδαξαν· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὁμόσε διδάξαντες, ἐμαρτύρησαν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν:
1
- τινὲς δὲ αὐτῶν εἰς τέλος ἀπέστησαν· οὗτοι οὖν μετάνοιαν οὐκ ἔχουσιν· διὰ γὰρ τὰς πραγματείας αὐτῶν ἐβλασφήμησαν τὸν Κύριον καὶ ἀπηρνήσαντο.:
1
- τοὔνομα αὐτοῦ δἰ ἐκείνου ἂν ἐρρέθη, τοῦ καὶ τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν ἑωρακότος· οὐδὲ γὰρ πρὸ πολλοῦ χρόνου ἑωράθη, ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας γενεᾶς, πρὸς τῷ τέλειτῆς Δομετιανοῦ ἀρχῆς:
1
- τοὺς δὲ ἀπεσταλμένους ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν Κλαύδιον Ἔφηβον καὶ Οὐαλέριον Βίτωνα σὺν καὶ Φορτουνάτῳ:
1
- τοὺς ἔγγιστα γενομένους ἀθλητάς:
1
- τούς τε Ἰουδαίους, πλεονάσαντας αὖθις χαλεπῶς ἂν ἄνευ ταραχῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου σφῶν τῆς πόλεως εἰρχθῆναι, οὐκ ἐξήλασε μέν, τῷ δὲ δὴ πατρίῳ νόμῳ βίῳ χρωμένους, ἐκέλευσε μὴ συναθροίζεσθαι. τάς τε ἑταιρείας ἐπαναχθείσας ὑπὸ τοῦ Γαίου διέλυσε.:
1
- τούτοις τοῖς ἄνδρασιν ὁσίως πολιτευσαμένοις συνηθροίσθη πολὺ πλῆθος ἐκλεκτῶν, οἵτινες πολλάκις αἰκίαις καὶ βασάνοις διὰ ζῆλος παθόντες ὑπόδειγμα κάλλιστον ἐγένοντο ἐν ἡμῖν. Διὰ ζῆλος γυναῖκες Δαναίδες καὶ Δίρκαι αἰκίσματα δεινὰ καὶ ἀνόσια παθοῦσαι ἐπὶ τὸν τῆς πίστεως δρόμον κατήντησαν:
1
- τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν συνπαρακληθῆναι ἐν ὑμῖν διὰ τῆς ἐν ἀλλήλοις πιστέως ὑμῶν τε καὶ ἐμοῦ.:
1
- τὴν φυτείαν ἢν φυτεύσουσιν οἱ δώδεκα ἀπόστολοι:
1
- τὴν φυτείαν ἣν φυτεύσουσιν οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ διώξει καὶ τῶν δώδεκα εἷς ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτοῦ παραδοθήσεται:
1
- τὴν ἀπὸ Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν γενηθεῖσαν Ῥωμαίων τε καὶ Κορινθίων:
1
- τήρησις μετὰ ἀνέσεως.:
1
- τίς δὲ ὁγράψας τὴν ἐπιστολὴν τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς θεὸς οἶδεν:
1
- τὸ μίσθωμα:
1
- τὸν Θεόν:
1
- τὸν δὲ Παῦλον εἴασεν ἐν τηρήσει διὰ Δρυσίλλαν:
1
- τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν:
1
- τῇ γυναικὶ Ποππαίᾳ, θεοσεβὴς γὰρ ἦν, ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἰουδαίων δεηθείσῃ χαριζόμενος, ἣ τοῖς μὲν δέκα προσέταξεν ἀπιέναι.:
1
- τῇ ἐν ὑμῖν πυρώσει πρὸς πειρασμὸν ὑμῖν γινομένῃ.:
1
- τῶν οὖν μετανοούντων εὐθὺς [εὐθέως] δοκεῖς τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἀφίεσθαι:
1
- υἱὸς παρακλήσεως:
1
2
- υἱός:
1
- φασὶ τὸν ἀπόστολον:
1
- φεύξεται ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἄναξ φοβερὸς καὶ ἀναιδής.:
1
- φιλοτιμούμενον:
1
- φοβούμενοι:
1
- ἀβαναύσως :
1
- ἀκριβέστερον εἰδὼσ τὰ περὶ τῆς ὁδοῦ.:
1
- ἀλλ᾽ εἰ πάσχοιτε δήὰ δικαιοσύνην, μακάριοι. τὸν δὲ φόβον αὐτῶν μὴ φοβηθῆτε, μηδὲ ταραχθῆτε· . . . ἔτοιμοι δὲ ἀεὶ πρὸς ἀπολογὶαν παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντι ὑμᾶς:
1
- ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα τῶν ἀρχαίων ὑποδειγμάτων παυσώμεθα, ἔλθωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἔγγιστα γενομένους ἀθλητάς· λάβωμεν τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν τὰ aενναῖα ὑποδείγματα.:
1
- ἀνεσκολοπίσθη κατὰ κεφαλῆς:
1
- ἀπόστολοι ἐκκλησιῶν:
1
- ἀρχαίαν:
1
2
- ἀσπάσασθε Ἀνδρόνικον καὶ Ἰουνιᾶν τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου καὶ συναιχμαλώτους μου, οἵτινές εἰσιν ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ:
1
- ἄναξ φοβερὸς καὶ ἀναιδής:
1
- ἄρα γε καὶ:
1
- ἄρχων:
1
- Ἀγριππησίων:
1
- Ἀδύνατον γὰρ τοὺς ἅπαξ φωτισθέντας . . . καὶ παραπεσόντας, πάλιν ἀνακαινίζειν εἰς μετάνοιαν . . . τὸ τέλος εἰς καῦσιν. :
1
- Ἀιβρέων:
1
- Ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα τῶν ἀρχαίων ὑποδειγμάτων παυσώμεθα ἔλθωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἔγγιστα γενομένους ἀθλητάς· λάβωμεν τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν τὰ γενναῖα ὑποδείγματα . . :
1
- Ἀλῦπις Τιβεριεὺς καὶ οἱ αὐτοῦ, Ἰοῦστος καὶ Ἀλῦπις, Ἐβρẽοι, μετὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῶν ὧδε κῖντε:
1
- Ἀσπάσασθε Πρίσκαν καί Ἀκύλαν τοὺς συνεργούς μου ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, οἵτινες ὑπὲρ τῆς ψυχῆς μου τὸν ἑαυτῶν τράχηλον ὑπέθηκαν:
1
- ἐγένετο δὲ Πέτρον διερχόμενον διὰ πάντων:
1
- ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου ὄρους τοῦ μέλανος οἱ πιστεύσαντες τοιοῦτοί εἰσιν· ἀποστάται καὶ βλάσφημοι εἰς τὸν Κύριον, καὶ πρόδοται τῶν δούλων τοῦ θεοῦ. τούτοις δὲ μετάνοια οὐκ ἔστι, θάνατος δὲ ἔστι. :
1
- ἐλθόντες δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν :
1
- ἐλπίζων ὅτι χρήματα δοθήσεται ὑπὸ τοῦ Παύλου· διὸ καὶ πυκνότερον αὐτὸν μεταπεμπόμενος ὡμίλει αὐτῷ.:
1
- ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως.:
1
- ἐν ἀρχῇ:
1
- ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου:
1
- ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου :
1
- ἐνδελεχισμόν :
1
