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Ancient Documents on the History of the Donatists
Monumenta Vetera Ad Historiam Donatistarum
18 chapters · ~3.5 hr read · by Anonymous
About Ancient Documents on the History of the Donatists
This anonymous dossier gathers primary documents on the Donatist controversy in Africa, opening with a history of the schism addressed to the Donatist bishop Parmenian that names the traditors of the persecution under Diocletian and traces the rival ordinations of Caecilianus and Majorinus at Carthage. It preserves courtroom proceedings, including the 320 AD interrogations before the proconsul Zenophilus that established Bishop Silvanus of Cirta as a traditor, and acts recording the trials of the martyrs of Abitina and Bishop Felix of Thibiuca. Later documents reach into the 340s AD, recording the mission of Macarius and Paulus under Constans and a Donatist letter on the martyrs Maximianus and Isaac.
By Anonymous. Collected in Patrologia Latina, Volume 8.
In this work
The Tenor of the Same Edict. Concerning the destruction of churches
Hear first who the traditors were, and learn more fully the authors of the schism. It is established that two evils, and most grievous ones, were committed in Africa: one in the act of tradition, the other in the schism; but both evils appear to have been committed at the same time and by the same authors. You ought therefore, brother Parmenianus, to learn what you are understood to be ignorant of. For nearly sixty years ago and more, the storm of persecution wandered through all Africa; which made some into martyrs, others into confessors; it laid some low in deadly death, and dismissed those who hid themselves unharmed. Why should I mention the laity, who at that time were supported by no dignity in the Church? Why mention very many ministers? Why deacons, placed in the third order? Why presbyters, placed in the second priesthood?
The very heads and princes of all, certain bishops of that time, in order to purchase the briefest delays of this uncertain light at the cost of eternal life, impiously handed over the instruments of the divine law. Among these were Donatus of Masculita, Victor of Rusiccade, Marinus from the Waters of Thibilis, Donatus of Calama, and the murderer Purpurius of Limata, who, when questioned about the sons of his sister—because he was said to have killed them in the prison of Mileum—confessed, saying: I both killed them, and I kill, not those alone, but also whoever acts against me. And Menalus, who, lest he be proved by his fellow citizens to have offered incense, feigned a pain in his eyes and trembled to come before the assembly of his own people.
These men and others, whom we shall shortly show to have been your leaders, after the persecution assembled at the city of Cirta (because the basilicas had not yet been restored), in the house of Urbanus Carisius, on the third day before the Ides of May, as the writings of Nundinarius, then a deacon, attest, and as the antiquity of the parchments bears witness—parchments which we shall be able to produce for those who doubt. For we have appended their full content at the end of these little books, to establish credibility. Those bishops, upon questioning by Secundus of Tigisi, confessed that they had handed over.
And when Secundus himself was rebuked by Purpurius, on the ground that he too had been long with the soldiers on guard, and had not fled, but had been released—and that he had not been released without cause, unless because he had handed over—all had already risen up and begun to murmur; and Secundus, fearing their spirit, took counsel from his brother's son, Secundus the younger, to reserve such a matter for God. Those who remained were consulted, that is, Victor of Garba, Felix from Rotarium, and Nabor from Centurio. They said that such a matter ought to be reserved for God. And Secundus said, Be seated, all of you: then all said, Thanks be to God. And they sat down. You have therefore, brother Parmenianus, who were the manifest traditors. Then, not long afterward, those same traditors—so many and such men—who had offered incense and were murderers, set out to Carthage and ordained Majorinus, whose throne you occupy, after the ordination of Caecilianus, thus making a schism.
And since it has been shown that your leaders were guilty of tradition, it will follow to show that they were also the authors of the schism. In order that this matter may be clear and manifest to all, it must be shown from what root the branches of error have extended themselves to the present day, and from what source that rivulet of malignant liquid, creeping secretly, has flowed down to our times. It must be told whence, and where, and by whom this second evil is established to have arisen; what causes came together, what persons were at work, who were the authors of this evil, who its nurturers; by whom judgments were sought from the emperor between the parties, who sat as judges, where the council was held, what sentences were pronounced. The matter concerns a division: and in Africa, as in the other provinces, there was one Church, before it was divided by the ordainers of Majorinus, whose inherited throne you occupy.
It must be seen who remained in the root with the whole world, who went outside, who sat upon a second throne which had not existed before; who erected altar against altar, who performed an ordination while another ordained person was still in place; who lies under the sentence of the apostle John, who said that many antichrists would go out: Because they were not, he says, of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. Therefore he who was unwilling to remain in unity with his brothers, following heretics, went out as a kind of antichrist.
That this was done at Carthage after the ordination of Caecilianus, there is no one who does not know: through a certain Lucilla, a factious woman, who, before the peace had been shaken by the whirlwinds of persecution, while the Church was still in calm, being unable to bear the rebuke of the archdeacon Caecilianus—she who was said, before the spiritual food and drink, to press her lips to the bone of some martyr or other, if indeed a martyr—and since she preferred to the saving cup the bone of some dead man, even if a martyr, but one not yet vindicated, she was rebuked and departed in anger and confusion. To her as she raged and grieved, lest she submit to discipline, the inborn storm of persecution suddenly came to her aid. At the same time a certain deacon Felix, who had been accused on account of some notorious letter written against the tyrant emperor at that time, fearing danger, is said to have hidden himself with bishop Mensurius.
When Mensurius publicly denied him to those who demanded him, a report was sent. A rescript came, that if Mensurius had not surrendered the deacon Felix, he should be directed to the palace. Being summoned, he suffered no small distress. For the Church had very many ornaments of gold and silver, which he could neither bury in the ground nor carry with him. These he entrusted, as it were, to certain faithful elders, making a memorandum which he is said to have given to a certain old woman: so that if he himself did not return, when peace was restored to Christians, that old woman should give it back to whomever she found sitting in the episcopal throne. He set out, stated his case, was ordered to return, but could not reach Carthage. The storm of persecution was completed and ended: by God's command, with Maxentius sending an indulgence, liberty was restored to Christians.
Botrus and Celesius, as is said, desiring to be ordained at Carthage, took pains to ensure that, with the Numidians absent, only the neighboring bishops should be sought to celebrate the ordination at Carthage. Then Caecilianus was chosen by the vote of the whole people, and was ordained with Felix, bishop of Autumni, laying hands upon him. Botrus and Celesius were cast down from their hope. Then the brief account of the gold and silver was handed over to Caecilianus as he sat, as had been entrusted by Mensurius, with witnesses present. The above-mentioned elders were summoned, who had drunk down the prey entrusted to the gullet of their greed: since they were being compelled to give it back, they withdrew their foot from communion. No less did the ambitious ones, to whom it had not fallen to be ordained: and also Lucilla, who had long been unable to bear discipline, together with all her people—a powerful and factious woman—refused to be joined in communion.
Thus, with three causes and persons coming together, it came about that malice had its effect. The schism of that time, therefore, was born of the rage of a disordered woman, nourished by ambition, and strengthened by greed. By these three persons charges were fabricated against Caecilianus, to the effect that his ordination was defective. A message was sent to Secundus of Tigisi, to come to Carthage. All the above-mentioned traditors set out: received as guests by the greedy, by the ambitious, by the angry—not by the Catholics, at whose petition Caecilianus had been ordained. Meanwhile, none of the above-mentioned approached the basilica where Caecilianus was with the whole body of citizens. Then a message was sent by Caecilianus: If there is something to be proved against me, let the accuser come forward and prove it. At that time nothing could be fabricated against him by so many enemies: but concerning his ordainer, who was falsely called a traditor by them, he deserved to be defamed.
Again a message was sent by Caecilianus, that if Felix had conferred nothing upon him, as they supposed, they themselves should ordain Caecilianus as though he were still a deacon. Then Purpurius, relying on his customary malice, as though Caecilianus too were the son of his sister, spoke thus: Let him come out here as if hands are to be laid upon him in the episcopate, and let his head be beaten in penance. When these things became known, the whole Church held fast to Caecilianus, lest he should give himself up to robbers. At that time either the guilty party ought to have been expelled, or communion ought to have been given to the innocent. The Church was packed with people: the episcopal throne was full: the altar was in its place, upon which peaceful bishops had offered in former times—Cyprian, Carpophorus, Lucianus, and the rest.
Thus they went outside, and altar was erected against altar: and an unlawful ordination was celebrated; and Majorinus, who had been a reader in the diaconate of Caecilianus, a member of Lucilla's household, was ordained bishop by the traditors at her instigation—traditors who, in the council of Numidia, as we said above, confessed their crimes to one another and granted one another mutual pardon. It is therefore manifest that both the ordainers who handed over and Majorinus who was ordained went out from the Church.
Meanwhile, from the source of their own crimes, which had overflowed among them from the veins of many misdeeds, they thought that the single reproach of tradition should be channeled against the ordainer of Caecilianus: foreseeing that rumor could not speak of two similar things at the same time, they attempted to put their own crimes into silence and to defame another's life; and though they themselves could be accused by the innocent, they strove to accuse the innocent, sending everywhere letters composed at the dictation of envy, which we have among other acts for the future. While still at Carthage they preceded themselves with their letters, so as to insert falsehood into the ears of all through false rumors, with fame spread among the peoples. And while falsehoods about one matter were being celebrated, the most true crimes of the above-mentioned lay hidden in silence.
It is often the custom to blush for a crime, but at that time there was no one to blush: because, apart from a few Catholics, all had sinned; and as though innocence had been a kind of image, wickedness had been committed among many. The crime of tradition was not enough—which was established to have been committed through Donatus of Masculita and the others mentioned above: they also joined to the tradition the enormous outrage of schism. You see therefore, Parmenianus, that these two crimes, so evil, so grave—of tradition and of schism—belong to your leaders.
We ask you, O Constantine, most excellent emperor, since you are of a just lineage, whose father among the other emperors did not carry out persecution; and Gaul is free from this crime: for in Africa there are contentions between us and the other bishops: we ask that Your Piety command that judges be given to us from Gaul. Given by Lucianus, Dignus, Nassucius, Capito, Fidentius, and the other bishops of the party of Donatus.
All these things were fulfilled in our times, when we saw with our own eyes the sacred buildings leveled to the ground and utterly overthrown from their foundations; the sacred books of the divine Scriptures burned in the middle of the forum: and the pastors of the churches—some hiding themselves shamefully now here now there; others seized ignominiously and exposed to the mockery of enemies. Then, as another prophetic word had foretold, contempt was poured out upon their princes; and he made them to wander in a pathless place, and not in a way. But I consider it wrong for me to set forth in words the sad calamities which befell them in the end: since it is not fitting for us even to recall the dissensions and injuries with which they strove against one another before the persecution. Wherefore it is our purpose to hand down from them only those things from which we may perceive the equity of divine judgment.
Accordingly I have resolved to make no mention either of those who were shaken in the persecution, or of those who made complete shipwreck of their salvation and of their own will plunged themselves into the deep whirlpool of the waters: but I shall henceforth include in this universal history only those things which may be of use first to myself, and then also to posterity. From this point therefore let us begin to describe the sacred contests of those who bore witness to the divine religion. The nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian was being completed, when in the month of Dystrus, which the Romans call March, as the feast day of the Lord's Passion was approaching, imperial edicts were posted everywhere, by which the churches were ordered to be demolished to the ground; the sacred codices to be consumed by flames; and that those of honorable rank should be marked with infamy; and that common people should be deprived of their liberty, if they persisted in the profession of the Christian faith.
And this was the first edict of this kind against us. But not long afterward other letters again arrived, by which it was commanded that all the overseers of the churches everywhere should first be cast into chains; and then be compelled by every means to sacrifice to the gods.
In those days, in the eighth consulship of Diocletian and the seventh of Maximian, Augusti, an edict went forth from those same Caesars and emperors over the whole face of the earth, and was posted throughout the colonies and cities to the rulers and magistrates, each in his own place, that they should wrest the divine books from the hands of bishops and presbyters. Then a notice was posted in the city of Tubyzacum on the day of the Nones of January. Then Magnilianus, curator of that city, ordered the presbyters to be brought before him, since Bishop Felix had set out for Carthage; he ordered Januarius the presbyter, and Fortunatus and Septiminus the readers, to be brought before him. To them Magnilianus the curator said: Do you have a bishop? Januarius the presbyter answered: We do. Magnilianus the curator said: Where is he? Januarius the presbyter answered: I do not know. Magnilianus said: Do you have the divine books? Januarius answered: We do. Magnilianus said: Hand them over to be burned with fire.
Januarius the presbyter, Fortunatus and Septiminus the readers said: Our bishop has them with him. Magnilianus the curator said: You shall therefore remain in custody until you render an account to Anulinus the proconsul. On the following day, however, Bishop Felix came from Carthage to Tubyza. And when Magnilianus had learned of his arrival, he immediately arranged for him to be presented to him through his staff. When he had come with all speed, Magnilianus the curator said to him: Are you Felix, bishop of this city? Bishop Felix said: I am. Magnilianus the curator said: Give up the books or parchments of whatever kind you have with you. Bishop Felix said: I have them; but I will not hand over the law of the Lord my God, whom I worship. Magnilianus said: Is your God then greater than our gods? Bishop Felix said: Great and terrible is our God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them.
For your gods are stones, made by the hands of men, of whom it is written: They have eyes and shall not see, they have ears and shall not hear, they have a mouth and shall not speak. Let those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them. Magnilianus the curator said: The command of the emperors comes first, for what you say is of no account. Therefore hand over all the books you have, so that they may, as has been decreed, be burned with fire. Bishop Felix said: It is better that I hand over my body to the fire than that the Scriptures of the Lord should be seen to be burned through me; for it is good to obey God, the eternal and immortal king, rather than an emperor of this age who commands wicked things. Magnilianus said: I have already told you that the command of the emperors comes before what you say. Bishop Felix said: The commandment of God must be kept before obedience to men.
Magnilianus the curator said: Meanwhile, reflect upon this for three days; for if in this very city you neglect to carry out what has been commanded, you will go to the proconsul, and what you now say you will pursue before his records. After the third day, however, Magnilianus the curator ordered holy Bishop Felix to be presented to him. When Bishop Felix had been brought before him, the same Magnilianus said: Have you deliberated with yourself as to what better counsel you might seem to follow? Felix said: My word is one: where it began, there also, with God as my guide, it shall end. For what I said at first, that same I say now, and before the proconsul I shall say nothing different whatsoever. Magnilianus the curator said: You shall therefore go now to the proconsul, and there you shall render an account under examination.
Then he addressed his men with these words: Since Bishop Felix has in no way hastened to carry out, in accordance with the decrees of the emperors, what they have deigned to command us, let him be conducted to Carthage with your escort. Bishop Felix said: Thanks be to God. Then a guide was appointed for him, Vincentius by name, a decurion of the city of Tubyzacum. And Bishop Felix set out for Carthage. When he had arrived there, he was presented to the legate of the proconsul. The same legate said to him: Why do you not hand over the superfluous Scriptures? Bishop Felix said: I have them indeed, but I do not give them up. The Scriptures which we hold are not superfluous, nor can they in any way be handed over by us. Then the legate ordered him to be cast into the depths of the prison.
When Bishop Felix had entered there, he besought the Lord his God, saying: Lord God, creator and founder of all things, Lord Jesus Christ, do not forsake me, for on account of you and your testament I suffer these things. Have mercy on me, and receive my spirit, and leave behind in this world the mortal body, so that by you, O Lord, as you have deigned to promise, I may deserve to receive with you an immortal one. For living always in you, O Lord, death shall never have power over me. After sixteen days, however, at the fourth hour of the night, Bishop Felix was brought out of prison and immediately presented before the eyes of Anulinus the proconsul. Anulinus the proconsul said to him: What is your name? Bishop Felix said: I am a Christian. Anulinus the proconsul said: I did not ask you about the name of your profession, but inquired by what name you are called.
Bishop Felix said: As I have already told you, so now I say again, that I am a Christian and a bishop. Then Anulinus the proconsul, angered that he had refused to tell him his name, said to him: Do you have the superfluous Scriptures? Bishop Felix said: I have the Scriptures; but they are not, as you assert, superfluous: know that they are by no means to be handed over by me. Then Anulinus the proconsul sent him to Rome to the praetorian prefect. When Bishop Felix had arrived there and had been presented to the same prefect, he ordered him to be received in prison and bound with heavier chains. After twelve days, however, the praetorian prefect ordered him to sail after the emperors. Then Bishop Felix boarded the ship, bound with the harsh bonds of chains, and lay for four days and four nights in the hold of the ship under the feet of horses. Not eating bread, nor drinking any water. Fasting, he came to Nola.
