Maternus, Julius Firmicus
Maternus (3),
Julius Firmicus, an acute critic of pagan rites and doctrines and a
vigorous apologist for the Christian faith, known from his treatise de
Errore Profanarum Religionum, composed between 343 and 350, very
valuable for its details of the secret rites of paganism. It describes
every leading form of idolatry then current and gives us information not
found elsewhere. It discusses the idolatry of the Persians, Egyptians,
Assyrians, the Greek mysteries, the ceremonies and formulae used in the
Mithraic worship. Some of the details on this last are very curious,
some liturgical fragments being inserted. In opposition to the heathen
orgies he presents the pure mysteries of Christianity in his preface, now
almost completely lost, and from c. xxiv. to the end. He concludes with
earnestly exhorting the emperors to suppress paganism by force; thus
giving one of the earliest specimens of Christian intolerance. The work
illustrates the small amount of philological and etymological science
possessed by the ancients. Maternus, arguing against the Egyptians that
Sarapis was originally the patriarch Joseph, derives the name Sarapis
from Σαρᾶς
ἀπό, because Joseph was the descendant of
Sarah. The work is valuable for Biblical criticism, as in it are found
quotations from the versions used in N. Africa in St. Cyprian's
time. There are probably embodied in it some fragments of the
ancient Greek writer Evemerus, whose work upon paganism, now lost,
was largely used by all the Christian apologists. In Migne's
Patr. Lat. t, xii. is reprinted an ed. of Maternus, pub. by
Munter at Copenhagen in 1826, with an introductory dissertation
discussing the whole subject. A contemporary pagan Julius Firmicus
Maternus, usually styled junior, wrote a work (between 330 and
360) on judicial astrology, mentioned by Sidon. Apoll. in Ep. ad
Pont. Leont. Upon this see the above dissertation. There
is some reason to suppose that he was converted to Christianity
and was identical with the subject of our art. See C. H. Moore,
Jul. Firm. Mat. der Heide und der Christ. (Munich, 1897).
[G.T.S.]