- ἐπ9ισκοποῦντες:
1
- ἐπιποθίαν.:
1
- ἐπισκόπους:
1
- ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως ἐλθών:
1
- ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως.:
1
- ἐπίσκοπος:
1
- ἑωράθη:
1
- ἔ ρ α ν ο ι :
1
- ἔπεσαν:
1
- ἔπινον γὰρ ἐκ πνευματικῆς ἀκολουθούσης πέτρας· ἡ δὲ πέτρα ἦν ὁ Χριστός:
1
- ἔχοντες ζῆλόν τινα ἐν ἀλλήλοις περὶ πρωτείων καὶ περὶ δόξης τινός:
1
- Ἐλυμας:
1
- Ἐτοιμας:
1
- ἡ γραφὴ λέγει:
1
- ἡ γὰρ ὑμῶν ὑπακοὴ εἰς πάντας ἀφίκετο:
1
- ἡ ξενία:
1
- ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν:
1
- ἡ σφραγὶς τὸ ὕδωρ ἐστίν:
1
- ἡ ἐκκλησία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡ παροικοῦσα Ῥώμην τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῇ παροικούσῃ Κόρινθον:
1
- ἡγεμόσιν, ὡς δἱ αὐτοῦ [τοῖ βασιλέως πεμπομένοις εἰς ἐκδίκησιν κακοποιῶν:
1
- ἡγούμενοι:
1
2
- ἡμῖν διὰ Κλήμεντος γραφεῖσαν:
1
- ἡμῖν διὰ Κλήμεντος γραφεῖσαν.:
1
- ἥξει δ᾽ ἐκ περάτων γαίης μητροκτόνος ἀνήρ:
1
- ἥτις καὶ προκάθηται ἐν τόπῳ χωρίου Ῥωμαίων, ἀξιόθεος , ἀξιοπρεπής, ἀξιομακάριστος, ἀξιέπαινος, ἀξιεπίτευκτος , ἀξίαγνος καὶ προκαταθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης , Χριστώνομος, Πατρώνομος:
1
- Ἦτε γὰρ ὡς πρόβατα πλανώμενοι· ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεστράφητε νῦν ἐπὶ τὸν ποιμένα καὶ ἐπίσκοπον τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν:
1
- Ἰουνίαν:
1
- Ἰόνιον πέλαγος, ὁ νῦν Ἀδρίας.:
1
- ὁ Κύριος εἶπεν:
1
- ὁ Χριστὸς οὖν ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ οἱ ἀπόστολοι ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ . . . . ἐξῆλθον (οἱ ἀπόστολοι) εὐαγγελιζόμενοι τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ Θεοῦ μέλλειν ἔρχεσθαι:
1
- ὁ βασιλεὺς οὗτος:
1
- ὁ δὲ Ῥωμαίων βασιλείς, ὡς ἡ παράδοσις διδάσκει, κατεδίκασε τὸν Ἰωάννην μαρτυροῦντα διὰ τὸν τῆς ἀληθείας λόγον εἰς Πάτμον τὴν νῆσον· διδάσκει δὲ τὰ περὶ τοῦ μαρτυρίου αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννης, μὴ λέγων τίς αὐτὸν κατεδίκασε.:
1
- ὁ θρέψας:
1
- ὁ θρέψας με πέπρακέν με Ῥόδῃ τινὶ εἰς Ῥώμην:
1
- ὁ ἑκατόνταρχος παρέδοκε τοὺς δεσμίους τῷ στρατοπεδάρχῃ, :
1
- ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὁμόσε ειδάξαντες, ἐμαρτύρησαν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν.:
1
- ὃν πάντες στυγέουσι βροτοὶ καὶ φῶτες ἄριστοι·:
1
- ὃς πᾶσαν γαῖαν καθελεῖ καὶ πάντα κρατήσει:
1
- ὅσοι ἐπ᾽ ἐξουσίαν ἀχθέντες ἐξητάσθησαν καὶ οὐκ ἡρνήσαντο ἀλλ᾽ ἔπαθον προθύμως . . . ὅσοι δὲ δειλοὶ καὶ ἐν δισταγμῷ ἐγένοντο καὶ ἐλογίσαντο ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν, πότερον ἀρνήσονται ἢ ὁμολογήσουρι καὶ ἔπαθον . . . ὑμεῖς δέ οἱ πάσχοντες ἕνεκεν τοῦ ὀνόματος δοξάζειν ὀφείλετε τόν θεὸν . . . δοκεῖτε ἔργον μέγα πεποιηκέναι ἐάν τις ὑμῶν διὰ τὸν θεὸν πάθῃ. :
1
- ὑστέρησα τῶν ὑπερλίαν ἀποστόλων:
1
- ὕπερ ἐπιγνόντα τὸν Πέτρον προτρεπτικῶς μήτε κωλῦσαι μήτε προτρέψασθαι:
1
- ὤλεσε γὰρ πολλοὺς καὶ γαστέρι χεῖρας ἐφῆκεν:
1
Index of Latin Words and Phrases
- . . . ' pastorem uero:
1
- Hic habitare prius sanctos cognoscere debes :
1
- Pone Tigellinum: taeda lucebis in illa,:
1
- Stemmate nobilium deductum nomen avorum:
1
- Tantae per urbis ambitum :
1
- Ut teres orbis iter flexi rota percucurrit anni :
1
- Veridicus rector, lapsos quia crimina fiere:
1
- ‘Prima Petrum rapuit sententia legibus Neronis, :
1
- ‘Tantae per urbis ambitum :
1
- . . . Linus fuit temporibus Neronis, a consulatu Saturnini et Scipionis:
1
- AMPLIATI:
1
- Ab Appii Foro hora quarta: dederam aliam paullo ante Tribus Tabernis.:
1
- Ad hanc enim Ecclesiam propter potiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in qua semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata est ea, quae est ab apostolis traditio.:
1
- Ad locum qui vocatur Naumachiae iuxta obeliscum Neronis in montem.:
1
- Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae:
1
- Afflicti suppliciis christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae.:
1
- Antonius Felix per omnem saevitiam et libidinem ius regium servili ingenio exercuit:
1
- Apostolos:
1
- Apud palatium neronianum iuxta obeliscum inter duas metas.:
1
- Atque ubi dicendam ad causam introissent . . . pro crimine accipi cum super Neronis ac Tigellini saevas percontationes, Faenius quoque Rufus violenter urgeret.:
1
- Auxit hanc molem facinorum eius temeritas impietatis in Deum, nam primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et mortibus affecit ac per omnes provincias pari persecutione excruciari imperavit ipsumque nomen exstirpare conatus beatissimos Christi apostolos Petrum cruse, Paulum gladio occidit. . . . Mox acervatim miseram civitatem obortae undique oppressere clades, nam subsequente autumno tanta Urbi pestilentia incubuit, ut triginta milia funera in rationem Libitinae venirent.:
1
- Castra Peregrinorum:
1