Then the cognitor of that city arranged for the arriving Bishop Felix to be presented to him, bound with heavier chains. The same cognitor said to him: Felix, how did you come here? Bishop Felix said: As God willed. The cognitor said: If in your own city or at Carthage you had handed over the divine Scriptures, you would not have come all the way here to me. Bishop Felix said: I have indeed the divine Scriptures; but, as you are not unaware that I have answered various questioners, so also to you I now make it most plainly clear in person, that I will in no way hand them over. The cognitor said: If you refuse to hand over the divine Scriptures, you will be punished by beheading. Bishop Felix said: I am more ready to be punished by beheading than to hand over the books of the Lord to sacrilege. Then the aforementioned cognitor ordered the sacred decrees of the emperors to be read aloud.
And when what had been decreed was being read by Vincentius the scribe, the cognitor said: Since this man has persevered so firmly in the same confession, in accordance with the command I decree that this same Bishop Felix be put to death by the sword. Bishop Felix, raising his eyes to heaven, said: God, I give thanks to you, who have deigned to preserve my virginity in me for fifty-six years in this world. Lord God of heaven and earth, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, on account of you and your law and for fear of you I suffer this, and I bow my neck to the sacrifice. Receive my spirit from this mortal world. For you alone are the living and unconquered God, remaining glorious for ever and ever. Amen.
When this prayer was completed, he was led away by soldiers and beheaded there, that is, at Nola, on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of February, and his body was laid there at Nola, and his relics were carried to bountiful Carthage by devout servants of God and sons of mother Church, and were placed on the road which is called the road of the Scillitans. In that same venerable place many miracles occur, and all manner of infirmities are healed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with God the Father is honour and praise and glory in the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.
In the eighth consulship of Diocletian and the seventh of Maximian, Augusti, an edict went forth from the emperors and Caesars over the whole face of the earth; and it was posted throughout the colonies and cities to the rulers and magistrates, each in his own place, that they should demand the divine books from the hands of bishops and presbyters. Then a notice was posted in the city of Tibiura, on the day of the Nones of June. Then Magnilianus ordered the elders of the people to be brought before him. On that same day Bishop Felix had set out for Carthage. He ordered Aper the presbyter to be brought before him, and Gyrus and Vitalis the readers. To them Magnilianus the curator said: Do you have the divine books? Aper said: We do. Magnilianus the curator said: Hand them over to be burned with fire. Then Aper said: Our bishop has them with him.
Aper said: I do not know. On the following day, however, Bishop Felix came from Carthage to Tibiura. Then Magnilianus the curator ordered Bishop Felix to be brought before him through an official. To him Magnilianus the curator said: Bishop Felix, give up the books or parchments of whatever kind you have. Bishop Felix said: I have them, but I will not give them up. Magnilianus the curator said: What the emperors have commanded comes before what you say. Give up the books, so that they may be burned with fire. Bishop Felix said: It is better that I be burned with fire than the divine Scriptures; for it is good to obey God rather than men. Bishop Felix said: The commandment of the Lord comes before that of men. Magnilianus said: Reflect upon this. After the third day, however, the curator ordered Bishop Felix to be brought before him, and said to him: Have you reflected? Bishop Felix said: What I said before, I say now also, and before the proconsul I shall say the same.
Magnilianus the curator said: You shall therefore go to the proconsul, and there you shall render an account. Then Vincentius Celsinus, a decurion of the city of Tibiura, was assigned to him. Then Felix set out from Tibiura; on the eighth day before the Kalends of July he was led away bound; and bound, he was ordered to be thrust into prison. On the following day, before dawn, Bishop Felix was brought out; the proconsul said to him: Why do you not give back the superfluous scriptures? Then he ordered him to be cast bound into the depths of the prison. After sixteen days, however, Bishop Felix was brought out of prison in chains, at the fourth hour of the night, before Anulinus the proconsul; Anulinus said to him: Why do you not give back the superfluous scriptures? Bishop Felix answered: I am not going to give them up. Then Anulinus the proconsul ordered him to be sent to the praetorian prefect, on the Ides of July.
Then the prefect ordered him to be received in his own prison and bound with heavier chains. After nine days, however, the prefect ordered him to sail to the emperors. Then Bishop Felix boarded the ship with heavy chains, and was in the hold of the ship for four days. Tossed about under the feet of horses, he tasted neither bread nor water; fasting, he arrived at port, and in the city of Agrigentum he was received by the brethren with the highest honour. From there they came to a city called Catana; there likewise they were received. From there they came to Messana. From there to Tauromenium; there likewise they were received. Afterwards they sailed the strait into the parts of Lucania, to a city called Rulo. From there they set out for Venusium, which is a city of the region of Apulia. Then the prefect ordered Felix to be freed from his chains, and said: Felix, why do you not give up the dominical scriptures? Or perhaps you do not have them?
He answered him: I have them indeed, but I will not give them up. The prefect said: Put Felix to death by the sword. Bishop Felix said in a clear voice: Thanks be to you, Lord, who have deigned to set me free. And he was led to the place of his passion (at which time even the moon itself was turned to blood) on the third day before the Kalends of September. Bishop Felix, raising his eyes to heaven, said in a clear voice: God, thanks be to you. I am fifty-six years old in this world. I have kept my virginity, I have preserved the gospels, I have preached faith and truth. Lord God of heaven and earth, Jesus Christ, to you I bow my neck to the sacrifice, you who remain for ever; to whom be glory and magnificence for ever and ever. Amen.
Let him who exults in the faith of the most holy religion and glories in Christ, and who rejoices in the truth of the Lord, with error condemned, so as to hold the catholic Church and to distinguish holy communion from the profane, read the acts of the martyrs, which have been set down of necessity in the archive of memory, lest with the passing of ages the glory of the martyrs and the condemnation of the traditors should grow obsolete.
I undertake therefore to write from the public records of the heavenly struggles and new contests waged by the most valiant soldiers of Christ, unconquered warriors, glorious martyrs—I undertake, I say, endowed not so much with talent as with the civic love by which I am joined to them, doing this by deliberate counsel, namely in a twofold manner: both that we may prepare the souls of those who imitate them for martyrdom, and that those whom we trust to live forever and to reign with the Lord Christ, when we set out in writing the struggles and victories of their very confession, we may commit to eternal memory. But I do not find, most beloved brethren, with what exordium to use, or with what beginning of praise to approach the most blessed confession of the most holy martyrs.
For I am swept away by great things and great virtues; and whatever it is that I behold in them, all of it I admire as divine and heavenly—in devotion, faith; in life, holiness; in confession, constancy; in suffering, victory. And as these things shine alone in their own virtues, so are they all the more glorious in each individual martyr. It pleases me therefore at the outset to treat the cause of the war itself and to run briefly through the crisis of the whole world with all speed, as necessity requires; so that, with the truth known, one may learn both the rewards of the Martyrs and the punishments of the traditors.
For in the times of Diocletian and Maximian the devil declared war on Christians in this manner: that he sought the most sacred testaments of the Lord and the divine Scriptures to be burned, that he overthrew the Lord's basilicas, and that he forbade the holy rites and most holy assemblies to be celebrated to the Lord. But the army of the Lord God did not endure the monstrous command, and shuddered at the sacrilegious order; and straightway it seized the arms of faith, descended into battle, about to fight not so much against men as against the devil.
And although by handing over to the gentiles the Lord's Scriptures and the divine testaments to be burned in profane fires, not a few fell away from the hinge of faith, yet by preserving them and by willingly shedding their own blood for them, very many acted bravely; and these, filled with God, having overcome and prostrated the devil, bearing the victorious palm in their suffering, all the martyrs were sealing with their own blood the sentence against the traditors and their associates, by which they had cast them out from the communion of the Church. For it was not right that martyrs and traditors should be together at the same time in the Church of God. Therefore from every direction immense columns of confessors flew to the field of contest: and wherever each one had found the enemy, there he set up the Lord's camp.
For in the city of Alutina, in the house of Occanius Felix, when the war-trumpet sounded, the glorious martyrs raised the Lord's standards; celebrating the Lord's sacraments everywhere in the customary manner, they were seized by the magistrates of the colony and by the garrison soldier himself: Saturninus the presbyter with four children, that is, Saturninus the younger and Felix, lectors, Maria a consecrated virgin, Hilarion an infant, and likewise Dativus, who is also called Senator, Felix, another Felix, Emeritus, Ampelius, Rogatianus, Quintus, Maximianus, Thelica, Rogatianus, Rogatus, Januarius, Cassianus, Victorianus, Vincentius, Cæcilianus, Restituta, Prima, Eva, Rogatianus, Guinalius, Rogatus, Pomponia, Secunda, Januaria, Saturnina, Martinus, Elautus, Felix, Margareta the elder, Honorata, Regiola, Victorianus, Pelusius, Faustus, Dacianus, Matrona, Cæcilia, Victoria, Herectina, a second Matrona, Januaria.
These, once seized, were led forth cheerfully to the forum. Still in the first field of contest, Dativus went forward first, whom holy parents brought forth as a white-robed senator for the heavenly senate. The presbyter Saturninus also went forward, surrounded by a numerous offspring of children: of whose progeny one part he destined as a companion to himself in martyrdom, and the other part, the pledge of his name, he left to the Church. The Lord's column followed these, in which shone the splendor of heavenly arms: the shield of faith, the breastplate of justice, the helmet of salvation, and the two-edged sword, the word of God; supported by whose protection, they promised their brethren the hope of victory. But now they arrived at the forum of the aforesaid city. There, meeting for the first time, they bore off the palm of confession by the magistrate's pronouncement.
For in this forum heaven had already fought on behalf of the Lord's scriptures, when Fundanus, once bishop of the city, had handed over the Lord's scriptures to be burned: and when the sacrilegious magistrate was applying them to the fire, suddenly a shower poured down from a clear sky, the fire brought near to the holy scriptures was extinguished, hailstones were added, and the whole region itself was devastated on behalf of the Lord's scriptures by the raging elements. From this city therefore the martyrs of Christ received the longed-for first chains; and directed to Carthage, they sang hymns and chanted psalms to the Lord cheerfully and joyfully throughout the whole journey. When they were conveyed to the office of Anulinus, then proconsul, and stood in the line steadfastly and bravely, they beat back the fierce onset of the devil with the Lord's constancy. But since the diabolical fury could not prevail against all the soldiers of Christ at once, it demanded them one by one for combat.
The struggles of these combats I shall recount not so much in my own words as in those of the martyrs; so that both the audacity of the raging enemy in the torments and in his very sacrilegious invective may be known, and the all-powerful virtue of Christ the Lord may be praised in the endurance of the martyrs and in their very confession.
When therefore they were brought before the proconsul's office, and it was reported that Christians had been sent by the magistrates of the Alutinensians who had celebrated the Lord's assembly contrary to the edict of the Emperors and Caesars, the proconsul first questioned Dativus as to his condition and whether he had held an assembly: and when he professed himself a Christian and that he had been at the assembly, the author of that most holy gathering was demanded from him, and straightway the office was ordered to raise him onto the rack and, stretched out, to prepare him for the claws.
But while the executioners were carrying out the cruel orders with savage speed, and stood raging at their words, and with the martyr's sides bared for wounds, loomed over him with raised claws, suddenly the most valiant martyr Thelica thrust himself through the midst into the torments and cried out: "Because we are Christians—we," he said, "assembled." Straightway the fury of the proconsul blazed up, and groaning, gravely wounded by the spiritual sword, he beat the martyr of Christ with the heaviest blows, stretched him suspended on the rack, and tore him with shrieking claws. But against this the most glorious martyr Thelica, from the very midst of the executioners' rage, poured forth prayers of this kind to the Lord with thanksgiving: "Thanks be to God.
In thy name, O Christ Son of God, deliver thy servants." As he prayed such things, the proconsul said: "Who is the author of your assembly with you?" He answered the one who raged more cruelly with a clear voice: "Saturninus the presbyter, and all." O martyr, giving the first place to all! For he did not set the presbyter before the brethren, but joined the brethren to the presbyter in the fellowship of confession. When therefore the proconsul asked for Saturninus, he showed not that he had betrayed him—whom he saw fighting alongside himself equally against the devil—but so that he might make plain to him that he had celebrated the assembly in full, since the presbyter too had been with them. Therefore blood flowed together with the voice of one beseeching the Lord, and mindful of the precepts of the Gospel, the martyr in the very laceration of his own body sought pardon for his enemies.
For amid the most grievous torments of his wounds, he rebuked the torturers and the proconsul alike with these words: "You do unjustly, unhappy ones; you act against God. O most high God, do not consent to them in these sins. You sin, unhappy ones; you act against God. We keep the commandments of the most high God. You act unjustly, unhappy ones; you tear apart the innocent. We are not murderers, we have committed no fraud. God, have mercy. I give thanks to thee. For thy name, O Lord, grant endurance. Deliver thy servants from the captivity of this age. I give thanks to thee, nor am I sufficient to give thee thanks." And when his sides, shaken by the blows of the claws, were more deeply furrowed and a wave of flowing blood streamed forth under the violent strokes, he heard the proconsul saying to him: "You will begin to feel what you ought to suffer." And he added: "Unto glory. I give thanks to God of kingdoms. The eternal kingdom appears, the incorruptible kingdom.
Lord Jesus Christ, we are Christians, we serve thee; thou art our hope, thou art the hope of Christians. Most holy God, most high God, almighty God, we render praises to thee for thy name." When he prayed such things, and it was said to him by the devil through the judge, "You ought to have kept the command of the Emperors and Caesars," with his body now exhausted, he proclaimed with strong and steadfast speech, victorious in spirit: "I care for nothing except the law of God, which I have learned. That I keep, for that I shall die, in that I am consumed; besides it there is nothing else." By such words of the most glorious martyr, Anulinus himself was tormented more in his own torments; whose fury at last, fattened by ferocity, afterwards shut him in prison and destined him for a suffering worthy of a martyr.
After him Dativus is raised up by the Lord for combat, who had been joined close to Thelica for the most valiant battle: and when, hanging stretched out on the rack, he boldly proclaimed with his voice repeated many times that he was a Christian and had held an assembly, there emerged the brother of the most holy martyr Victoria, a man indeed wearing the toga, but at that very time estranged from the most holy worship of the Christian religion; who rebuked the martyr suspended on the rack with profane words to this effect:
"This is the man, my lord," he said, "who, during the absence of our father, while we were studying here, seduced our sister Victoria, and led her away from here, from the most splendid city of Carthage, together with Secunda and Restituta, all the way to the Alutinensian colony, and who never entered our house except at that time when by certain persuasions he was enticing the girlish minds." But the most illustrious martyr Victoria did not endure that her colleague in the Lord and fellow-martyr, the Senator, should be falsely attacked, and straightway bursting forth with Christian freedom: "I set out," she said, "by no one's persuasion, nor did I come with him to the Alutinensian colony. This I can prove through the citizens. All things I did of my own accord and will. For I was also at the assembly, and I celebrated the Lord's day with the brethren in the fitting devotion of religion, because I am a Christian." Then the shameless advocate heaped up curses against the martyr.
And against him the glorious martyr from the rack resolved everything with a truthful reply.
Meanwhile Anulinus, burning with anger, orders the claws to be pressed into the martyr. Straightway the executioners found the sides bare and prepared for blows with bloody wounds. They flew savagely upon their hands at the swift commands, and with the skin torn open and the entrails ripped apart, they laid bare the hidden recesses of the breast to the unspeakable gaze of the profane, straining with cruelty. Amid all this the martyr's mind was unmoved; and although his limbs were broken, his entrails torn out, his sides scattered, yet the martyr's spirit remained whole and unshaken. At last Dativus, mindful of his dignity—he who is also called Senator—poured forth prayers to the Lord in such words under the raging executioner: "O Christ the Lord, let me not be confounded." By these words the most blessed martyr merited what he had asked of the Lord as easily as he had asked it briefly. For presently the proconsul, his mind shaken, his tongue leaping forward to spare him. The executioners ceased.
