[Image]  [Hi-Res Image]

Page 78

to be handing him rolls or volumes carried in baskets. Prosecuted by the Prefect Maximus, Anterus paid with his life for the zeal he had displayed in collecting the materials accumulated for two centuries past by the proconsul's exceptores. His successor Fabian (q.v.) pursued the work with a new ardor. The Liber pontificalis [ed. Mommsen in MGH, Gest. Pont. Rom., i (1898), 27] mentions that this pope reenforced the seven notarii with seven subdeacons who collected the Acts intact and referred them to the deacons. He suffered martyrdom in the time of Emperor Deciua (q.v.). All the bishops of Rome, for that matter, have concerned themselves with compiling the Acts that were so precious to the Christians. In a letter to a bishop of Vienne, one of the second-century bishops advises the collection thereof with no less care than the bones of the victims they describe. The Acts of the saints, as ultimately compiled by the Bollandista, form fifty-six huge folios, which were published from 1659 to 1794 (see ACTA MARTYRUM; BOLLAND, JAN, BOLLANDISTS). When finally, after 300 years of struggle, the Christians witnessed Constantine adopting Christianity and abjuring the old gods whom his defeated rival had invoked in vain, the Church in triumph had then another part to play; from a persecuted Church there arose a dominating Church, and the great men placed at its head assured to it the supremacy over civil society and over the emperors themselves.

Christianity owed too much to the spoken word and its inseparable adjunct, stenography, not to continue employing these two very powerful elements of touching the masses with practical effect; and the notarii, whose function has been shown as it existed at the outset of the struggle between the Church and the Empire, still potently aided the

Christian orators in spreading their

3. Use by doctrine. In particular, the Fathers the Church of the Church had stenographers in

conditions (cf. Jerome's chance remark in Epist., exvii., Eng. transl., NPNF, 2 err., vi. 220: " my volubility has baffled the expedients of shorthand "J; while other notarii, freely practising their profession, took down the sermons of the Fathers in churches, and sold the copies to the wealthy among the faithful who were prevented by the condition of their health or other causes from coming to hear the sacred word. These great orators were not wont to elaborate their works at leisure; their discourses were nearly always improvised, being homilies pronounced in the church before the people; and later these discourses, being collected together by the notarii, became books. They thus belong to the history of Christian preaching, and exhibit its primitive model. A text selected from the Bible and commented upon, such is the origin of all the pulpit literature of Christianity; while the constant themes of these informal efforts were the contempt of riches, charity in all its forms, the fear of the Lord, the practise of household virtues (see PREACHING, HISTORY OF). The pagan rhetoricians both shunned and disdained improvising. They would have refused to speak at length, without long preparation, before emperors and the great of this

world. On the contrary, among the Christian orators, the speaker would have blushed to prepare, to refine in advance, the phrases of a homily. A Father of the Church entered the pulpit with the Gospel or the Old Testament, read a verse therefrom, and spoke as his heart and his thought inspired him. The notarii, taking down his words, reproduced them and spread them abroad to the four winds of heaven. Moreover, where would the Christian orator have found time to elaborate and polish his discourses? The bishops had not only to speak, as rhetoricians might, but they were obliged to baptize, instruct, administer the Church, govern the same, contend for its interests against princes or magistrates, against other and opposing churches; they had the poor and captive to look after, and, in critical hours, to bear all the burden of persecutions. By this very activity, this affluence of speaking and action alike, these men carried the palm over the rhetoricians. While the latter, devoid of convictions, were shutting themselves up in their schools, and laboriously fashioning their periods, the often unpolished, but ever living, word of Christian priests was despoiling them of the world.

To stenography, then, and to it alone, is owing the enormous bulk of materials, of so much use for the history of the Church, and, consequently, for the history of society, which antiquity has bequeathed us in this department of preaching and spoken discourse. One may mention Tertullian (Opera, Paris, 1641), Cyprian (Opera, ed. Baluze, Paris, 1726), Athanasius, whose " Discourses against the Gentiles," " Letters to the Bishops," " Apology against the Arians," " Exposition of the Faith," " Life of St. Anthony," and other works, fill four folio volumes (Padua, 1778), Origen, the most prolific of either sacred or profane writers, who had with him seven notarii, writing incessantly under his dictation, besides the skilled young girls who assisted him as copyists. This was the Origen of whom Jerome could say in his letter to Paula, " Who has ever managed to read all that he has written? " (Letter xxix. of the Benedictine edition, no. xxxiii. in MPL, xxii., cf. A h'F, vi. 46); and in fact, even the slight portion of his works transmitted to modern times fills no less than fifteen octavo volumes (\Viirzburg, 17801794). One may adduce still further Ambrose, who dictated to his stenographers day and night; and the works of Basil, which are contained in three folio volumes (Paris, 1721-30); two folio volumes are to be credited to Gregory Nazianzen (Benedictine edition, Paris, 1768-1840); thirteen folios. to John Chrysostom (Benedictine edition, Paris 17181738); five huge folios to Jerome (Benedictine edition, Paris, 1696-1706), the sole remains of the 6,000 " volumes " which this great orator is supposed to have dictated according to Isidore of Seville (the word volume in this connection is to be taken in the sense of its antique use, whereby, for instance, each hook of the lEneid, or of the works of Homer, formed a volume). The writings of Jerome afford an interesting study from the professional standpoint. They discover an intensity of animation that strikes all who have read them.. Everywhere is perceived the man of utterance whose soul is diffused through his words aglow.