- Clemens Alex. igitur integro Pastore usus de divinis eius revelationibus ne dubitavit quidem neque Hermam apostolorum temporibus posteriorem existimasse potest.:
1
- Coemeterium ad Nymphas Beati Petri ubi baptizaverat:
1
- Cohors militum Italicorum voluntaria, quae est in Syria.:
1
- Colitur S. Novatus:
1
- Collegia funeratica:
1
- Coniuncti:
1
- Consul suffectus:
1
- Contemptissimae inertiae.:
1
- Cum mihi Domitianus Augustus sororis suae nepotum delegavit curam.:
1
- Cuncta malefacta sibi impune ratus tanta potentia subnixo.:
1
- Cymiterium Ostrianum, ubi Petrits apostolus baptizavit:
1
- Dicit ei Simon Petrus: Domine, quo vadis? Respondit Iesus: Quo ego vado, non potes me mode sequi: sequeris autem postea. Dicit ei Petrus: Quare non possum te sequi modo? animam meam pro te ponam.:
1
- Dominus conservator ecclesiae Pudentianae.:
1
- Domus Aurea:
1
- Dum essem puer et liberalibus studiis erudirer, solebam cum caeteris eiusdem aetatis et propositi, diebus dominicis sepulchra Apostolorum et martyrum circuire, crebroque cryptas ingredi, quae in terrarum profunda defossae, ex utraque parte ingredientium per parietes habent corpora sepultorum, et ita obscura sunt omnia, ut propemodum illud propheticum compleatur: Descendant ad infernum viventes:
1
- Duraveruntque, quoniam et de longissimo aevo arborum diximus, ad Neronis principis incendia quibus cremavit Urbem, annis CLXXX . . . postea cultu virides iuvenesque ni Princeps ille accelerasset etiam arborum mortem:
1
- Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat:
1
- Et fecit constitutum in ecclesia et patenas vitreas ante sacerdotes in ecclesia, et ministros supportantes, donec episcopus missas celebraret, ante se sacerdotes adstantes, sic missae celebrarentur:
1
- Et iuxta eandem viam (Appiam) ecclesia est S. Sebastiani martyris, ubi ipse dormit, et ibi aunt sepulchra Apostolorum Petri et Pauli; in quibus xl annos requiescebant (‘De locis S.S. Martyrum'); ‘Postea pervenies via Appia ad S. Sebastianum martyrem, cuius corpus iacet in inferiori loco, et ibi sunt sepulchra Apostolorum Petri et Pauli in quibus xl annos requiescebant:
1
- Fasti Consulares:
1
2
- Fatebantur:
1
- Fertur Titus adhibito consilio prius deliberasse . . . at contra alii et Titus ipse evertendum templum in primis censebant quo plenius Iudaeorum et Christianorum religio tolleretur; quippe has religiones, licet contrarias sibi, iisdem auctoribus profectas: Christianos ex Iudaeis extitisse: radice sublata, stirpem facile perituram.:
1
- Flagitia cohaerentia nomini:
1
- Flaviam Domitillam, filiam sororis Clementis consulis.:
1
- Flavium Sabinum inermem neque fugam coeptantem circumsistunt:
1
2
- Hic [Lucius Annaeus Seneca] ante biennium quam Petrus et Paulus martyrio coronarentur, a Nerone interfectus est:
1
- Hic [Petrus] ordinavit duos episcopos, Linum et Cletum, qui praesentaliter omne ministerium sacerdotale in urbe Roma populo vel supervenientium exhiberent; beatus autem Petrus ad orationem et praedicationem, populum erudiens, vacabat. . . . Hic beatum Clementem episcopum conservavit, eique cathedram vel ecclesiam omnem disponendam commisit.:
1
- Hic [Pius] ex rogatu beate Praxedis dedicavit aecclesiam thermas Novati in vico Patricii, in honore Sororis suae sanctae Potentianae, ubi et multa dona obtulit; ubi saepius sacrificium Domino offerens ministrabat:
1
- Hic ex rogatu beatae Praxedis dedicavit ecclesiam thermas Novati, in vico Patricii, in honore sororis suae sanctae Potentianae, ubi et multa dona obtulit; ubi saepius sacrificium domino offerens ministrabat. Immo et fontem baptismi construi fecit.:
1
- Hic fecit basilicas duas: una beato Laurentio iuxta theatrum . . . et in Catacumbas ubi iacuerunt corpora sanctorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli, in quo loco platomam ipsam, ubi iacuerunt corpora sancta, versibus exornavit.:
1
- Hic memoriam Beati Petri construxit et composuit.:
1
- Hic requiescit in pace Hilarus Lector tituli Pudentis:
1
- III Kal. iul. Romae, natale sanctorum Petri et Pauli: Petri in Vaticano, via Aurelia; Pauli vero in via Ostensi; utriusque in Catacumbas; passi sub Nerone, Basso et Tusco Consulibus.:
1
- III. Kal. Iul. Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostense—Tusco et Basso cons.:
1
- III. Kal. Iul. Romae natale apostolorum sanctorum Petri et Pauli—Petri in Vaticano via Aurelia Pauli vero in Via Ostensi, :
1
- III. Kal. iul. Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostense Basso et Tusco Consulibus.:
1
- III. Kl. Iulii Passio beatorum Petri et Pauli a Marcello discipulo Petri edita quique idem interfuit passioni.:
1
- Igitur primo correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens. . . .:
1
- Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis coniuncti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus adfixi aut flammandi, atque, ubi defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. Hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigae permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. Unde quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exampla meritos miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur:
1
- In munere Neronis arserunt vivi de quibus ille iusserat cereos fieri, qui lucerent spectatoribus. . . . Maleficos homines taeda, papyro, cera super vestiebat, sicque ad ignem admoveri iubebat ut arderent.:
1
- In septimo miliario eiusdem viae [Nomentanae] s. papa Alexander cum Eventio et Theodulo pausant:
1
- Indicio eorum:
1
- Ineunt deinde consulatum Silius Nerva et Atticus Vestinus, coepta simul et aucta coniuratione, in quam certatim nomina dederant senatores eques miles, feminae etiam, cum odio Neronis tum favore in C. Pisonem:
1
- Ipsa rettuli verba:
1
- Ipsum nomen, si flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini puniantur:
1
- Ista quam felix ecclesia . . . ubi Petrus passioni dominicae adaequatur:
1
- Iudaeorum iuventutes per speciem sacramenti in provincias gravioris caeli distribuit, reliquos gentis eiusdem vel similia sectantes urbe summovit, sub poena perpetuae servitutis nisi obtemperassent.:
1
- Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit.:
1
- Jam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes.:
1
- Laterculum:
1
- Laureolum Schol. In ipso mimo Laureolo figitur crux unde vera cruce dignus est Lentulus, qui tanto detestabilior est quanto melius gestum imitatus est scenicum. . . . Hic Lentulus nobilis fuit et suscepit servi personam in agendo mimo.:
1
- Linus:
1
- Magi estis quia novum nescio quod genus religionis inducitis.:
1
- Marcus, Petri sectator, praedicante Petro evangelium palam Romae coram quibusdam Caesareanis equitibus et multa Christi testimonia proferente, petitus ab eis, ut possent quae dicebantur memoriae commendare, scripsit ex his, quae a Petro dicta sunt, evangelium quod secundum Marcum vocitatur.:
1
- Mundus ipse concutitur . . . consternatio omnium:
1
- Naumachia:
1
- Neque enim in universum aliquid quod quasi certam formam:
1
- Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat . . . igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens. . . .:
1
- Nobilissimos e senatu, invidiae sirnul et praedae causa . . . interfecit.:
1
- Non possum ferre, Quirites, Graecam urbem:
1
- Non regibus haec adulatio, non Caesaribus honor.:
1
- Numquid ergo,' ait, ‘protinus putas aboleri delicta eorum, qui agunt poenitentiam?:
1
- P. Ælius Chrestus et Cornelia Paula hoc scalare adplicitum huic sepulchro quod emerunt a fisco agente Agathonico proc [-uratore] Augustorum nostrorum quod habet scriptura infra scripta. Gentiano et Basso cons. vii Kal. April.:
1
- Paulus Apostolus . . . quarto decimo anno Neronis eodem die quo Petrus, Romae pro Christo capite truncatur . . . anno post passionem Domini XXXVII:
1
- Petrus:
1
- Petrus Apostolus . . . cum primum Antiochenam Ecclesiam fundasset, Romam proficiscitur, ubi Evangelium praedicans xxv annis eiusdem urbis Episcopus perseverat. Post Petrum primus Romanam ecclesiam tenuit Linus annis xi.:
1
- Petrus in parte occidentali civitatis iuxta viam Corneliam ad milliarium primum in corpore quiescit.:
1
- Pius, natione Italus ex patre Rufino, frater Pastoris, de civitate Aquileia, sedit ann. xviii, mens. iiii, dies iii. Fuit temporibus Antonii Pii a consulatu Clari et Severi. Sub huius episcopatu frater ipsius Hermis librum scripsit in quo mandatum continetur quod praecepit angelus Domini cum venit ad eum in habitu pastoris et praecepit ei ut sanctum Paschae die dominica celebraretur.:
1
- Pomponia Graecina, insignis femina, Plautio qui ovans se de Britanniis rettulit nupta ac superstitionis externae rea, mariti·iudicio permissa; isque prisco instituto, propinquis coram, de capite famaque coniugis cognovit et insontem nuntiavit. Longa huic Pomponiae aetas et continua tristis fuit; nam post Iuliam Drusi filiam dolo Messalinae interfectam per quadraginta annos non cultu nisi lugubri, non animo nisi maesto egit; idque illi imperitante Claudio impune, mox ad gloriam vertit.:
1
- Post ascensum eius beatissimus Petrus episcopatum suscepit:
1
- Praeter caeteros Iudaicus fiscus acerbissime actus est; ad quem deferebantur qui vel improfessi Iudaicam viverent vitam, vel, dissimulata origine, imposita genti tributa non pependissent.:
1
- Presbyter Pastor titulum:
1
- Princeps Peregrinorum:
1
- Principe Augusta nomen hoc ortum est, Tiberio disciplina eius inluxit, sub Nerone damnatio invaluit. . . . Et tamen permansit erasis omnibus hoc solum “institutum Neronianum” iustum denique ut dissimile sui auctoris.:
1
- Profectione Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniā proficiscentis.:
1
- Propositus est libellus sine auctore, multorum nomina continens. Qui negabant esse Christianos. . . . Alii ab indice nominati, esse se Christianos dixerunt.:
1
- Qui sacra impia nocturnave ut quem obtruncarent, defigerent, obligarent, fecerint faciendave curaverint, aut crucibus suffiguntur aut bestiis obiiciuntur. . . . Magicae artis conscios summo supplicio adfici placuit, id est bestiis obiici aut crucibus suffigi; ipsi autem magi vivi exuruntur.:
1
- Quod assignata oratione assidendi mos est quibusdam, non perspicio rationem, nisi quod pueri volunt. Quid enim, si Hermas:
1
- Quod et placuit Sancto Pio Episcopo; thermasque Novati dedicavit ecclesiam sub nomine beatae Virginis [Potentianae in vico Patricio. Dedicavit autem et aliam sub nomine sanctae Virginis] Praxedis infra urbem Romam, in vico qui appellatur Lateranus.:
1
- Relegatio:
1
- Romanus secretis criminationibus incusaverat Senecam ut C. Pisonis socium. . . . Unde Pisoni timor, et orta insidiarum in Neronem magna moles sed inprospera.:
1
- Salaria Nova:
1
- Scribit Bruttius . . . Flaviam Domitillam Flavii Clementis consulis ex sorore neptem in insulam Pontianam relegatam, quia se Christianam esse testata est.:
1
- Scribit Bruttius plurimos Christianorum sub Domiciano fecisse martyrium, inter quos et Flaviam Domitillam Flavii Clementis consulis ex sorore neptem in insulam Pontianam relegatam quia se Christianam esse testata sit.:
1
- Sed exponenda huius nominis [Christi] ratio est propter ignorantium errorem, qui eum immutata litera Chrestum solent dicere.:
1
- Sed profectione Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis.:
1
- Sed quoniam valde longum est in hoc tali volumine omnium Ecclesiarum numerare successiones, maximae et antiquissimae et omnibus cognitae, a gloriosissimis duobus apostolis Petro et Paulo Romae fundatae et constitutae Ecclesiae:
1
- Sed res utraque, Iosephi et Clementis, longe dissimilis est. Iosephus, sacros populi sui ritus describens, per figuram, historicis non inusitatam, praesenti, quod dicimus, historico utitur. Clemens, autem, ut Corinthos ad ordinem servandum adducat, lectoribus ordinem Iudaici cultus ante oculos ponit. Quodsi autem templum iam fuisset destructum, tota S. Patris argumentatio fuisset infirma, ipsaque adversarios invitasset, ut dicerent: En, eversione templi Hierosolymitani Deus ipse testatus est, talem ordinem sibi non esse exoptatum.:
1
- Sed ut cum perperam Chrestianos pronuntiatur a vobis, nam nec nominis certa est notitia penes vos:
1
- Sedes ubi sedit Sc:
1
- Sepultus est in Vaticano iuxta viam triumphalem totius orbis veneratione celebratur.:
1
- Sibi suisque, libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum:
1
- Simon Petrus . . . Romam pergit, ibique viginti quinque annis cathedram sacerdotalem tenuit usque ad ultimum Neronis annum, id est, quartum decimum:
1
- Simon Petrus . . . princeps Apostolorum, post episcopatum Antiochensis ecclesiae et praedicationem dispersionis eorum qui de circumcisione crediderant, in Ponto, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia et Bithynia, secundo Claudii anno ad expugnandum Simonem Magum Romam pergit, ibique viginti quinque annis cathedram sacerdotalem tenuit, usque ad ultimum annum Neronis, id est decimum quartum.:
1
- Sub huius episcopatu frater eius Ermes librum scripsit, in quo mandatum continetur, quod ei praecepit angelus, cum venit ad illum in habitu pastoris.:
1
- Subdidit reos:
1
- Suffecti:
1
- Suffectus:
1
- Tot facinoribus foedum annum etiam di tempestatibus et morbis insignivere, vastata Campania turbine ventorum qui . . . pertulitque violentiam ad vicina urbi; in qua omne mortalium genus vis pestilentiae depopulabatur. . . .:
1
- Ubi haec a tribuno relata Bunt Poppaea et Tigellino coram, quod erat saevienti principi intimum consiliorum. . . .:
1
- Ut autem portam civitatis voluit egredi, vidit sibi Christum occurrere. Et adorans eum ait: “Domine, quo vadis?” Respondit ei Christus: “Romam venio iterum crucifigi.” Et ait ad eum Petrus: “Domine, iterum crucifigeris?” Et dixit ad eum dominus: “Etiam, iterum crucifigar.” Petrus autem dixit: “Domine, revertar et sequar te.” Et his dictis dominus ascendit in coelum . . . Et [Petrus] post haec rediens in se ipsum, intellexit de sua dictum passione.:
1
- Valde incongruum ac esse durissimum videretur ut illa ei specialiter possessio non serviret in qua palmam sumens martyrii capite est truncatus ut viveret, utile iudicavimus eandem massam quae Aquas Salvias nuncupatur . . . cum Christi Gratia luminaribus deputare.:
1
- Video istic cruces non unius quidem generis, sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas; capite quidem conversos in terrain suspendere.:
1
- Virtutes quoque in vitia deflexit; quantum coniectare licet, super ingenii naturam inopia rapax, metu saevus.:
1
- Volo tamen ex redundantia alicuius etiam comitis apostolorum testimonium superinducere, idoneum confirmandi de proximo iure disciplinam magistrorum. Extat enim et Barnabae titulus ad Hebraeos, adeo satis auctoritatis viri, utquem Paulus iuxta se constituerit in abstinentiae tenore (1 Cor. ix. 6:
1
- ad Caesarem appello.:
1
- ad Catacumbas:
1
2
- addito maiestatis crimine, quod tunc omnium accusationum complementum erat:
1
- affiicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae:
1
- apologia:
1
2
- apostoli:
1
- arcisolium:
1
2
- area:
1
- argumentum ex silentio:
1
- assessores:
1
- assiduae sterilitates:
1
- atrocia:
1
- auctor, initiator:
1
- basilica beate Priscae:
1
- bassi sub Nerone:
1
- beato Petro apostolo in templum Apollinis.:
1
- bene esse:
1
- billicum confessionis:
1
- brachia patibulo explicuerunt.:
1
- coercitio:
1
- cognitio:
1
- cognitiones:
1
- cognitionibus de Christianis interfui nunquam; ideo nescio quid et quatenus aut puniri soleat aut quaeri:
1
- cognomen:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
- cognomina:
1
2
3
- collegia, sodalitates:
1
- commentarios:
1
- consiliarii:
1
2
- consul suffectus:
1
- continua et vincta agmina:
1
- continua hinc et vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum adiacere.:
1
- continua hinc et vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum adiacere. Atque ubi dicendam ad causam introissent:
1
- convicti:
1
- cubiculum:
1
- cubitorium:
1
- cuius corpus collegit:
1
- cuius corpus ita recondit in aere et conclusit sicut beati Petri . . . et crucem auream super locum beati Pauli apostoli posuit pens. lib. cl.:
1
- cuius corpus noctu collegit:
1
- cuius loculum undique aere Cypro conclusit, quod est immobile; ad caput, pedes V; ad pedes, pedes V; ad latus dextrum, pedes V; ad latus sinistrum, pedes V; subter, pedes V; supra, pedes V; sic inclusit corpus beati Petri et recondit.:
1
- cum gloria dormitionem accepit:
1
- cum vero mihi Domitianus Augustus sororis suae nepotum delegaverit curam:
1
- custodia militaris:
1
2
- custodia publica,:
1
- de maleficis et mathematicis:
1
- dedicator:
1
- delatores:
1
- denique urbis Romae incendium voluptatis suae spectaculum fecit:
1
- deportatio:
1
- depositio:
1
- depositio martyrum:
1
- dies sancti Petri epularum.:
1
- discipulos:
1
- discipulos oriens misit:
1
- domui Vespasiani per adfinitatem innexum et gratissimum Domitiano, Praetorianis [Domitianus] praeposuit, patrem eius, sub Caio Caesare, egregie functum ea cura, dictitans, laetum militibus idem nomen.:
1
- ecclesiae domesticae:
1
- edicta quasi viventis et brevi magno inimicorum malo reversuri.:
1
- eodem anno dominus Petrus apostolus ad coronam martyrii properavit ad Christum et Plautilla corpus terrenum deseruit.:
1
- eodem die quo Romae Cornelius sed non eodem anno:
1
- eodem tempore Augustus Constantinus fecit basilicam:
1
- eoque, concubia nocte, suos liberos Sabinus, et Domitianum, fratris filium in capitolium accivit.:
1
- episcopi:
1
2
3
4
5
- episcopus:
1
2
3
4
- erexit in titulum:
1
- ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos:
1
- esse:
1
- etenim crebro vulgi rumore lacerabatur, tamquam viros claros et insontes ob invidiam aut metum extinxisset.:
1
- exitiabilis superstitio:
1
- fecit in titulo beatis Aquile et Priscae coronam ex argento pens. lib. VI.:
1
- fenestrella:
1
- flagitia:
1
- frater ipsius:
1
2
- frumentarii:
1
- gens:
1
2
3
4
- haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis.:
1
- hic titulos in urbe Romae dividit presbyteris.:
1
- hoc monumentum haeredem non sequitur:
1
- honestiores capite puniantur:
1
- hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat:
1
- hostis generis humani:
1
- imperator:
1
- imperio consulari:
1
- in fine vitae alii segnem, multi moderatum et civium sanguinis parcum credidere:
1
- in fine vitae alii segnem, multi moderatum et civium sanguinis parcum credidere.:
1
- in praedio suo:
1
2
3
- in saevitiam unius:
1
- in templum Apollinis, in Monte Aureo in Vaticanum palatii Neroniani iii Kai. Iul.:
1
- ingens multitudo:
1
2
- institutum:
1
- interim in iis, qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur, hunc sum secutus modum. Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani; confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi, supplicium minatus; perseverantes duci iussi.:
1
- intra antiquae ecclesiae rudera prope S. Priscam:
1
- invalidus senecta:
1
- isque (Aulus Plautius) prisco instituto propinquis coram de capita famaque coniugis cognovit et insontem pronuntiavit.:
1
- iuxta obeliscum inter duas metas:
1
- leges monumentorum:
1
- lex de maiestate:
1
2
- lex monumenti:
1
- literae dimissoriae:
1
2
3
- loculi:
1
2
- locus ad catacumbas:
1
- locus sacer:
1