For it was not right that a martyr of Christ should be tortured on account of his fellow-martyr Victoria. For when even Pompeianus came against him as a savage accuser with an unworthy suspicion and joined a slanderous action, he was despised by the martyr and struck down. "What are you doing here in this place, devil? What do you still attempt against the martyrs of Christ?" By the Lord's Senator and martyr, both the power and the forensic fury were overcome at once. But the most illustrious martyr, even after being tortured for Christ, when questioned whether he had been at the assembly, steadfastly professed and said that he had come upon the assembly and had celebrated the Lord's day with the brethren in the fitting devotion of religion, and that the author of that most holy gathering had been one—and thereby stirred up the proconsul against himself more sharply again; and with his savagery breaking out afresh, the martyr's dignity, doubled, was ploughed again by the repeated furrows of the claws.
But the martyr, returning to his former prayer amid the most savage torments of his wounds, said: "I pray, O Christ, let me not be confounded. What have I done? Saturninus is our presbyter."
While his sides were being scraped by the hooked claws, with the harsh and savage executioner's cruelty serving as guide, Saturninus the presbyter was summoned to combat: who, contemplating the heavenly kingdom and considering that his fellow-martyrs were enduring things altogether small and light, himself also began to engage in like manner. For when the proconsul said, "You have acted contrary to the command of the emperors and Caesars, in assembling all these people," the presbyter Saturninus replied, secure with the Spirit of the Lord prompting him: "We celebrated the Lord's day." The proconsul said: "Why?" He replied: "Because the Lord's day cannot be omitted." As soon as he had said this, he ordered him to be fitted against Dativus straightway.
Meanwhile Dativus was watching the laceration of his own body rather than feeling pain, and he whose mind and soul hung upon the Lord reckoned nothing of the pain of the body; but he only besought the Lord, saying: "Help, I pray, O Christ; have pity; save my soul; keep my spirit; let me not be confounded. I pray, O Christ, grant endurance." When the proconsul said to him, "From this most splendid city you ought rather to have called others to a right mind, and not to have acted contrary to the commands of the emperors and Caesars," he cried out more boldly and steadfastly: "I am a Christian." By which word the devil was overcome, and said: "Spare him." And at the same time handing him over to prison, he reserved the martyr for a fitting suffering.
But the presbyter Saturninus, steeped in the fresh blood of the martyrs, while he hung on the rack, was urged to persist in the faith of those in whose blood he persisted. When he was asked whether he himself was the author and had gathered them all together, and said: Yes, I was present at the assembly, the reader Emeritus, leaping forward to the contest as the presbyter was engaged: I am the author, he said, in whose house the assembly was held. But the proconsul, who had already been so many times defeated, shuddered at the onslaught of Emeritus; and yet, turning to the presbyter, he said: Why were you acting against the edict, Saturninus? To whom Saturninus replied: The Lord's day cannot be interrupted. The law so commands. Then the proconsul said: Nevertheless you ought not to have despised what was forbidden, but rather to have observed it, and not to have done something against the edict of the emperors.
And with a voice long meditated against the martyrs, he stirred up the terror of his wrath; which was obeyed with no sluggish compliance. For the executioners fell upon the aged body of the presbyter, and with raging fury, tearing apart the sinews' connections, they lacerated him. You would have seen torments to be lamented and novel tortures devised against a priest of God, as though the executioners were raging with the fury of hunger upon a feast of wounds, and with the flesh laid open, to the horror of those watching, amid the redness of blood, the bared bones grew pale, and not even amid the delays of the torturers did the expelled soul abandon the body while the punishment still hung upon it. But with such a voice did the presbyter pray to the Lord: I beseech thee, O Christ, hear me. I give thee thanks, O God: command that I be beheaded. I beseech thee, O Christ, have mercy. O Son of God, come to my aid.
To whom the proconsul said: Why do you act against the edict? And the presbyter replied: The law so commands, the law so teaches. O truly admirable and praiseworthy divine response of the presbyter and teacher! The presbyter proclaims the most holy law even amid torments, for which he willingly endured punishment. At last, deterred by the voice of the law, Anulinus said: Spare him, and sending him back into the custody of the prison, he destined him for the punishment he had longed for.
But when Emeritus was brought forward, the proconsul said: Were assemblies held in your house against the edicts of the emperors? To whom Emeritus, flooded with the Holy Spirit, replied: In my house we celebrated the Lord's day. And he said: Why did you allow them to enter? He answered: Because they are my brothers, and I could not forbid them. But you ought to have forbidden them, he said. And he replied: I could not, because we cannot be without the Lord's day. He was immediately ordered to be stretched on the rack and, once stretched, to be tormented. When he was suffering heavy blows from a fresh executioner, he said: I beseech thee, O Christ, come to my aid. You do what is against the commandment of God, O unhappy ones. And to the proconsul who interjected: You ought not to have received them, he answered: I could not but receive my brothers. But the sacrilegious proconsul said: The command of the emperors and Caesars came first.
Against this the most devout martyr replied: God is greater than the emperors. I beseech thee, O Christ, praise to thee. O Christ the Lord, grant endurance. To him praying thus the proconsul put this question: Do you then have any scripture in your house? And he answered: I have it, but in my heart. And the proconsul said: Do you have it in your house, or not? The martyr Emeritus said: I have them in my heart. Deliver me, O Christ, in thy name. I suffer briefly, I suffer willingly. O Christ, let me not be confounded. O martyr mindful of the apostle, who had the law of the Lord written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh of the heart. O martyr, a fitting and diligent keeper of the sacred law, who, shuddering at the crime of the traditores, placed the dominical scriptures, lest he lose them, within the secrets of his own breast. Upon learning this, the proconsul said: Spare him.
And recalling his confession to memory together with the confessions of the others, he said: For your merits, all of you shall pay the fitting penalties according to your confession.
But now the bestial fury, gorged on the torments of the martyrs with bloodied mouth, was growing faint. But when Felix, so named both in name and in suffering, had come forward to battle, and the entire battle-line of the Lord remained uncorrupted and unconquered, the tyrant, prostrated in mind, downcast in voice, dissolved in soul and body, said: I hope that you will choose rather that course by which you may live, so that you may observe the edicts. Against this the confessors of the Lord, the unconquered martyrs of Christ, as if with one mouth declared: We are Christians; we cannot but keep the holy law of the Lord even to the shedding of blood. Struck by this voice, the enemy said to Felix: I do not ask whether you are a Christian, but whether you have held an assembly, or whether you have any scriptures. O foolish and laughable interrogation of the judge! He says: Be silent as to whether you are a Christian. And he added: Were you at an assembly?
He answered: As if a Christian could be without the Lord's day, or the Lord's day be celebrated without a Christian. Do you not know, O Satan, that the Christian is constituted in the Lord's day and the Lord's day in the Christian, so that neither can exist without the other? When you hear the name, learn the gathering of the Lord; and when you hear the assembly, recognize the name. In the end you are known by the martyr and mocked, you are confounded by such an answer. We celebrated the assembly most gloriously, he said; we always gathered at the Lord's house to read the dominical scriptures. Gravely confounded by this confession, Anulinus, after having him beaten with clubs until he was near death, joins him, his passion completed, to the heavenly council as a martyr hastening to the starry tribunals.
But another Felix follows Felix, alike in name and in confession and in the very suffering itself. For having engaged with equal virtue, he too was shaken by the injury of clubs, and laying down his soul amid the torments of the prison, was joined to the martyrdom of the former Felix. After these, Ampelius, keeper of the law and most faithful guardian of the divine scriptures, took up the contest. When the proconsul asked whether he had been at an assembly, he answered cheerfully and confidently with an eager voice: I held an assembly with my brothers, I celebrated the Lord's day; and I have the dominical scriptures with me, but written in my heart. O Christ, I render praise to thee. Hear me, O Christ. When he had said these things, with his neck bruised, he was sent back as if joyfully into the Lord's tabernacle with his brothers. Rogatianus follows him: who, having confessed the name of the Lord, was joined to the aforementioned brothers unharmed.
But Quintus, brought forward, having confessed the name of the Lord nobly and magnificently, was beaten with clubs and handed over to prison, reserved for a worthy martyrdom. Maximianus followed him, equal in confession, alike in engagement, equal in the triumphs of victory. After him, the younger Felix, proclaiming that the Lord's day is the hope and salvation of Christians, when he likewise was beaten with clubs, said: I celebrated the Lord's day with a devoted mind, I held an assembly with my brothers, because I am a Christian. By this confession he too merited to be joined to the aforementioned brothers. But the younger Saturninus, offspring of the martyr Saturninus the presbyter, hastened eagerly to the longed-for contest, pressing forward to be made equal to his father's most glorious virtues. When the furious proconsul, prompted by the devil, had said to him: And you, Saturninus, were you present? Saturninus answered: I am a Christian. I am not asking you that, he said, but whether you celebrated the Lord's day.
To whom Saturninus answered: I celebrated the Lord's day, because Christ is the Saviour. Upon hearing the name of Saviour, Anulinus blazed with anger, and set up against the son the rack used for his father. And with Saturninus stretched out, he said: What do you profess, Saturninus? You see where you are placed. Do you have any scriptures? He answered: I am a Christian. The proconsul said: I ask whether you have assembled and whether you have scriptures. He answered: I am a Christian. There is no other name which after Christ we ought to hold sacred. Inflamed by this confession, the devil said: Since you persist in your obstinacy, you too must be subjected to torments. Say whether you have any scriptures. And he said to the officer: Torment him. The torturers, wearied by the paternal wounds, went at the sides of the youth, and still mingling on the hooks the father's blood, yet moist, with the kindred blood of the son.
You would have seen through the furrows of gaping wounds the blood of the father, who had hung there before, flowing from the sides, and the blood of the son mingled with the father's and dripping from the dripping hooks. But the young man, refreshed by the commingling of the twofold blood, felt healing rather than torments, and recovering his strength amid the torments, cried out with most vigorous voice: I have the dominical scriptures, but in my heart. I beseech thee, O Christ, grant endurance. There is hope of life. Anulinus said: Why were you acting against the edict? He answered: Because I am a Christian. Upon hearing this, he said: Spare him. And immediately, the torment ceasing, he was sent back to join his father's company. Meanwhile, as the hours slipped by, the day was sinking into night, and with the sun the torments were spent, the dark fury of the torturers failed, and it languished together with the cruelty of its judge.
But the legions of the Lord, in which Christ, the eternal light, shone with the gleaming splendour of heavenly arms, leapt forward more boldly and steadfastly into the contests. But when the adversary of the Lord, defeated by the most glorious battles of so many martyrs, overcome by so many and such great engagements, abandoned by the day, overtaken by the night, with the fury of the executioners now failing, was no longer able to engage further with each one in order to rout them, he probed the spirits of the entire army of the Lord, and assailed the devoted minds of the saints with this interrogation: You have seen, he said, what those who persevered have endured, or what those who persist in their confession still have to endure. And therefore let whoever among you wishes to attain pardon, so as to be able to be safe, make profession.
To this the confessors of the Lord, the glorious martyrs of Christ, joyful and triumphant together, not from the words of the proconsul but from the victory of their suffering, burning with the Holy Spirit, declared more boldly and clearly as if with one mouth: We are Christians. By this voice the devil was prostrated, and Anulinus was shaken and confounded, and thrusting all the saints into prison, he destined them for martyrdom. And lest the most devoted sex of women and the most flourishing choir of sacred virgins be deprived of the glory of so great a contest, all the women, with Christ the Lord assisting, engaged in the struggle and were crowned in Victoria.
For the most holy Victoria, flower of virgins, glory and dignity of confessors, honourable in birth, most holy in religion, temperate in character, in whom the good of nature shone forth in bright chastity, and to the beauty of her body there answered a faith more beautiful of mind and the integrity of holiness, rejoiced that she had been restored to a second palm in the martyrdom of the Lord. For from infancy bright signs of chastity already shone in her, and in her still tender years there appeared the most chaste rigour of mind and a certain dignity of future suffering. At last, after her full virginity had completed the final period of her age, when as a girl unwilling and resisting she was being compelled by her parents into marriage, and a ravisher urged that she be handed over unwilling to a husband, the girl secretly let herself down over a precipice, and borne up by the hands of servants, was received unharmed in the embrace of the earth.
Nor would she afterwards have suffered for Christ the Lord, had she then died for chastity alone. Freed therefore from the marriage torches, and having eluded at the same time both her parents and the bridegroom, leaping forth almost from the very midst of the wedding throng, she fled as an untouched virgin to the Church, the temple of chastity and haven of modesty, and there preserved with unshaken modesty the most sacred hair of her head, consecrated and dedicated to God, in perpetual virginity. She therefore, hastening to martyrdom, bore in her triumphant right hand the flourishing palm of chastity. For when the proconsul asked what she professed, she answered with a clear voice: I am a Christian. And when by her brother Fortunatianus, a man of the toga and her defender, she was said with vain arguments to be of unsound mind, Victoria answered: My mind is my own, I have never changed. To this the proconsul said: Do you wish to go with your brother Fortunatianus?
She answered: I do not wish to, because I am a Christian; and those are my brothers who keep the commandments of God. O girl founded on the authority of the divine law! O glorious virgin, worthily consecrated to the eternal King! O most blessed martyr, most illustrious in her evangelical profession, who answered with the dominical voice: These are my brothers who keep the commandments of God. Upon hearing this, Anulinus, laying aside the authority of a judge, descended to persuasion of the girl. Take thought for yourself, he said. For you see your brother wishing to provide for your safety. To whom the martyr of Christ replied: My mind is my own, I have never changed. For I was also at the assembly, and I celebrated the Lord's day with my brothers, because I am a Christian. As soon as Anulinus had heard this, he blazed up driven by fury, and sending the most sacred girl, the martyr of Christ, to prison together with the rest, he reserved them all for their passion.
But Hilarianus still remained, one of the sons of the presbyter martyr Saturninus, who overcame his tender age with immense devotion. There, hastening to be joined to the triumphs of his father and brothers, he did not so much shudder at the dreadful threats of the tyrant as count them as nothing. When it was said to him: Did you follow your father or your brothers? Suddenly from his small body a youthful voice was heard, and the narrow breast of the boy opened itself entirely in voice to the confession of the Lord as he answered: I am a Christian, and of my own accord and will I held an assembly with my father and with my brothers. You could hear the voice of the father, the martyr Saturninus the presbyter, coming forth through the channels of his sweet son, and the tongue confessing Christ the Lord following the example of his brother.
But the foolish proconsul, not understanding that it was not men but God who fought against him in the martyrs, and not perceiving that in his boyish years he sensed great souls, thought that the boy could be terrified by the torments of childhood. At last he said: I will cut off your hair and your nose and your ears, and so I will let you go. To this the boy Hilarianus, glorious in the virtues of his father and brothers, who had already learned from his elders to despise torments, answered with a clear voice: Whatever you wish to do, do it, because I am a Christian. He too is immediately ordered to be taken to prison; and the voice of Hilarianus is heard with great joy saying: Thanks be to God. Here the struggle of the great contest is completed, here the devil is overcome and conquered, here the martyrs of Christ rejoice with eternal congratulation over the glory of their future passion.
Appendix to Those Acts Which Contain the Accusation of the Donatists Against Mensurius and Caecilianus
But since, as we said above, the time of the schism has admonished us to join the decrees of so great and such martyrs to their confessions, and to chain the most holy constitutions of the friends of God to the foregoing acts, I shall of necessity briefly run through all that the martyrs in prison established by the authority of divine law and left to be preserved for posterity, nor in this very haste of mine shall I pass over the pride and audacity of the lapsed and of the traditors. For the faithfulness of the record, love of the law, the state of the Church, the public welfare, and the common life have compelled me to omit nothing. For by these matters it will be possible to recognize what the Catholic Church is, if the pestilential stain of the traditors be declared to all ages by their wicked deeds and by the sentence of the martyrs.
After the longed-for prison had received the aforesaid martyrs of Christ, the confessors who had been thrust in there before joined their triumphant right hands to those of the victorious newcomers. Moreover, to that same place came also very many other confessors from various parts of the Province; among whom were bishops, priests, deacons, and other clergy, who, upholding the law of the Lord, celebrated the assembly and the Lord's Day steadfastly and bravely, and who, preserving the Lord's scriptures and the divine testaments from flame and fire, offered themselves to dreadful flames and diverse torments, after the manner of the Maccabees, for the sake of the divine laws.
In that season, therefore, when the grim prison and thick darkness held within themselves the most faithful witnesses of God, and the enormous weight of chains bound their devoted limbs, when hunger weakened them, thirst wearied them, cold shook them, the crowd pressed upon them, and their very sides, torn by fresh lacerations of the hooks, burned with pain, amid chains and iron and the instruments of torments, by the authority of divine law, celebrating a council to preserve for themselves and for future martyrs, they were composing heavenly decrees. For truly that living Holy Spirit was exercising the minds of the confessors by breathing into them and by eternal and divine conversations.
But after the cruel storm and the horrible threats of persecution, by which tyrannical rage had assailed the Christian religion, so that the eternal peace of the Christian name might shine forth again purer and more serene, there was also no lack of the most cunning fraud of all the traditors and the diabolical conspiracy of pestilential shipwrecked men, composed by the art of the devil, which under the pretext of religion would assail religion, overturn faith, and disturb the law and divine rights; especially since Mensurius, once bishop of Carthage, polluted by the recent betrayal of the scriptures, had begun to publish the madness of his crime with a fiercer savagery: for he who ought to have sought and implored from the martyrs pardon for the books he had burned, in order to heap his crimes with greater outrages, raged against the martyrs with the same spirit with which he had betrayed the divine laws.
For this man, more savage than a tyrant, more cruel than an executioner, chose his deacon Caecilianus as a fitting minister of his crime; and he placed straps and whips together with armed men before the doors of the prison, so that all who brought food and drink to the martyrs in prison might be driven away with grievous injury. And they were beaten indiscriminately by Caecilianus, those who came to feed the martyrs; while the confessors inside in their chains were thirsting, cups were smashed before the threshold of the prison, food was scattered about to be torn apart by dogs, the fathers and most holy mothers of the martyrs lay before the prison doors, and, driven away from the last sight of their children, they kept heavy watch night and day at the door of the prison. There was horrible weeping and bitter lamentation from all who were present, as Caecilianus raged as a tyrant and cruel executioner, forbidding the loving embraces of the martyrs and tearing Christians away from the duty of piety.
Meanwhile the martyrs of Christ were moved neither by the squalor of the prison, nor by the pain of their bodies, nor finally by any want of necessities; but, now drawing near to the Lord by their merits and confession, they directed to posterity a saving decree, which would separate the common offspring of the Christian name from all renewed communion with the traditors, under such a threat: If anyone shall have communicated with the traditors, he shall have no part with us in the heavenly kingdoms. And they confirmed this their sentence, written by the authority of the Holy Spirit, with this comparison. It is written, they say, in the Apocalypse: Whosoever shall add to this book one tittle or one letter, God shall add upon him innumerable plagues; and whosoever shall delete, the Lord shall delete his part from the book of life.
If therefore one tittle added, or one letter taken away from the holy book, cuts off utterly and makes sacrilegious and subverts the author, it is necessary that all those who delivered the divine testaments and the venerable laws of almighty God and our Lord Jesus Christ to be burned in profane fires, be tormented by the eternal fires of gehenna and by unquenchable fire. And therefore, as we said above, if anyone shall have communicated with the traditors, he shall have no part with us in the heavenly kingdoms. Agreeing to this, each one hastened to the glory of passion, and each of the martyrs confirmed the final testimony with his own blood. Thenceforth the holy Church follows the martyrs and detests the traditors of accursed perfidy.
Since these things are so, then, who is there, endowed with knowledge of divine law, furnished with faith, distinguished in devotion, holy in religion, mindful of the judgment of God, who would discern truth from error, separate perfidy from faith, and disclose feigned simulation from certain and whole sanctity, separate the fallen from the standing, the wounded from the whole, the guilty from the just, the condemned from the innocent, the betrayer of the law from its guardian, the denier of Christ's name from its confessor, the persecutor of the Lord from his martyr, and would think the Church of the martyrs and the conventicles of the traditors to be one and the same thing? No one, surely, since these things are so mutually opposed and contrary to one another as light to darkness, life to death, the holy angel to the devil, Christ to antichrist, as the Apostle Paul says: I speak as to children, be ye also enlarged, and be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.
For what participation hath justice with iniquity, or what fellowship hath light with darkness, what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever, and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? But ye are the temple of the living God. For he saith: Because I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore go out from among them and be ye separate, saith God almighty, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and ye shall be sons and daughters to me, saith the Lord almighty. Wherefore the conspiracy of the traditors, the house of hypocrites, and the sentence of the Pharisees must always be fled and avoided by the good and the religious.
Would that the adoptions of the sons and daughters of God, spiritually born in the holy Church, might worthily succeed, and not, plunged into the crimes of others, acquire darkness for light and death for life, destruction for themselves instead of salvation. For such is the Church of the Lord, which is always one and singular and cannot be divided against itself into two parts, but after the most foul night of persecution and the pestilential storms of tyrants, the devil came with the cunning of most crafty fraud to deceive the innocent and prey upon the peoples; so that those whom he had not been able to swallow up by the open disaster of persecution, nor had been able to retain in perpetual ruin bound by the chains of sins to be enslaved to the sacrilegious worship of idols in that age, these he might join to himself through polluted betrayals and extinguish under the pretext of most holy religion.
Finally those false rites of sacred things and feigned mysteries are celebrated not so much for the salvation as for the destruction of the wretched, when a sacrilegious man erects an altar, a profane man celebrates the sacraments, a guilty man baptizes, a wounded man heals, a persecutor venerates the martyrs, a traditor reads the Gospels, a burner of the divine testaments promises the inheritance of heaven: whom the Lord rebukes and chides in the Gospel saying: Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him a son of gehenna doubly more than ye are yourselves. And the prophet, rejecting their polluted sacrifices, says: Their sacrifices are as an unwashed cloth. Everyone who shall touch it shall be defiled. But also through Haggai the most illustrious Prophet: Ask, saith the Lord, the priests the law.
If a man shall receive holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and shall touch with the skirt of his garment any part of bread, wine, or oil, shall it be sanctified? And the priests said: No. And Haggai said: If one defiled in soul shall touch any of these things, shall it be defiled? And the priests said: It shall be defiled. And Haggai said: So also is this people and this nation before me, saith the Lord, and everyone whosoever shall approach there shall be defiled.
The corrupt assembly of all the polluted must therefore be fled and execrated, and the glorious succession of the most blessed martyrs must be sought by all, which is the holy Church, one and true and catholic, from which the martyrs went forth, and by whom the divine testaments were preserved. For this alone broke the assault of fierce persecution, this preserved the law of the Lord even to the shedding of blood: in this the virtues of the holy people are multiplied by the presence of the Spirit, baptism is accomplished by the Saviour, eternal life is restored. For God is always propitious and present to them, the Lord Christ rejoices with them, and the Holy Spirit is glad, victor in the confessors, triumphant in the martyrs.
Finally, when neither Mensurius nor his minister Caecilianus was willing to cease from this monstrous cruelty, while the proconsul Anulinus and other persecutors were meanwhile occupied with other business, these blessed martyrs, deprived of bodily nourishment, little by little and at intervals of days, compelled by the atrocity of hunger, yielded to the natural condition, and migrated to the starry kingdoms with the palm of martyrdom, by the grace of our Lord Jesus, who reigns with the Father for ever and ever. Amen.
In the times of Diocletian and Maximian the devil declared war on Christians in this manner: that he sought the most sacred testaments of the Lord and the divine scriptures to be burned, that he would overthrow the Lord's basilicas, and would forbid the sacred rites and most holy assemblies to be celebrated to the Lord. But the army of the Lord God did not endure so monstrous a command, and shuddered at the sacrilegious order; and straightway took up the arms of faith, descended into battle, to fight not so much against men as against the devil.
And although by delivering to the gentiles the Lord's scriptures and the divine testaments to be burned in profane fires, some fell away from the hinge of faith, yet by preserving them and willingly shedding their own blood for them, very many ended bravely, and these, full of God, having overcome and prostrated the devil, bearing the victorious palm in their passion, were confirming with their own blood the sentence against the traditors and their associates, by which all the martyrs had rejected them from the communion of the Church. For it was not right that martyrs and traditors should be together in the Church of God.
Therefore immense columns of confessors flew from every direction to the field of combat; and wherever each one found the enemy, there he set up the Lord's camp. For in the city of Abitina, in the house of Octavius Felix, when the war-trumpet sounded, the glorious martyrs raised the Lord's standards; celebrating the Lord's Day everywhere according to custom, they were seized by the magistrates of the colony and by the garrison soldier himself: Saturninus the priest with his four children, that is, Saturninus the younger and Felix, lectors, Maria, a consecrated virgin, Hilarion, an infant, and likewise Dativus, who is also called Senator, Felix, another Felix, Emeritus, Ampelius, Rogatianus, Quintus, Maximianus, Thelica, Rogatianus, Rogatus, Januarius, Cassianus, Victorianus, Vincentius, Caecilianus, Restituta, Prima, Eva, Rogatianus, Givalius, Rogatus, Pomponia, Secunda, Januaria, Saturnina, Martinus, Dantus, Felix, Margarita, Major, Honorata, Regiola, Victorinus, Pelusius, Faustus, Dacianus, Matrona, Caecilia, Victoria, Herectina, Secunda, likewise Matrona, Januaria: who, seized, were led forth eagerly to the forum.
For this first field of combat, Dativus went forward first, whom holy parents begot as a bright senator for the heavenly senate. Saturninus the priest also went, surrounded by his numerous offspring of children; of whose progeny, one part destined itself as companion to him in martyrdom, while another part he left to the Church as a pledge of his name. The Lord's company followed these, in which shone the splendor of heavenly arms, the shield of faith, the breastplate of justice, the helmet of salvation, and the two-edged sword, the word of God: supported by whose protection, they promised to their brethren the hope of victory. But now they had arrived at the forum of the aforesaid city. There, meeting first, they bore off the palm of confession by the magistrate's indictment.
For in this forum heaven had already fought for the Lord's scriptures, when Fundanus, once bishop of that city, delivered the Lord's scriptures to be burned: and when the sacrilegious magistrate was applying them to the fire, suddenly a shower poured down from a clear sky, the fire applied to the holy scriptures was extinguished, hailstones were brought on, and that whole region was devastated by raging elements on behalf of the Lord's scriptures.
From this city, therefore, the martyrs of Christ received their longed-for first chains, and being directed to Carthage, they sang hymns and psalms to the Lord eagerly and joyfully throughout the entire journey. When they came before the office of Anulinus, then proconsul, and stood in battle line steadfastly and bravely, they beat back the fierce assault of the devil with the Lord's constancy. But since the diabolical rage could not prevail against all the soldiers of Christ at once, it demanded them one by one for combat. The struggles of these combats I shall recount not so much in my own words as in those of the martyrs; so that both the audacity of the raging enemy in the torments and in his very sacrilegious invective may be known, and the most mighty power of Christ the Lord may be praised in the endurance of the martyrs and in their very confession.
When, therefore, they were brought before the proconsul's office, and it was reported that Christians had been sent by the magistrates of Abitinae who had held a gathering and celebrated the Lord's Day contrary to the edict of the emperors and Caesars, the proconsul first questioned Dativus as to his condition and whether he had held a gathering; and when he professed himself a Christian and that he had been at the gathering, the author of that most holy assembly was demanded from him; and straightway the office was ordered to raise him onto the rack, and, stretched out, to have him torn with claws. But while the executioners were fulfilling the cruel commands with savage swiftness, and stood raging over the martyr's sides, bared for wounds, threatening with raised claws, suddenly Thelica, that most valiant martyr, thrust himself into the midst of the torments, and cried out: We are Christians; it is we, he said, who assembled.
Straightway the fury of the proconsul blazed up, and groaning, gravely wounded by the spiritual sword, he beat the martyr of Christ with the heaviest blows, stretched him suspended on the rack, and tore him with screeching claws. But against all this, the most glorious martyr Thelica, from the very midst of the executioners' rage, poured forth prayers of this kind to the Lord with thanksgiving: Thanks be to God. In Thy name, O Christ, Son of God, deliver Thy servants.
As he prayed such things, the proconsul said: Who is the author of your assembly with you? He, with the executioner raging more cruelly, answered in a clear voice: Saturninus the presbyter, and all of them. O martyr who gives the first place to all! For he did not set the presbyter before the brethren, but joined the brethren to the presbyter by the fellowship of confession. When therefore the proconsul sought Saturninus, he pointed him out—not because he betrayed one whom he saw fighting alongside himself equally against the devil, but that he might show him that he had celebrated the gathering in full, since the presbyter himself had also been with them. Blood therefore flowed together with the voice of him who was entreating the Lord, and mindful of the precepts of the Gospel, the martyr amid the very laceration of his own body begged pardon for his enemies.
For amid the most grievous torments of his wounds, he rebuked the torturers and the proconsul alike with these words: You do unjustly, unhappy ones; you act against God. O most high God, consent not to them in these sins. You sin, unhappy ones; you act against God. Keep the commandments of the most high God. Most high. You act unjustly, unhappy ones; you tear apart the innocent. We are not murderers; we have committed no fraud. God, have mercy. I give thanks to Thee. For Thy name, O Lord, grant endurance. Deliver Thy servants from the captivity of this age. I give thanks to Thee, nor am I sufficient to give Thee thanks. And when his sides, shaken by the blows of the claws, were more deeply furrowed, and a wave of flowing blood poured forth under the violent strokes, he heard the proconsul saying to him: You will begin to feel what you ought to suffer. And he added: Unto glory. I give thanks to God of kingdoms. The eternal kingdom appears, the incorruptible kingdom.
Lord Jesus Christ, we are Christians, we serve Thee; Thou art our hope, Thou art the hope of Christians. Most holy God, most high God, almighty God, we render praises to Thee for Thy name, Lord God almighty. When to one praying such things it was said by the devil's instrument the judge, You ought to have kept the command of the emperors and Caesars, with his body now exhausted, he proclaimed as a victor in spirit with strong and steadfast speech: I care for nothing save the law of God, which I have learned. That I keep, for that I shall die, in that I am perfected; besides it there is no other. And so by such words of the most glorious martyr, Anulinus himself was the more tormented in his own torments; whose rage at last, fattened by ferocity, said: Enough; and consigned the martyr, shut away in prison, to a fitting passion.
After him Dativus was raised up by the Lord for the contest, who had watched close at hand the most valiant battle of Thelica while he himself hung stretched on the rack nearby; and when he boldly proclaimed with his voice repeated many times that he was a Christian and had held a gathering, there came forward Fortunatianus, the brother of the most holy martyr Victoria, a man indeed of the toga, but at that very time estranged from the most holy practice of the Christian religion; who assailed the martyr hanging on the rack with profane words to this effect: This is the man, O Lord, he said, who, during the absence of our father, while we were studying here, seduced our sister Victoria, and led her away from this most splendid city of Carthage together with Secunda and Restituta all the way to the colony of Abitinae, and who never entered our house except at those times when he was enticing girlish minds with certain persuasions.
But Victoria, that most illustrious martyr of the Lord, did not endure that her fellow and co-martyr, a senator, should be falsely attacked; and straightway bursting forth with Christian freedom, she said: I set out at no one's persuasion, nor did I come with him to Abitinae. This I can prove through the citizens. I did everything of my own accord and will. For I was also at the gathering, and I celebrated the Lord's Day with the brethren, because I am a Christian. Then the shameless advocate heaped curses upon the martyr. And against him the glorious martyr from the rack resolved everything with truthful answers. Meanwhile Anulinus, burning with anger, ordered the claws to be pressed upon the martyr. Straightway the executioners found his sides bare and prepared for blows, and covered them with bloody wounds.
The savage hands flew swifter than the swift commands, and with the skin torn open and the flesh ripped apart, they laid bare the hidden recesses of his breast to the abominable gaze of the profane, striving with their cruelty. Amid all this the martyr's mind remained unmoved; and though his limbs were broken, his entrails torn out, his sides scattered, yet the martyr's spirit remained whole and unshaken. Finally, mindful of his dignity, Dativus, who was also a senator, poured forth to the Lord under the raging executioner these words: O Christ the Lord, let me not be confounded. With these words, the most blessed martyr obtained from the Lord what he had asked as easily as he had asked it briefly.
Then presently, with the proconsul's mind shaken, the word Enough leapt from his tongue (that is, he spoke it). The executioners ceased. For it was not right that a martyr of Christ should be tortured on account of his co-martyr Victoria. For when Pompeianus also came against him as a savage accuser with an unworthy suspicion and joined a calumnious charge, he was spurned and repulsed by the martyr. What are you doing here, devil? What do you still attempt against the martyrs of Christ? By the Lord's senator and martyr, both the power and the forensic rage were overcome at once.