- locus sacer, locus religiosus:
1
- maiestas:
1
- majestas:
1
2
- maleficae:
1
- maleficus:
1
- memoria:
1
2
- memoriae:
1
2
- mitem virum abhorrere a sanguine et caedibus:
1
2
- molitores novarum rerum.:
1
- molitores rerum novarum:
1
- more Iudaico:
1
- mota prope etiam Parthorum arma falsi Neronis ludibrio.:
1
- multitudinem Iudaeorum flagrantium nonnunquam in concionibus:
1
- neptem:
1
- nomen:
1
- nomen ipsum, si flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini puniantur' . . . ‘nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam.:
1
- non longe, miliario VII.:
1
- non vero ”scripturae” auctoritatem ipsam sed solum argumentum inde haustum [Tertullianus] impugnavit.:
1
- nundinum:
1
- palatium Neronianum:
1
- paratus:
1
- passi sub Nerone:
1
- pastor:
1
- pastores:
1
- patris tui fuisse germanum.:
1
- peregrini:
1
- pontifices:
1
- posuit iuxta locum ubi crucifixus est, inter corpora sanctorum episcoporum, in templum Apollinis, in monte aureo, in vaticanum palatii neroniani.:
1
- praedio suo:
1
- praenomen:
1
- praeterea quod non esset Romae Paulus neque Timotheus neque Barnabas, quoniam in Macedoniam missi erant a Paulo.:
1
- primus inter pares:
1
- prope Septizonium sordidis aedibus cubiculo vero perparvo et obscuro.:
1
- pudenda:
1
- quae scriptura valde mihi utilis videtur et ut puto divinitus inspirata.:
1
- quasi sub umbraculo religionis insignissimae certe licitae.:
1
- quinquennium Neronis:
1
- quod postquam Sallustius Crispus . . . comperit metuens ne reus subderetur:
1
- quos vocavit θρεπτούς:
1
- quum orassem domi, et consedissem supra lectum, intravit et quidam reverenda facie etc.:
1
- refert autem Brettius, multos Christianorum sub Dometiano subiisse martyrium; Flavia vero Dometila et Flavus Clementis consulis sororis filius in insulam Pontiam fugit quia se Christianum esse professus est.:
1
- relatio:
1
2
3
- religio licita:
1
2
3
4
- repente ex tenuissima suspicione tantum non in ipso eius consulatu interemit.:
1
- rescissio actorum:
1
- sarcophagi:
1
- sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum placamentis decedebat infamia, quin iussum incendium crederetur. Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque.:
1
- sed tali dedicatore damnationis nostrae etiam gloriamur.:
1
- sella gestatoria:
1
- sepultus est iuxta corpus beati Petri in Vaticanum.:
1
- sepultus est via Aurelia in templum Apollinis, iuxta locum ubi crucifixus est, iuxta palatium Neronianum, in Vaticanum, iuxta territorium Triumphale.:
1
- sepultus est via Numentana, ubi decollatus est, ab urbe Roma :
1
- sequitur clades forte an dolo principis incertum, nam utrumque auctores prodidere.:
1
- seriatim:
1
- si fidem commentarii voluerit haereticus, instrumenta Imperii loquentur.:
1
- si ob gravitatem caeli interiissent; vile damnum.:
1
- spina:
1
- sub idem tempus inter lacum Fucinum amnemque Lirim perrupto monte, quo magnificentia operis a pluribus viseretur etc.:
1
- suffect:
1
- suffecti:
1
- super corpus Petri, supra aera quod conclusit, fecit crucem ex auro purissimo, pens. lib. cl. in mensuram loci, ubi scriptum est hoc CONSTANTINVS AVGVSTVS ET HELENA AVGVSTA HANC DOMVM REGALEM SIMILI FVLGORE CORVSCANS AVLA CIRCVMDAT, scriptum ex litteris nigellis in cruce ipsa.:
1
- superstitio nova ac malefica:
1
- synagogas Iudaeorum fontes persecutionum:
1
- tabula patronatus:
1
- titulus:
1
2
3
4
5
- titulus Pudentis:
1
- tota haec quaestio facillime posset dissolvi si tempus Clementis episcopatus plane constaret.:
1
- trinis viis:
1
- urbs libera:
1
- utrumque in Catacumbis, passi sub Nerone, Basso et Tusco consulibus.:
1
- vario super exitu eius rumore eoque pluribus vivere eum fingentibus credentibusque.:
1
- velut totius orbis dominam visere cupiens:
1
- verna:
1
- vestigia:
1
- via Nomentana ad nymphas Beati Petri ubi baptizabat:
1
Index of German Words and Phrases
- Dass diese Worte [the passage about Clement and Grapte] eine “Fiction” seien, ist eine Annahme, die sich nicht begründen and die sich nicht halten lässt, wenn man sie durchdenkt.:
1
- Denn aufmerksame and unparteiische Lesung des Hirten würde dem Frg. gezeigt haben dass derselbe geraume Zeit vor dem Episkopat des Pius geschrieben sein will. Wer das Buch trotz des Namens Clemens (Vis:
1
- Der Grosse Abschnitt—c. 9–11—ist aus der Feder eines Juden geflossen der mit allen Fasern seiner Seele an seinem Volke hängt:
1
- Die Himmelfahrt des Isaia, ein ältestes Zeugnis für das römische Martyrium des Petrus:
1
- Man beachte wohl, das (gläubige) Israel κατὰ σάρκα:
1