But since the most illustrious martyr was bound also to be tortured for Christ, when asked whether he had been at the gathering, he steadfastly professed and said that he had arrived when the gathering was already in progress and had celebrated the Lord's Day with the brethren with fitting religious devotion, and that the author of that most holy assembly had not been one person alone; and thus he stirred the proconsul against himself again more sharply; and with his savagery breaking out afresh, the martyr's doubled dignity was ploughed again by the furrowing claws. But the martyr amid the most savage torments of his wounds, repeating his former prayer, said: I ask, O Christ, let me not be confounded. What have I done? Saturninus is our presbyter.
While they were scraping his sides with hooked claws, with the hard and savage executioner showing his mastery of cruelty, Saturninus the presbyter was called forth to battle; and he, contemplating the heavenly kingdom and considering that what his co-martyrs were enduring was quite small and light, himself also began to engage in like manner. For when the proconsul said: You acted contrary to the command of the emperors and Caesars in assembling all these people, the presbyter Saturninus answered, prompted by the Spirit of the Lord: We celebrated the Lord's Day without fear. The proconsul said: Why? He answered: Because the Lord's Day cannot be omitted.
Day. As soon as he had said this, he was ordered to be fitted against Dativus straightway. Meanwhile Dativus watched the butchery of his own body rather than felt pain from it; and he whose mind and soul hung upon the Lord reckoned nothing of the pain of his body; but only prayed to the Lord saying: Help me, I beseech Thee, O Christ; have pity; save my soul; keep my spirit that I be not confounded. I ask, O Christ, grant endurance. When the proconsul said to him: From this most splendid city you ought rather to have called others to a right mind, and not to have acted contrary to the command of the emperors and Caesars, he cried out more boldly and steadfastly: I am a Christian. By which word the devil was overcome, and he said: Enough. And thrusting him into prison at the same time, he reserved the martyr for a fitting passion.
But the presbyter Saturninus, steeped in the fresh blood of the martyrs, as he hung on the rack, was admonished to persevere in the faith of those in whose blood he persevered. When he was asked whether he himself was the author and had gathered them all together, and said, Yes, I was present at the gathering, Emeritus the lector, leaping forward to the contest while the presbyter was engaging, said: I am the author, in whose house the gatherings were held. But the proconsul, who had already been defeated so many times, shuddered at the onset of Emeritus; and yet, turning to the presbyter, he said: Why were you doing what is forbidden, Saturninus? To whom Saturninus said: The Lord's Day cannot be omitted. The law so commands. Then the proconsul: Nevertheless you ought not to have despised what is forbidden, but rather to have observed it, and not to have done a thing contrary to the command of the emperors.
And with a word long meditated upon the martyrs, he urged the torturer to rage; and he was obeyed with no sluggish compliance. For the executioners fell upon the aged body of the presbyter, and with raging fury, tearing apart the sinews' connections, ripped it apart into lamentable torments and novel tortures of an exquisite kind devised against a priest of God. You would have seen the executioners raging as if with ravenous hunger upon the fodder of wounds, and with the entrails laid open, to the horror of beholders amid the redness of blood, the bared bones growing pale; and lest amid the delays of the torturers the soul, driven out, should abandon the body while it still hung in punishment, the presbyter entreated the Lord with these words: I ask, O Christ, hear me. I give thanks to Thee, O God: command that I be beheaded. I ask, O Christ, have mercy. Son of God, help me. To whom the proconsul said: Why were you doing what is forbidden?
And the presbyter said: The law so commands, the law so teaches. O truly admirable and praiseworthy divine response of the presbyter and teacher! The presbyter proclaims the most holy law even in torments, for which he willingly endured punishments. At last, deterred by the voice of the law, Anulinus said: Enough; and returning him to the custody of the prison, consigned him to the longed-for suffering.
But when Emeritus was brought forward: In your house, said the proconsul, were gatherings held contrary to the commands of the emperors? To whom Emeritus, flooded with the Holy Spirit, said: In my house we celebrated the Lord's Day. And he said: Why did you allow them to enter? He answered: Because they are my brethren, and I could not forbid them. But you ought, he said, to have forbidden them. And he replied: I could not, because without the Lord's Day we cannot exist. Straightway he too was ordered to be stretched on the rack, and being stretched, to be tormented. When he was suffering heavy blows from a fresh executioner, he said: I ask, O Christ, help me. You act contrary to the command of God, O unhappy ones! And the proconsul interjecting, said: You ought not to have received them. He answered: I could not but receive my brethren. But the sacrilegious proconsul said: But the command of the emperors and Caesars came first.
Against this the most devout martyr said: God is greater, not the emperors. I ask, O Christ, I render praises to Thee. O Christ the Lord, grant endurance. To one praying such things the proconsul put this question: Have you then any scriptures in your house? And he answered: I have them, but in my heart. And the proconsul said: Do you have them in your house, or not? The martyr Emeritus said: I have them in my heart. I ask, O Christ, praises to Thee. Deliver me, O Christ; I suffer in Thy name. I suffer briefly; I suffer willingly. O Christ the Lord, let me not be confounded. O martyr mindful of the Apostle, who had the law of the Lord written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of fleshly hearts.
O martyr most fit and most diligent keeper of the sacred law, who, shuddering at the crime of the traditores, placed the dominical scriptures within the secret recesses of his own breast lest he should lose them. Upon learning this, the proconsul said: Enough. And recalling his profession to memory together with the confessions of the rest, he said: For your deserts, all of you shall pay the fitting penalties according to your confession.
But now the bestial rage, its bloody mouth gorged on the torments of the martyrs, was growing faint. But when Felix, so named and so proved in his passion, had come forward to battle, and the whole battle-line of the Lord stood uncorrupted and unconquered, the tyrant, prostrated in mind, cast down in voice, dissolved in soul and body, said: I hope you will rather choose that course by which you may live, so as to keep the commands. Against which the confessors of the Lord, the unconquered martyrs of Christ, as if with one mouth said: We are Christians; we cannot but keep the holy law of the Lord even to the shedding of blood. Struck by this voice, the enemy said to Felix: I do not ask whether you are a Christian, but whether you held a gathering or have any scriptures. O foolish and laughable interrogation of the judge! Be silent, he says, as to whether you are a Christian. And he added: Were you at the gathering? Answer.
As if a Christian could exist without the Lord's Day, or the Lord's Day be celebrated without a Christian. Do you not know, O Satan, that the Christian is constituted in the Lord's Day and the Lord's Day in the Christian, so that neither can exist without the other? When you hear the name, learn the assembly of the Lord; and when you hear the gathering, recognize the name. In the end you are known by the martyr and mocked, and confounded by such an answer. We celebrated the gathering most gloriously, he said; we always assembled in the Lord's house to read the dominical scriptures. Gravely confounded by this confession, Anulinus, after having him beaten with rods until he was half-dead, united him, his passion completed, with the heavenly assembly as a martyr hastening to the starry tribunals. But another Felix followed Felix, alike in name and in confession and in the very passion itself.
For having engaged with equal virtue, he too was shaken by the blows of rods, and laying down his soul amid the torments of prison, was joined to the martyrdom of the former Felix.
After these, Ampelius, keeper of the law and most faithful guardian of the divine scriptures, took up the contest. When the proconsul asked him whether he had been at the assembly, he answered cheerfully and confidently with an eager voice: I held the assembly with my brethren, I celebrated the dominicum; and I have the dominical scriptures with me, but written in my heart. Christ, I render praise to thee. Hear me, O Christ. When he had said these things, beaten about the neck, he was sent to prison as though already joyfully into the Lord's tabernacle, together with his brethren. Rogatianus followed him: who, having confessed the name of the Lord, was joined to the aforementioned brethren unharmed. But the fifth, brought forward, having confessed the name of the Lord excellently and magnificently, was beaten with rods and thrust into prison, reserved for a worthy martyrdom. Maximianus followed him, equal in confession, alike in the contest, equal in the triumphs of victory.
After him, the younger Felix, proclaiming that the dominicum is the hope and salvation of Christians, when he likewise was beaten with rods, said: I celebrated the dominicum with a devoted mind, I held the assembly with my brethren, because I am a Christian. By this confession he too merited to be joined to the aforementioned brethren.
But the younger Saturninus, holy offspring of Saturninus the martyr-presbyter, hastened eagerly to the longed-for contest, pressing forward to be made equal to his father's most glorious virtues. When the furious proconsul, at the devil's prompting, said to him: And you, Saturninus, were you present? Saturninus answered: I am a Christian. I am not asking you that, he said, but whether you performed the dominicum. Saturninus answered him: I performed the dominicum, because Christ is the Saviour. Upon hearing the name of Saviour, Anulinus blazed with anger, and set up the rack against the son as his father had experienced. And with Saturninus stretched out, he said: What do you profess, Saturninus? You see where you are placed. Do you have any scriptures? He answered: I am a Christian. The proconsul then said: I ask whether you assembled, and whether you have scriptures? He answered: I am a Christian. There is no other name which after Christ we ought to hold sacred.
Inflamed by this confession, the devil said: Since you persist in your obstinacy, it is necessary that you also be subjected to torments. Say whether you have any scriptures? And he said to the officer: Torment him. The torturers, wearied by the paternal wounds, went at the sides of the young man, and mingled the father's blood, still moist on the hooks, with the kindred blood of the son. You might have seen, through the furrows of gaping wounds, the blood of the father flowing first from the sides of the son, and the blood of the son mingled with the father's blood dripping from the moistened hooks. But the young man, refreshed by the mingling of his native blood, felt healing rather than torments, and, having recovered his strength amid the torments, cried out with most valiant voice: I have the dominical scriptures, but in my heart. I pray thee, O Christ, grant me endurance. My hope is in thee. Anulinus said: Why were you acting against the edict? He answered: Because I am a Christian.
Upon hearing this, he said: Enough. And immediately, the torment ceasing, he was sent to join his father's company.
Meanwhile, as the hours slipped by, the day was sinking into night, and with the sun the torments were spent; the dark fury of the torturers failed, and grew faint along with the cruelty of their judge. But the Lord's legions, in which Christ, the eternal light, shone with the gleaming splendour of heavenly ages, leapt forward into the contests more boldly and steadfastly. But when the adversary of the Lord, vanquished by the most glorious battles of so many martyrs, overcome by so many and such great encounters, abandoned by the day, overtaken by the night, with the rage of the executioners now failing, was no longer able to engage with each one individually after being routed, he probed the spirits of the whole army of the Lord, and assailed the devoted minds of the confessors with this question: You have seen, he said, what those who persevered have endured, or what those who persist in their confession still have to endure.
Therefore, let whoever among you wishes to obtain pardon, so that he may be able to be safe, make his declaration. To this the confessors of the Lord, the glorious martyrs of Christ, joyful and triumphant together, burning with the Holy Spirit not from the proconsul's words but from the victory of their suffering, said more boldly and clearly, as if with one mouth: We are Christians. By this voice the devil was prostrated and shaken. And Anulinus, confounded, thrusting them all into prison, destined those holy ones for martyrdom.
And lest the most devoted sex of women and the most flourishing choir of sacred virgins be deprived of the glory of so great a contest, all the women, with Christ the Lord's aid, entered the contest in Victoria and were crowned. For Victoria, most holy among women, flower of virgins, honour and dignity of the confessors, noble by birth, most holy in religion, temperate in character, in whom the good of nature shone forth in bright chastity, and to the beauty of her body there answered the fairer faith of her mind and the integrity of her holiness, rejoiced that she had been restored to a second palm in the Lord's martyrdom. For from infancy bright signs of chastity already shone in her, and in her tender years there appeared the most chaste rigour of mind, and a certain dignity of future suffering.
Finally, after her full virginity had reached the mature time of age, when as a girl unwilling and resisting she was being compelled by her parents into marriage, and her parents were handing her over against her will to a bridegroom, in order to flee the ravisher, the girl secretly let herself down over a precipice, and, borne up by the hands of servants, was received unharmed in the bosom of the earth. Nor would she afterwards have been about to suffer even for Christ the Lord, had she then died for chastity alone. Freed therefore from the wedding torches, and having mocked the bridegroom together with her parents, leaping out from almost the midst of the wedding throng itself, she fled as an untouched virgin to the Church, the temple of chastity and haven of modesty, and there preserved with unshaken modesty the most sacred hair of her head, consecrated and dedicated to God, in perpetual virginity. She therefore, hastening to martyrdom, bore the flower of chastity as a palm in her triumphant right hand.
For when the proconsul asked what she professed, she answered with a clear voice: I am a Christian. And when her brother Fortunatianus, a man of the toga, and his advocate, said that she had been captured in mind by vain arguments, Victoria answered: My mind is my own; I have never changed. To this the proconsul said: Do you wish to go with your brother Fortunatianus? She answered: I do not, because I am a Christian; and those are my brethren who keep the commandments of God. O girl founded on the authority of the divine law! O glorious virgin, worthily consecrated to the eternal King! O most blessed martyr, most renowned in evangelical profession, who answered with the Lord's own words: These are my brethren who keep the commandments of God. Upon hearing these things, Anulinus, laying aside the authority of a judge, descended to persuasion of the girl. Take thought for yourself, he said. For you see your brother wishing to provide for your safety.
To him the martyr of Christ said: My mind is my own; I have never changed. For I was also at the assembly, and I celebrated the dominicum with my brethren, because I am a Christian. As soon as Anulinus had heard these things, he blazed up driven by fury, and sending the most sacred girl, the martyr of Christ, to prison together with the rest, reserved them all for the Lord's passion.
But Hilarianus still remained, one of the sons of Saturninus the martyr-presbyter, who overcame his tender age with immense devotion. He, hastening to be joined to the triumphs of his father and brothers, did not so much dread the tyrant's dreadful threats as hold them as nothing. When it was said to him: Did you follow your father or your brothers? Suddenly from his small body a youthful voice was heard, and the narrow breast of the boy opened itself entirely in the voice of one confessing the Lord, answering: I am a Christian, and of my own accord and will I held the assembly with my father and with my brothers. You might hear the voice of Saturninus the martyr-father coming forth through the channels of his sweet son, and the tongue confessing Christ the Lord made confident by his brother's example.
But the foolish proconsul, not understanding that it was not men but God who fought against him in the martyrs, and not perceiving that in his boyish years he harboured a great spirit, thought the boy could be terrified by the torments of childhood. Finally, he said: I will cut off your hair and your nose and your ears, and so I will let you go. To this the boy Hilarianus, glorious in the virtues of his father and brothers, who had already learned from his elders to despise torments, answered with a clear voice: Whatever you wish to do, do it, because I am a Christian. Straightway he too is ordered to be received into prison; and with great joy the voice of Hilarianus is heard saying: Thanks be to God. Here the struggle of the great contest is completed, here the devil is overcome and vanquished, here the martyrs of Christ rejoice in their sufferings with eternal congratulation of future glory.
Acts of the Purgation of Felix
Many things are missing in the municipality of the Autumnitanians, Gallienus the duumvir said: Since you are present, Caecilianus, hear the letter of my lord Aelius Paulinus, a man of distinction acting as vicar of the prefecture, what he has seen fit to command according to the letter given to us, which compels you to declare both the scribe whom you had at that time of your administration, and the record-keeper. But since the record-keeper of that time has departed this life, you will need to bring with you all the acts of your administration, according to the tenor of the letter of my said lord, and it is necessary that you set out to the Colony of Carthage with your scribe; the curator is present, in whose presence we compel you: what do you answer to this?
Caecilianus said: As soon as you brought to me the letter of Aelius Paulinus, a man of distinction acting as vicar of the prefecture, I immediately sent to the scribe Miccius, that he should come and bring me the acts drawn up at that time, and he is still searching, since it is no small time since I administered the duumvirate; it has been eleven years. Therefore when he has found them, I will comply with so great a command. Gallienus the duumvir said: It is in your interest to obey the order, for you see that the order is sacred. Caecilianus said: I am devoted to so great a command. Likewise, when a little later the scribe Miccius had arrived, Fuscius the duumvir said: You too have heard, Miccius, that you together with Caecilianus are required to go to the office of the man of distinction the vicar, to bring with you the records of that time. What do you say to this?
Miccius replied: The magistrate, when his year was completed, took all his acts to his own home: I am inquiring whether mine can be found on wax tablets. And while he was searching, Quintus Sisenna the duumvir said: He has replied what the office has ascertained. Apronianus said: If the magistrate had taken all his acts away, whence the acts which had then been issued or drawn up after so long a time? And when he was speaking, Aelianus the proconsul said: Both my question and the response of each person is contained in the records. Agesilaus said: There are moreover other letters necessary to this matter: it is important that they be read. Aelianus the proconsul said: Read them in the hearing of Caecilianus, so that he may acknowledge whether he himself dictated them. Agesilaus read aloud. In the consulship of Volusianus and Annianus, on the 14th day before the Kalends of September, in court before Aurelius, Didymus, Speretius the priest of Jupiter Optimus Maximus the duumvir, he read aloud.
Maximus of the splendid colony of the Carthaginians said: I speak in the name of the elders of the Christian people of the catholic law. Before the greatest emperors, a case will be conducted against Caecilianus and Felix, who strives to invade with all means the primacy of that same law. Against them, proofs of his crimes are being sought. For when persecution was proclaimed against Christians, that is, that they should sacrifice, or deliver to fire whatever Scriptures they possessed; Felix, who was then bishop at Autumni, had given his consent, so that the Scriptures might be handed over from the hand of Galatius to be burned in fire, and the magistrate at that time was Alfius Caecilianus, whom you deign to see present.
And since the duty of that time's office fell upon him, that by proconsular command all should sacrifice, and if they had any Scriptures, should offer them according to the sacred law, I ask, according to sense, and you see he is an old man, and cannot go to the sacred court: let him declare before the records, whether he has already given letters concerning the agreement made with him by the same man, and whether the things he set forth in the letters are true, so that the acts and trustworthiness of these matters may be disclosed in the sacred judgment. Speretius the duumvir said to Caecilianus who was standing by: You hear what has been deposited before the records. Alfius Caecilianus said: I was at Zama for the purpose of purchasing linen goods with Saturninus. And when we had come there, the Christians themselves sent to me at the praetorium, to say: Has the sacred command reached you? I said: No, but I have already seen examples.
And at Zama and at Furni I saw basilicas torn down and Scriptures burned. Therefore bring forward whatever Scriptures you have, so that the sacred command may be obeyed. Then they send to the house of bishop Felix, to take the Scriptures from there, so that they might be burned according to the sacred command. Thus Galatius went with us to the place where they had been accustomed to hold their prayers. From there we took a chair, and letters of greeting, and all the doors were burned according to the sacred command. And when we sent to the house of the same bishop Felix, the public officials reported that he was absent. For when Ingentius the scribe of Augentius, with whom I had administered the aedileship, came at a later time, I dictated a letter to that same colleague, which I sent to the same bishop Felix. Maximus said: He is present; let the same letter be offered to him, so that he may acknowledge it. He replied: It is the same.
Maximus said: Since he has acknowledged his letter, I read it, and I pray that it be inserted in full in the records. And he read aloud: Caecilianus to his father Felix, greeting. When Ingentius met my colleague Augentius his friend, and inquired in the year of my duumvirate, whether any Scriptures of your law had been burned according to the sacred law, that Galatius, one of your law, publicly brought forth letters of greeting from the basilica. I pray that you fare well. This is the token which the Christians had sent to me as a petition, and the petition itself belongs to him: and you said, Take the key, and whatever books you find on the chair, and the codices on the stone, take them: but take care that the officials do not take the oil and the wheat. And I said to you: Do you not know that where Scriptures are found, the very house is torn down? And you said: What then shall we do?
And I said to you: Let one of your people take them to the courtyard where you hold your prayers, and let them be placed there; and I will come with the officials and take them. And we came there, and took everything, according to the sacred command. Maximus said: Since the reading of his letter has been recited before the records, which he himself acknowledged that he sent, and what he said, we ask that these things remain in the records. Speretius the duumvir said: What you said has been written down. Agesilaus said: He acknowledged the present letter; the remaining part, which he has now read, he says is false. Caecilianus said: My lord, I dictated only up to the point where it reads, I pray you, dearest father, fare well. Apronianus said: Always thus has falsehood been perpetrated through terror, through staging, through an irreligious mind, by those who refused to agree with the Catholic Church.
For while Paulinus was here administering the duties of the prefects, a certain private man was suborned, who had the manner of a courier, to come to the unity of the Catholic Church, and to lead them in and frighten them. The conspiracy has therefore been detected. For it was being contrived against Felix the most devout bishop through a lie, so that he might appear to have betrayed and burned the Scriptures. Ingentius indeed, since all that he was doing was harming the holiness and religion of Caecilianus, was suborned to come with letters as if from bishop Felix to Caecilianus the duumvir, and to fabricate for him that he had been sent by Felix. Let him say the very words by which this was fabricated. Aelianus the proconsul said: Speak. Apronianus said: Say, he said, to my friend Caecilianus, that I have received eleven precious divine codices, and since someone is now pressing me to restore them, say that in the year of your magistracy you burned them, so that I need not return them.
For this reason therefore Ingentius must be examined, to what extent these things were contrived and fabricated, and to what extent he wished to entrap the magistrate into a lie, so as to besmirch Felix with infamy: let him say by whom he was sent, yet this contrivance against the conscience of Felix, whereby he would detract from the honor and good name of Caecilianus. For there is a certain man who was sent as a legate through Mauretania and Numidia from the opposing party. And with Ingentius standing by, Aelianus the proconsul said: By whose command did you undertake to do the things that are charged against you? Ingentius said: Where? Aelianus the proconsul said: Since you pretend not to understand what you are asked, I will speak more plainly: Who sent you to the magistrate Caecilianus? Ingentius said: No one sent me. Aelianus the proconsul said: How then did you come to the magistrate Caecilianus?
Ingentius said: When we had come, and the case of Maurus was being conducted by the bishop of Utica, who bought the episcopate for himself, the bishop Felix of Autumni went up to the city to deal with the matter, and said, Let no one communicate with him, because he has committed a falsehood. And I said to him in reply: Neither with you, nor with him, for you are a traditor. For I grieved over the case of Maurus my host, because I had communicated with him abroad, because I had escaped the persecution. Thereupon I went to the homeland of Felix himself, I brought with me three elders, so that they might see whether he had truly betrayed or not. Apronianus said: He did not come to Caecilianus in that way to inquire about Caecilianus. Aelianus the proconsul said to Caecilianus: How did Ingentius come to you? Caecilianus replied: He came to me at home: I was dining with workmen; he came there; he stood at the door. Where is Caecilianus? He said. I replied: Here.
I said to him: What is it? Is all well? All is well, he says. I replied to him: If you do not disdain to dine, come, dine. He says to me: I will return here. He came there alone. He began to say to me: Look, I am thus concerned to inquire and search whether a Scripture was burned in the year of my duumvirate. I say to him: You are troubling me, you are a man sent against me: get away from me. And I dismissed him from me. And he came there again with my colleague, with whom I was aedile. My colleague said to me: Our bishop Felix has sent this man here, so that you make a letter for him, because he has received precious codices, and did not wish to return them: write to him, that in the year of your duumvirate they were burned. And I said: Is this the faith of Christians? Ingentius said: My lord, let Augentius also come.
And I am a man of honor, and let my honor perish, and we have his sides. Aelianus the proconsul said to Ingentius: You are convicted on another charge. Aelianus the proconsul said to the Office: Fit him. And when he was being fitted, Aelianus the proconsul said: Suspend him. And when he was being suspended, Aelianus the proconsul said to Caecilianus: How did Ingentius come to you? He replied: Felix our bishop sent me here, he said, so that you write to him, because there is some lost fellow I know not who, having with him precious codices belonging to me, and I do not wish to restore them. Therefore make a letter, that they were burned, so that I need not recover them. And I began to rebuke him. And my colleague said: Write to him, to our Felix. And so I dictated the letter, which is evident up to the point where I dictated. Aelianus the proconsul said: Hear without fear the reading of your letter. Acknowledge up to what point you dictated.
Agesilaus read aloud: I pray you, dearest father, to fare well for many years. Aelianus the proconsul said to Caecilianus: Did you dictate up to this point? He replied: Up to this point; the rest is false. Agesilaus read aloud: By this token, which you sent to me as a petition, unless I and you and he whose petition it is: and you said, Take the key, and whatever books you will find on the chair, and the codices on the stone, take them: but take care that the officials do not take the oil and the wheat. And I said to you: Let one of you take them to the courtyards where you hold your prayers, and let them be placed there; and I will come with the officials and take them. And we came there and took everything according to the agreement, and burned them according to the command.
Maximus said: Since the tenor of his letter has also been recited before the records, which he said he himself acknowledged and sent, we ask that this remain in your records. Speretius said: What you said has been written down. Caecilianus replied: That part is false, up to where my letter is, up to where it says, Fare well, dearest father. Aelianus the proconsul said: Whom do you say added to the letter? Caecilianus said: Ingentius. Aelianus the proconsul said: Your declaration remains in the records. Aelianus the proconsul said to Ingentius: You are being tortured, lest you lie. Ingentius said: I erred; I added this to the letter, grieving over the case of Maurus my host. Aelianus the proconsul said: Constantine Maximus ever Augustus and Licinius the Caesars deign to show such piety toward Christians that they do not wish discipline to be corrupted, but rather desire that this religion be observed and honored. Do not therefore flatter yourself by telling me that you are a decurion, and therefore cannot be tortured.
You are being tortured, lest you lie, which appears to be foreign to Christians. Therefore speak plainly, lest you be tortured. Ingentius said: I have already confessed without torture. Apronianus said: Deign to inquire of him, by what authority, by what deceit, by what madness he has gone about through all the Mauretanias, and even the Numidias, and by what means he has stirred up sedition against the Catholic Church. Aelianus the proconsul said: Were you in the Numidias? He replied: No, my lord: let there be one who proves it. Aelianus the proconsul said: Nor in Mauretania? He replied: I was there for the purpose of trading. Apronianus said: And in this he lies, my lord (for to the Mauretanias situated there one cannot go except through the Numidias), inasmuch as he says he was in Mauretania but was not in Numidia. Aelianus the proconsul said to Ingentius: Of what condition are you? Ingentius replied: I am a decurion of the Ziquenses. Aelianus the proconsul said to the office: Put him down.
When he had been put down, Aelianus the proconsul said to Caecilianus: Are the things you said false? Caecilianus replied: No, my lord. Let him who wrote the letter be ordered to come. He is his friend. He himself will say up to what point I dictated the letter. Aelianus the proconsul said: Who is he whom you desire to come? Caecilianus said: Augentius, with whom I was aedile. I cannot prove it except through Augentius himself, who wrote the letter, up to what point I dictated to him: he himself can say. Aelianus the proconsul said: Is it therefore established that the letter is false? Caecilianus replied: It is established, my lord, I do not lie upon my blood. Aelianus the proconsul said: Since you have acted as duumvir in your homeland, your words ought to be believed. Apronianus said: Nor is it new for them to do this. Moreover they have also added to the records what they wished. It is already their craft.
Aelianus the proconsul said: From the declaration of Caecilianus, who says that the records were falsified and that much was added to the letter, it is manifest with what intent Ingentius did these things: and therefore let him be received into prison. For he is needed for a more rigorous examination. But that Felix the devout bishop is free from the burning of the divine instruments is manifest, since no one has been able to prove anything against him, that he betrayed or burned the most holy Scriptures. For the above-written examination of all makes it manifest that no divine Scriptures were found, corrupted, or burned. This is contained in the records, that Felix the devout bishop, in those times, was neither present, nor gave his consent, nor ordered any such thing to be done. Agesilaus said: Concerning those who came to instruct your authority, what does your Authority command? Aelianus the proconsul said: Let them return to their own sees.
Here end the records of the purgation of Felix the bishop of Autumni, the ordainer of Caecilianus of Carthage.
Acts of the Purgation of Caecilianus
Here begin the acts wherein it is established that Silvanus was a traditor, who together with the others ordained Majorinus, whom Donatus succeeded. In the consulship of Constantine Maximus Augustus and Constantine the younger, most noble Caesar, on the ides of December, when Sextus of Thamugadi had been brought in and Victor the grammarian had been summoned, with Nundinarius the deacon also present, Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: What is your name? He answered: Victor. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: Of what condition are you? Victor said: I am a teacher of Roman letters, a Latin grammarian. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: Of what rank are you? Victor said: My father was a decurion of the Constantinians, my grandfather a soldier who had served in the imperial retinue. For our origin descends from Moorish blood. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: Mindful of your good faith and honesty, state plainly what was the cause of the dissension among the Christians.
Victor said: I do not know the origin of the dissension: I am one of the people of the Christians. Indeed, when I was at Carthage, when Bishop Secundus had at last come to Carthage, they are said to have found Bishop Caecilianus constituted improperly by certain persons I know not whom, and they set up another against him. Hence the dissension began there at Carthage; and I cannot fully know the origin of the dissension from that point, since our city has always had one Church, and if it had dissension, we know nothing of it at all. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: You are in communion with Silvanus. Victor answered: With him. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: Why then, setting aside him whose innocence has been cleared? And he added: It is further asserted that you most certainly know something else, namely that Silvanus is a traditor; confess concerning him. Victor answered: This I do not know. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said to Nundinarius the deacon: Victor denies knowing that Silvanus is a traditor.
Nundinarius the deacon said: He himself knows whether he handed over the codices. Victor answered: I had fled from this storm; and, if I lie, may I perish. When we were suffering the assault of a sudden persecution, we fled to the mountain of Bellona. I was sitting with Martus the deacon; and when Victor the presbyter was asked by that same Martus for all the codices, he denied having them. Then Victor gave the names of all the readers. They came to my house. Since I was absent, the magistrates went up and my codices were taken away. When I came, I found the codices had been taken. Nundinarius the deacon said: You therefore answered in the records that you had given the codices. Why are these things denied which can be brought to light? Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said to Victor: Confess plainly, lest you be questioned more strictly. Nundinarius the deacon said: Let the acts be read. Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said: Let them be read.
And Nundinarius handed them over, and the secretary read them aloud. In the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time and Maximianus for the seventh, on the 14th day before the kalends of June, from the acts of Munatius Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the colony of the Cirtensians. When they had come to the house in which the Christians assembled, Felix, perpetual flamen, curator, said to Paul the bishop: Bring forth the scriptures of the law, and whatever else you have here, so that you may be able to comply with the edict and command. Paul the bishop said: The readers have the scriptures, but what we have here we give. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator, said to Paul the bishop: Show the readers, or send to them. Paul the bishop said: You all know them. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said: We do not know them. Paul the bishop said: The public office knows them, that is, Edusius and Junius, the secretaries.
Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said: The matter of the readers, whom the office will point out, remaining on record, give what you have. With Paul the bishop seated, and Montanus, and Victor, Deusatelius, and Memorius as presbyters, Martus with Helius and Martus standing by as deacons, Marcuclius, Catullinus, Silvanus, and Carosus as subdeacons, Januarius, Meraclus, Fructuosus, Miggins, Saturninus, Victor of Samsurica, and the other diggers, with Victor son of Aufidius writing on the other side, in a brief inventory thus: two golden chalices, likewise six silver chalices, six silver cruets, a silver vessel, seven silver lamps, two candlesticks, short bronze lamp-stands with their seven lamps, likewise eleven bronze lamps with their chains, 82 women's tunics, 38 head-coverings, 16 men's tunics, 13 pairs of men's shoes, 47 pairs of women's shoes, rustic cloaks.
19.
Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Marcuclius, Silvanus, and Carosus the diggers: Bring forth what you have. Silvanus and Carosus said: Whatever was here, all of it we have thrown out. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Marcuclius, Silvanus, and Carosus: Your answer is recorded in the acts. After which, in the libraries, empty cupboards were found there. There Silvanus brought forth a silver bowl and a silver lamp, saying that he had found them behind a jar. Victor son of Aufidius said to Silvanus: You would have been a dead man, if you had not found them. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Silvanus: Search more diligently, lest anything remain here. Silvanus said: Nothing remains, all of this we have thrown out. And when the dining room was opened, four jars and six vessels were found there. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said: Bring forth the scriptures you have, so that you may be able to comply with the edicts of the emperors and their command.