- Nicht auffallend aber konnte es nur sein, dass andere sich durch die starken Argumente für die frühe Abfassung der lukanischen Schriften als vollkommen überzeugt erklärten. Nicht nur Delbrück hielt mir sofort vor, ich hätte mich in einer von mir selbst sicher entschiedenen Frage mit unnötiger Zurückhaltung ausgedrückt, sondern auch Maurenbrecher erkannte in meinen Beweisführungen die Lösung des chronologischen Problems. In seinem Werk “Von Nazareth nach Golgatha” (1909) S. 22–30, gibt er die wichtigsten der von mir geltend gemachten Beobachtungen für eine frühe Abfassungszeit der Acta zutreffend und eindrucksvoll wieder and beschliesst seine Darlegung also: “Die Annahme (eines späteren Ursprungs and geschichtlichen Wertlosigkeit der Lukasschriften) ist neuerdings immermehr gefallen and schliesslich durch eine gründliche Untersuchung von Prof. Harnack in allen Teilen gänzlich widerlegt and beseitigt worden. Viel mehr hat sich nach jeder Richtung hin, wenn auch nicht die unbedingte Glaubwürdigkeit, so doch das hohe Alter der Apostelgeschichte ergeben. Und wenn Prof. H. selbst nur zögernd und erst nur in letzten Moment seiner Arbeit die Konsequenz seiner Ergebnisse auch für die Datierung zog, so muss man doch sagen, dass nur in jener von ihm vorgeschlagenen Weise so wohl der Schlusssatz der Acta wie die ganze Tenor des Buchs verständlich wird, und dass daher schon um dieses äusseren Zeugnisses willen die Datierung auf d. J. 62 als bewiesen und nicht nur als möglich zu gelten hat.:
1
- Widersetzte er (Claudius) sich energisch, wiewohl erfolglos der mystischen Richtung der Zeit, welche sich namentlich in der Vorliebe für Superstitions peregrinae:
1
- der sogenannte Marcellustext:
1
- die zuletzt angeführten Stellen mögen darauf hinweisen, dass der monarchische Episkopat damals in Anzug war; aber von diesem selbst ist in dem Buche keine Spur zu finden.:
1
- musste dem römischen Bischofe höchst unbequem werden: denn sie drohte die einzigartige Bedeutung des Petrus für das Abendland and die einzigartige Stellung Roms im Abendlande zu gefärhrden.:
1
- zwar nicht sicher, aber sehr wahrscheinlich:
1
Index of French Words and Phrases
- Ann. XX dans le texte arménien, évidemment fautif.:
1
- Ce d'but, de même que plusieurs autres parties de la notice, étant emprunté au De Viris:
1
- Ces interpolations, à mon avis, ne doivent donc ni déconcerter ni rébuter la critique. Sous la couche des inventions, les traits originaux existent, et un grand nombre d'entre eux apparaissent come à fleur de sol. Il les faut dégager patiemment:
1
- En ce qui regarde Saint Pierre le chiffre de ses vingt-cinq années est aussi bien attesté que les chiffres d'années de ses successeurs depuis Xystus Ier:
1
- I1 (l'auteur) n'en tenait pas moins un rang élevé dans l'Eglise; il parle avec autorité; il est très-respecté des frètres auxquels il écit; Timothée paraît lui être subordonné. Le seul fait d'adresser une épitre à une grande Eglise indique un homme important, un des personnages qui figurent dans 1'histoire apostolique et dont le nom est célèbre . . . L'attribution à Barnabé est la plus vraisemblable.:
1
- L'auteur de la note paraît avoir mal compris le texte des Acta:
1
- La I Petri:
1
- La Version Vulgate (L') remontant peut-être a la fin du IIe:
1
- Les gentils, aux temps de Dioclétien, avaient recherché, pour les anéantir, les livres, les écrits religieux des fidèles. Cette destruction, qui nous est attestée par des procès-verbaux contemporains, fut rigoureusement poursuivi, et l'Eglise, après la tourmente, dut pourvoir à la réfection de ses archives dévastées. Ce fut souvent à l';aide de souvenirs de traditions orales, que l'on dut réconstituer alors nombre d'Acta:
1
- Les lettres de cette courte épitaphe,' remarks Marucchi, ‘sont très soignées et d'une forme paléographique certainement antérieure à la seconde moitié du IIe:
1
- Malheureusement les Actes [des Martyrs] authentiques ont presque tous disparu. . . . L'Eglise romaine non possède aucun. Les actes de ces martyrs ont dû être détruits pendant la grande persécution de Dioclétien; il est certain qu'à cette époque on a brûlé les Archives de de 1'Eglise romaine; on a d'ailleurs agi de même en Afrique, ainsi que nous 1'apprend S. Augustin.:
1
- On peut dire sans exaggération que c'est la region cimetériale la plus vaste et la plus régulière de toute la Rome souterraine. Ses inscriptions gravées sur marbre, ou peintes en rouges sur des tuiles comme au premier étage, attestent qu'au moins en partie elle remonte à la plus haute antiquité. A mon avis, il y eut là un noyau cimetérial dès le Ile:
1
- Quant au temple d'Apollon, il y a, clans cette désignation, un souvenir du célèbre sanctuaire de Cybèle, qui s'élévait tout près du cirque et de la basilique, et qui fut, jusqu'aux dernières années du ive:
1
- S. Pierre, sa venue et son martyre à Rome:
1
- arrière-pensées:
1
- la mention de patènes de verre est à remarquer; elles n'étaient certainemeut plus en usage à la fin du Ve:
1
- venons en aux athlètes tout récents.:
1
Index of Pages of the Print Edition