Catulinus brought forth one very large codex. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Marcuclius and Silvanus: Why have you given only one codex? Bring forth the scriptures you have. Catulinus and Marcuclius said: We have no more, because we are subdeacons; but the readers have the codices. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Marcuclius and Catulinus: Show us the readers. Marcuclius and Catulinus said: We do not know where they live. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Catulinus and Marcuclius: If you do not know where they live, tell us their names. Catulinus and Marcuclius said: We are not betrayers. Here we are, order us to be killed. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said: Let them be taken back. And when they had come to the house of Eugenius, Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Eugenius: Bring forth the scriptures you have, so that you may be able to comply with the edict, and he brought forth four codices.
Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Silvanus and Carosus: Point out the other readers. Silvanus and Carosus said: The bishop has already said that Edusius and Junius, the secretaries, know them all. Let them show you to their houses. Edusius and Junius, the secretaries, said: We will show them, my lord. And when they had come to the house of Felix the tailor, he brought forth five codices. And when they had come to the house of Victorinus, he brought forth eight codices. And when they had come to the house of Projectus, he brought forth five larger codices and two smaller ones. And when they had come to the house of the grammarian, Felix, perpetual flamen, curator, said to Victor the grammarian: Bring forth the scriptures you have, so that you may be able to comply with the edict. Victor the grammarian offered four codices and four quires. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator, said to Victor: Bring forth the scriptures, you have more. Victor the grammarian said: If I had had more, I would have given them.
And when they had come to the house of Eutychius of Caesarea, Felix, perpetual flamen, curator, said to Eutychius: Bring forth the scriptures you have, so that you may be able to comply with the edict. Eutychius said: I have none. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator, said to Eutychius: Your declaration is recorded in the acts. And when they had come to the house of Coddeonis, his wife brought forth six codices. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said: Search, lest you have more; bring them forth. The woman answered: I have none. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Bovus the public slave: Go in and search, lest she have more. The public slave said: I searched and found nothing. Felix, perpetual flamen, curator of the republic, said to Victorinus, Silvanus, and Carosus: If anything has been done amiss, the danger falls upon you. When these had been read, Zenophilus, most distinguished man, consular, said to Victor: Confess plainly. Victor answered: I was not present.
Nundinarius the deacon said: We have read the letters of bishops made by Fortis, and he read a copy of the petition handed over to the bishops by Nundinarius the deacon. Christ and his angels are witness that those with whom you are in communion handed over, that is, Silvanus of Cirta is a traditor and a thief of the goods of the poor. Which all of you bishops, presbyters, deacons, and elders know concerning the four hundred folles of Lucilla, a most distinguished woman, for which you conspired together that Majorinus should be made bishop: and hence the schism arose. For Victor the fuller also, in your presence and that of the people, gave twenty folles so that he might be made a presbyter, which Christ and his angels know. And a copy of a letter was read aloud. Bishop Purpurius to his fellow-bishop Silvanus, greeting in the Lord.
Our son Nundinarius the deacon came to me and asked that I should send these letters of intercession from me to you, most holy one, so that if it could be done, there might be peace between you and him. For I wish this to be done so that no one may know what is transacted between us. If you are willing, let it be arranged by your written word that I alone come there in person to the matter, and cut out the dissension itself from between you. For with his own hand he delivered to me a written account of the affair, on account of which he was stoned at your command. It is not right that a father should chastise a son against the truth, and I know that what is written in the document handed to me is true. Seek a remedy by which that malice there may be able to be extinguished before the flame rises, which afterwards will not be able to be extinguished without spiritual bloodshed.
Bring in your fellow clergy and the elders of the people, men of the church, and let them inquire diligently what these dissensions are, so that what is done may be done according to the precepts of the faith. You shall not turn aside to the right or to the left. But be unwilling to lend your ear readily to evil advisers who do not want peace. You are all killing us, and with another hand, Farewell. Likewise also a copy of a letter. Purpurius the bishop to the clergy and Elders of the Cirtensians, eternal salvation in the Lord. Moses cries out to the whole senate of the sons of Israel, and said to them, what the Lord commands to be done—nothing was done without the counsel of the elders. And so you also, dearest ones, whom I know to possess all heavenly and spiritual wisdom, with all your strength come to know what this dissension is and bring it to peace.
For Nundinarius the deacon says that nothing is hidden from you as to the source of this dissension between our dearest Silvanus and himself. For he has handed me a document in which everything is written down. He said also that it is not hidden from you. I know that there is no ear. Seek a good remedy by which this matter may be extinguished without danger to your souls; lest suddenly, when you take someone's side, you come into judgment. Judge a just judgment between the parties according to your gravity and justice. Take heed for yourselves that you turn not aside to the right or to the left. It is God's business that is being conducted, who searches the thoughts of each one. Take pains that no one may know what this conspiracy is. The things contained in the document are true—it is not good. For the Lord says: By your mouth you shall be condemned, and by your mouth you shall be justified. Likewise another was read aloud.
Fortis to his dearest brother Silvanus, eternal salvation in the Lord. Our son Nundinarius the deacon came to me, and reported those things which occurred between you and him through the intervention of a malicious person, who wishes to turn the souls of the just from the way of truth. When I heard these things, I was struck down in mind, that such a dissension has arisen between you. For a priest of God should not come to that which is not expedient for us. Now therefore ask him that, as much as he is able, the peace of the Lord Saviour Christ may be with him. Let us not come before the public and be condemned by the gentiles. For it is written: See that while you bite and contend with one another, you are not consumed by one another.
Therefore I beseech the Lord that this scandal may be removed from our midst, so that the business of God may be celebrated with thanksgiving, the Lord saying: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you. What peace can there be where there is dissension, where there are jealousies? For when I had been separated from the soldiers by ass. And had come into that situation, with such an injury, I commended my soul to God, and I sent back to you, because God sees the minds of men and of theirs, whether I was led by you to them, but God freed us, and we serve with you. Therefore, just as it has been forgiven us, so also be you reconciled to peace, so that in the name of Christ we may celebrate the Passover with joy. Let no one know. To the brothers and sons, to the clergy and elders, Fortis, eternal salvation in the Lord.
My son Nundinarius your deacon came to me, and reported concerning those things which have been done against you, which indeed ought to have been settled by you, lest it had come to pass that, having suffered such madness, they were stoned for the truth by those—which both you and we know—as you reported to us, and it is written: Is there not a wise man among you who can judge between brothers? But brother goes to judgment with brother, but before unbelievers. Just as you do not attend to judgment, so it has come to this extreme that we give such an example to the gentiles, that those who through us believed in God, should themselves curse us, when we come before the public?
Therefore, lest it come to this, you who are spiritual, act so that no one may know, so that we may celebrate the Passover in peace, and exhort them to be reconciled to peace, and let there be no dissension, lest when it has come before the public, you too begin to be in danger if this has been done, and afterwards lay the blame upon yourselves. You shall give as much as possible—you, Donatus the priest, possessor, and each of Valerius and Victor, who know all that has been done—give your effort that peace may be with you. Likewise another was read aloud. Sabinus to his brother Silvanus, eternal salvation in the Lord. Nundinarius your son came to us, not only to me but also to our brother Fortis, bringing a strong and grave complaint. I marvel at your gravity, that you have so dealt with your son, whom you yourself nurtured and ordained. For if a building is constructed of earth, nothing heavenly is added to it, which is built through the hand of a priest.
But it is no wonder to you, since Scripture says: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject. And again it says: Men loved darkness more than light. As you also do. Let it suffice you to know all things, beyond which also our brother Fortis has written to you. Now I would ask of your charity, most kind brother, that you fulfil the word of the prophet Isaiah: Cast out malice from your souls, and come, let us reason together, says the Lord. And again: Cast out evil from your midst. So also do you. Subdue and turn away the sedition of those who were unwilling that there should be peace between you and your son. But let your son Nundinarius celebrate the Passover with you in peace, lest the matter come before the public, which is already known to all of us. I would ask you, most kind brother, to fulfil the petition of my humble self. Let no one know. Likewise another was read aloud.
Sabinus to his brother Fortis, eternal salvation in the Lord. What charity is like among all colleagues, I am certain, yet in a special way according to the will of God who said: Some I love above my own soul. I am certain that you have cultivated Silvanus. Wherefore I did not hesitate to give these writings to you, because I caused your writings made to him to be given on account of the name of Nundinarius: and he who acts diligently, the business of God always proceeds with vigour. Do not put forward an excuse. For occupation constrains us in these days, and without delay stirs us around these matters until before the most solemn day of the Passover, so that through you a most rich peace may be made, that we may be found worthy co-heirs of Christ, who said: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you. And again. I ask that you do this. And with another hand.
I wish you to fare well in the Lord and to be mindful of us. Farewell. But I ask you, let no one know. When these had been read, Zenophilus the most distinguished consular said: Both from the records and from the letters which have been read aloud, it is established that Silvanus is a traditor; and he said to Victor: Confess plainly whether you know that he handed over anything. Victor said: He handed over, but not in my presence. Zenophilus the most distinguished consular said: What office did Silvanus hold in the clergy at that time? Victor answered: Under Bishop Paul the persecution arose, and Silvanus was a subdeacon. Nundinarius the deacon answered: When it came to the point, he said, that he was to be made bishop, the people responded: Let another be made, hear us, O God. Zenophilus the most distinguished consular said to Victor: Was it said by the people that Silvanus was a traditor? Victor said: I myself struggled as bishop.
Zenophilus the most distinguished consular said to Victor: Therefore you knew him to be a traditor? Confess concerning this. Victor answered: He was a traditor. Nundinarius the deacon said: You elders were crying out: Hear us, O God, we want our fellow citizen, that man is a traditor. Zenophilus the most distinguished consular said to Victor: You cried out then with the people that Silvanus was a traditor and ought not to be made bishop? Victor said: I cried out, and the people too. For we were seeking our own citizen, an upright man. Zenophilus the most distinguished consular said: For what reason did you think he did not deserve it? Victor said: We were seeking an upright man, and our own citizen.
For I knew that the cause of the emperors would bring us to this point, when such matters are entrusted to such persons. Likewise, with Victor of Samsurica and Saturninus the grave-diggers brought in and presented, Zenophilus, vir clarissimus, consularis, said: What is your name? He answered: Saturninus. Zenophilus said: What is your condition? Saturninus answered: A grave-digger. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Do you know that Silvanus is a traditor? Saturninus said: I know that he handed over a silver lamp. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: What else? Saturninus answered: I know nothing else, except that he threw it out from behind a jar. And with Saturninus removed, Zenophilus, consularis, said to the one standing by: And you, what is your name? He answered: Victor of Samsurica. Zenophilus, consularis, said: What is your condition? Victor said: I am a craftsman. Zenophilus said: Who handed over the silver tablet? Victor answered: I did not see it. What I know, I say.
Zenophilus, consularis, said to Victor: Although it has already been established from the answers of those questioned above, nevertheless do you confess whether Silvanus is a traditor. Victor said: When the second petition was made, as to how he allowed us to be led to Carthage, I heard from the bishop's own mouth: A silver lamp was given to me, and silver capitals, and I handed these over. Zenophilus said to Victor of Samsurica: From whom did you hear this? Victor said: From Bishop Silvanus. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Victor: Did you hear from him that he had handed them over? Victor said: I heard from him that he had handed them over with his own hands. Zenophilus said: Where did you hear this? Victor said: In the basilica. Zenophilus, consularis, said: At Constantina? Victor said: There he began to address the people, saying: Concerning what they say of me, that I am a traditor—about the lamp and the capitals? Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: What else do you think should be inquired into from these matters?
Nundinarius said: About the casks of the treasury—who took them? Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: What casks? Nundinarius said: They were in the temple of Sarapis, and Bishop Purpurius took them; the vinegar which they contained, Bishop Silvanus took it, along with the presbyter Dontius and Lucianus. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: Do those present know that this was done? Nundinarius answered: They know. The deacon Saturninus said: Our elders used to say that they were taken away. Zenophilus, consularis, said: By whom are they said to have been taken? Saturninus said: By Bishop Purpurius, and the vinegar by Silvanus and Dontius and Superius the presbyters and Lucianus the deacon. Nundinarius said: Did he give twenty folles and was Victor made a presbyter? Saturninus said so. And as he was speaking, Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: To whom did he give them? Saturninus said: To Bishop Silvanus. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: So, in order to become a presbyter, he gave twenty folles as a payment to Bishop Silvanus? Saturninus said: He gave them.
Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: Was it placed before Silvanus? Saturninus said: Before the throne of the bishops. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: By whom was the money taken? Nundinarius said: The bishops themselves divided it among themselves. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: Do you desire that Donatus be produced? Nundinarius said: Let him certainly come—the one about whom the people cried out for two days after the pardon: Hear us, O God, we want our fellow citizen. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: Did the people certainly cry this out? He answered: They cried it out. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: Did they cry out that Silvanus was a traditor? Saturninus said: Indeed. Nundinarius said: When he was made bishop, we did not communicate with him, because he was said to be a traditor. Saturninus said: What he says is true. Nundinarius said: I saw that Mutus the arena-worker carried him on his neck. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: Was it done thus? Saturninus said: Thus.
Zenophilus, consularis, said: Are all things true which Nundinarius says, that Silvanus was made bishop by the arena-workers? Saturninus said: True. Nundinarius said: Prostitutes were there. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus: Did the arena-workers carry him? Saturninus said: They themselves carried him, and the people. For the citizens were shut up in the area of the martyrs. The deacon Nundinarius said: Was the people of God there? Saturninus said: They were shut up in the greater house. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Are all things certain which Nundinarius says, are they true? Saturninus said: True. Zenophilus, consularis, said: What do you say? Victor said: All things are true, my Lord. Nundinarius said: Bishop Purpurius took one hundred folles. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: Concerning the four hundred folles, whom do you think should be questioned? Nundinarius said: Let the deacon Lucianus be produced, because he knows everything. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: Do those here know? Nundinarius said: They do not know. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Let Lucianus be produced.
Nundinarius said: These men know that the four hundred folles were received; but because the bishops divided them, they do not know. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius and Victor: Do you know that the folles were received from Lucilla? Saturninus and Victor said: We know. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Did the poor receive nothing? They said: No one received anything. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Saturninus and Victor: Was nothing taken from the temple of Sarapis? Saturninus and Victor said: Purpurius took the casks, and Bishop Silvanus, and the presbyters Dontius and Superius, and the deacon Lucianus took the vinegar. Zenophilus, consularis, said: From the answers of Victor the grammarian and Victor of Samsurica and Saturninus it has become clear that all things which Nundinarius submitted are true. Let them be dismissed and depart. Zenophilus, consularis, said: What others do you think should be questioned? Nundinarius said: The deacon Castus, so that he may say whether he is not a traditor. He himself ordained him. And with the deacon Castus brought in and presented, Zenophilus, consularis, said: What is your name?
He answered: Castus. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: What is your condition? Castus said: I hold no rank. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: Although now through Victor the grammarian as well as through Victor of Samsurica and Saturninus the things which Nundinarius objects have come to confession, nevertheless do you also confess whether Silvanus is a traditor. Castus answered: He used to say that he had found a lamp behind a jar. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: Confess also concerning the casks taken from the temple of Serapis and the vinegar. Castus answered: Bishop Purpurius took the casks. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Who took the vinegar? Castus answered that Bishop Silvanus, and the presbyters Dontius and Superius, took the vinegar from there. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: Confess how many folles Victor gave in order to become a presbyter. Castus said: He offered, my Lord, a purse, and what it contained I do not know. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: To whom was the purse given? Castus said: He brought it to him in the greater house.
Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: Was the money not distributed to the people? Castus answered: It was not given, nor did I see it. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: Of the folles which Lucilla gave, did the common people receive nothing? Castus said: I did not see anyone receive anything. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Castus: Where then did they go? Castus said: I do not know. Nundinarius said: Surely you either heard or saw whether it was said to the poor: Lucilla gives to you also from her own property. Zenophilus, consularis, said: The confession of Castus is clear, that he did not know that the folles which Lucilla donated had been distributed to the people, and therefore let him be removed. And with the subdeacon Crescentianus brought in and presented, Zenophilus, consularis, said: What is your name? He answered: Crescentianus. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: Confess simply, as the others have, whether you know Silvanus to be a traditor. Crescentianus said: The former clergy who were there, they reported each thing.
Zenophilus, vir clarissimus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: What did they report? Crescentianus said: They reported that he was a traditor. Zenophilus, vir clarissimus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: Did they call him a traditor? And he added: Who said this? Crescentianus said: Those who associated with him among the people said that he had at some time handed over. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: Were they speaking of Silvanus? Crescentianus said: Indeed. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: When he had been made bishop, were you present? Crescentianus said: I was present with the people, shut up in the greater house. The deacon Nundinarius said: The field-workers and arena-workers made him bishop. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: Did Mutus the arena-worker certainly lift him up? He said: Openly. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: Do you know that the casks were taken from the temple of Sarapis? Crescentianus said: Many people said that Bishop Purpurius himself had taken the casks and the vinegar, that it had come to our elder Silvanus, and the sons of Aelio said so.
Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: What did you hear? Crescentianus said: That the vinegar was taken by the elder Silvanus and by the presbyters Dontius and Superius and the deacon Lucianus. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: Of the four hundred folles which Lucilla donated, did the people receive anything? Crescentianus said: No one received anything from them; I do not know, nor who distributed them. Nundinarius said: Did the old women never receive anything from them? Crescentianus said: Nothing. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Certainly whenever something of that kind is donated, all the common people receive from it publicly. Crescentianus said: I did not hear or see him give anything to anyone. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: So nothing was given to the people from the four hundred folles? Crescentianus said: Nothing. Surely some small portion would have come to us. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Where then were they taken? Crescentianus said: I do not know. No one received anything. Nundinarius said: How many folles did Victor give in order to become a presbyter?
Crescentianus said: I saw baskets brought in with money. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Crescentianus: To whom were the baskets given? Crescentianus said: To Bishop Silvanus. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Were they given to Silvanus? Crescentianus said: To Silvanus. Zenophilus, consularis, said: Was nothing given to the people? He answered: Nothing. It would have been necessary for us also to receive something, if they were being distributed as is customary. Zenophilus, consularis, said to Nundinarius: What else do you think should be inquired of Crescentianus? Nundinarius said: That is it. Zenophilus, vir clarissimus, consularis, said: Since Crescentianus the subdeacon has confessed simply concerning all matters, let him be dismissed. Likewise with the subdeacon Januarius brought in and presented, Zenophilus, vir clarissimus, consularis, said: What is your name? He answered [lacuna] The rest is missing.
The Text of the Letters of Mensurius to Secundus of Tigisi, and of Secundus to Mensurius, Concerning the Handing Over by Mensurius
to have demanded more. Nevertheless, that certain men of the Carthaginian order had afterwards informed the proconsul that those who had been sent to carry off and burn the scriptures of the Christians had been deceived, because they had found nothing but certain things not pertaining to them; but that the scriptures themselves were being kept in the bishop's house, from which they ought to be brought forth and burned: but that the proconsul had been unwilling to consent to this. In those same letters it was also read that those who offered themselves to the persecutions without being arrested, and voluntarily declared that they possessed scriptures which they would not hand over—from whom no one had sought this—had displeased Mensurius, and that he had forbidden Christians from honoring them.
Certain persons were also accused in that same letter of being criminals and debtors to the treasury, who under the pretext of the persecution either wished to be rid of a life burdensome with many debts, or thought to cleanse themselves and as it were wash away their crimes, or certainly to acquire money and enjoy pleasures in custody through the service of Christians. The Donatists, however, charged Mensurius with no crime except the handing over of books: for they said that he had lied, in that those books were not the holy scriptures, and that he had wished to conceal his sin, although they also made a charge of the fiction itself.
They also read out the replies of Secundus of Tigisi to the same Mensurius, given in a peaceable manner, in which he himself also narrated what the persecutors had done in Numidia: and those who, having been arrested and refusing to hand over the holy scriptures, suffered many evils and were tortured with the most grievous torments and were killed—these he commended as worthy of honor for the merit of their martyrdom, praising them for not having handed over the holy scriptures, after the example of that woman who in Jericho refused to hand over to the persecutors the two spies, in whom the two testaments, old and new, were prefigured. Which example indeed, if it is to be understood under this figure, rather helped Mensurius. For in his own letter Mensurius rebuked those who, although they did not hand over the holy scriptures, nevertheless confessed that they possessed them; which that woman did not do. For she did not confess that the spies who were being sought were with her, but denied it.
Secundus also wrote that a centurion and a beneficiarius had been sent to him by the curator and the council, demanding that the divine books be burned, and that he had answered them: I am a Christian and a bishop, not a traditor. And when they wished to receive from him some Ecbola, or whatever it might be, he had not given them this either, after the example of Eleazar the Maccabee, who was unwilling even to pretend to eat swine's flesh, lest he should provide others with an example of transgression. These letters of Mensurius and Secundus, until they were finished in the reading, the Catholics heard patiently; although they testified that they were private letters and did not pertain to the cause of the Church.
27.
Now that which Purpurius cast against him—that he had been detained by the curator and the council in order to hand over the scriptures—Secundus himself nearly confessed in the letter he had written back to Mensurius, where he says that a centurion and a beneficiarius had been sent to him by the curator and the council, and that the scriptures, or whatever writings, had been demanded of him; which indeed he said he had not handed over: but since he himself there recalled so many martyrs who, when they refused to hand over, were tortured and killed, how it was that he, detained and convicted and unwilling to hand over anything, could have suffered nothing and been released—this he neither wrote to Mensurius nor answered to Purpurius. For he did not tell the centurion and the beneficiarius that he did not have the scriptures, but replied that he would hand over nothing whatsoever.
How they, upon hearing this, could have reported back without their own destruction after letting him go, is not apparent; especially since the same Secundus said that not merely persons of low station, but even heads of households, when they had given this same answer to the persecutors, were killed with the most cruel deaths.
Now this Secundus also confessed without ambiguity in his own letter given to Mensurius—which you yourselves produced and read aloud—that he had not handed over, but that persecutors sent by the curator and the council had come to him; whom Purpurius of Limata had charged against him, to hand over the scriptures: and when they demanded them from him, he had replied, "I am a Christian and a bishop, not a traditor," and had been willing to hand over nothing whatsoever to them. You wish us to believe this of him, when you yourselves see how incredible it is that a bishop, detained or summoned to hand over the Lord's scriptures while that persecution was raging, should have been released after handing over nothing. Indeed you were contending that the bishops could not have assembled at the city of Cirta to ordain a bishop during the time of the persecution.
How then was that persecution raging, if a bishop could be held on account of scriptures to be handed over, and be released with impunity after handing over nothing?
Acts of the Council of Cirta
In the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time and Maximian for the seventh, on the fourth day before the Nones of March, at Cirta, when Secundus the bishop of Tigisis, of the first see, had taken his seat in the house of Urbanus Donatus, he said: Let us first examine ourselves, and so we shall be able to ordain a bishop here. Secundus said to Donatus of Mascula: It is said that you handed over. Donatus replied: You know how much Florus sought me out that I might offer incense, and God did not deliver me into his hands, brother: but because God has forgiven me, do you also keep me for God. Secundus said: What then are we to do about the martyrs? Because they did not hand over, they were therefore crowned. Donatus said: Send me to God; there I shall render account. Secundus said: Step aside. Secundus said to Marinus of Aquae Thibilitanae: It is said that you also handed over. Marinus replied: I gave Pollus some papers, but my codices are safe.
Secundus said: Pass to one side. Secundus said to Donatus of Calama: It is said that you handed over. Donatus replied: I gave medical codices. Secundus said: Pass to one side. And in another place: Secundus said to Victor of Rusicade: It is said that you handed over the four Gospels. Victor replied: Valentianus was the curator; he himself compelled me to send them into the fire. I knew that they were copies for deletion. Forgive me this fault, and God also forgives me. Secundus said: Pass to one side. And in another place: Secundus said to Purpurius of Limata: It is said that you killed two sons of your sister at Mileum. Purpurius replied: Do you think I am frightened by you, as others are? What did you do, you who were held by the curator and the Council to hand over the scriptures? How did you free yourself from them, unless because you handed over or ordered something to be handed over? For they did not let you go freely.
For I killed and I kill those who act against me. Therefore do not provoke me to say more. You know that I deal with no one lightly. Secundus the younger said to his uncle Secundus: Do you hear what he says against you? He is ready to withdraw and make a schism—not only he himself, but all those whom you are accusing, whom I know will abandon you and pass sentence against you, and you will remain alone as a heretic. Therefore what does it concern you who did what? He must render account to God. Secundus said to Felix of Rotaria, a centurion, and to Victor of Garba: What seems right to you? They replied: They have God to whom they shall render account. Secundus said: You know, and God knows. Be seated. And all replied: Thanks be to God.
The Sentence of Marcianus, One of the Bishops Who Were Present at This Council of Carthage
Your Marcianus, among the rest, delivered such a sentence, saying—which the seventy who were present did not disapprove. In his Gospel, he says, the Lord says: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman; every branch in me not bearing fruit he will cut off and cast away, and every one remaining in me and bearing fruit he purges. As therefore unfruitful branches are cut off and cast away, so those who offered incense, the traditors, and those who are ordained in schism by traditors, cannot remain in the Church of God, unless, having recognized their own howling, they are reconciled through penance. Wherefore one ought not to communicate with Caecilianus, who was ordained in schism by traditors.
We beseech you, O Constantine, most excellent emperor, since you are of a just lineage, whose father did not exercise persecution among the other emperors, and Gaul is free from this crime: for in Africa there are contentions between us and the other bishops: we petition that your Piety command that judges be given to us from Gaul. Given by Lucianus, Dignus, Nasutius, Capito, Fidentius, and the other bishops of the party of Donatus.
Concerning the Roman Council Under Miltiades
Judges were given: Maternus from the city of Agrippina, Rheticius from the city of Augustodunum, Marinus of Arles. These three Gauls came to the city of Rome, together with fifteen others from Italy. They assembled in the house of Fausta in the Lateran, in the consulship of Constantine for the third time and Licinius for the third time, on the sixth day before the Nones of October, the sixth day of the week. When there had taken their seats Miltiades bishop of the city of Rome, and Rheticius and Maternus and Marinus, bishops of Gaul, and Merocles from Milan, Florianus from Caesana, Zoticus from Quintiana, Stemnius from Ariminum, Felix from Florence of Tuscany, Gaudentius from Pisa, Constantius from Faventia, Proterius from Capua, Theophilus from Beneventum, Savinus from Terracina, Secundus from Praeneste, Felix from the Three Taverns, Maximus from Ostia, Evandrus from Ursinum, Donatianus from Forum Claudii: with these nineteen bishops seated, the case of Donatus and Caecilianus was brought forward.
Sentences were pronounced against Donatus by each one: that he had confessed to having rebaptized, and to having laid hands upon lapsed bishops, which is foreign to the Church. Witnesses brought forward by Donatus confessed that they had nothing to say against Caecilianus. Caecilianus was pronounced innocent by the sentences of all the aforementioned, including the sentence of Miltiades, by which the judgment was closed, in these words also: Since it is established that Caecilianus is not accused by those who came with Donatus, according to their own profession, nor has it been established that he was convicted by Donatus in any particular, I judge it right that he be retained in his ecclesiastical communion with his status intact. It is therefore sufficient both that Donatus has been struck down by so many sentences, and that Caecilianus has been cleared by so great a judgment. And yet Donatus believed that an appeal should be made from the bishops. To which appeal the Emperor Constantine responded thus: O the raging audacity of madness!
As is customary in cases among the Gentiles, they have interposed an appeal. The bishops Eunomius and Olympius, sent to Africa, declare to the Carthaginians against the party of Donatus where the Catholic Church is, and corroborate the sentence pronounced by the Roman council in favor of Caecilianus. At the same time the same Donatus requested that he be permitted to return, and not to approach Carthage. Then it was suggested to the Emperor by his supporter Filuminus that, for the sake of peace, Caecilianus be detained at Brixia; and this was done. Then two bishops were sent to Africa, Eunomius and Olympius. They came and were at Carthage for forty days, to pronounce where the Catholic Church was. The seditious party of Donatus did not allow this to be done. Daily uproars arose from partisan zeal.
The final sentence of those same bishops Eunomius and Olympius is read to this effect: that they said that the Catholic Church was the one spread throughout the whole world; and that the sentence of the nineteen bishops given long before could not be dissolved. Thus they communicated with the clergy of Caecilianus and returned. Concerning these matters we have volumes of the proceedings. If anyone wishes, let him read in the final portions. Meanwhile Donatus of his own accord returned first to Carthage. Upon hearing this, Caecilianus hastened to his own people. In this way the parties were renewed again. It is established, however, both that Donatus has been struck down by so many sentences and that Caecilianus has been pronounced innocent by an equal number of sentences.
In the Year of the Lord 321. Rescript of Constantine to Valerius or Verinus
When my colleague Ingentius met his friend Augentianus and inquired in the year of my duumvirate whether any writings of your law had been burned in accordance with the sacred law, and since Galatius, one of your law, publicly brought out salutatory letters from the basilica. I wish you, dearest parent, good health. PETRONIUS, ANNIANUS and JULIANUS, To domitius celsus, Vicar of africa.
Since his dignity has commanded that Lucianus, Capito, Fidentius and Nasutius, bishops, and Mammarius, a presbyter, who had come to Gaul with other men of his law according to the heavenly precept of the Lord Constantine the Great, ever unconquered Augustus, should return to their own homes; we have provided them, brother, with a transport allowance together with the appropriate provisions as far as the port of Arles, in accordance with the command of the same most clement prince of eternal memory, so that from there they may sail to Africa. Which it is fitting that your diligence be informed of by our letter. We wish you, brother, most happy good health. Hilarius the chief officer presented this on the fourth day before the Kalends of May. Trier.
4th of the Ides of March. A Sermon on the Passion of the Holy Donatus and Advocatus
If the manifest records of persecutions are not written down idly, nor read without purpose at the annual solemnity in honor of the martyrs and for the edification of believers: why should not the crafty deceits and the snares of flattering deception be likewise written down and read, which under the pretext of religion subvert souls by fraudulent circumvention? For instruction is more necessary there where open hostility is not professed, because hostile companionship is easy and close at hand for deceiving, and the enemies of a man, he says, are his own household. Therefore it will be foreign to the duty of religion and piety not only to suppress the glories of the martyrs by a kind of envious silence, but under the patronage of that silence to conceal by deceptive subtlety what is salutary. For what is so dangerously kept silent by the prudent, as what is uselessly unknown to the simple?
Since indeed, as it is easy for the unwary to be deceived by the false ministers of Antichrist under the name of Christ, so it is necessary to flee this name of the ministers of Antichrist. By the betrayal therefore of wolves lurking under the clothing of sheep, either the instructed will be freed—those who were being deceived through inexperience—or the contumacious will perish by their own fault, without guilt and danger to those who preach. For Christians, therefore, the reasons for repeating what has been done are full both of usefulness and of justice, because the faithful are strengthened by the recollection, and they spur even the unlearned toward endurance of temptations, and by exposing enemies they condemn them. Let the holy mother Church therefore proclaim the most patient faith of her sons. Let the den of the most cruel robbers also recognize the fruit of its own work. Let us therefore now come to the causes.
The matter was transacted at Carthage, with Caecilianus Eudinepiso then pressing it, with the assent of the count Leontius, the commander Ursatius, Marcellinus then tribune, yet with the Devil as the contriver of all these. For first, as is the ingrained custom of the ancient dragon, as though he himself had not long since stood forth as the open assailant of the Christian name in manifest persecution, he endeavored to circumvent by cunning fraud those whom he could not overcome by open persecution, so that the deception might the more easily betray them, the more the author of the deception had lain hidden. But those for whom the divine precepts have always been victorious weapons understood the snares of his flattery just as they were not then terrified by the threats of his raging.
But when, by flattering, he did not deceive those who were cautious and watchful, the envious craftsman, knowing that those whom he had long since cast down by public slaughter could return through penance to him whom they had denied, and that the Lord himself was ready to receive the confession of the sorrowful, inasmuch as he does not will the death of the dying but rather that he should return and live, raised up against the times of peace the minds which he had subdued in the battle by fear of torments—flattery having removed the humility by which alone the wrath of an indignant God could be mitigated—and instilled that pride by which he knew most certainly that God is more gravely offended, suggesting that the lapsed could unlawfully hold again the ecclesiastical honors which the deserters of the heavenly sacraments had then held. Rejoicing now as much in the false betrayal of these as he had lately rejoiced in the weakness of their faith.
Indeed more secure now when they are called, as it were, bishops or Christians, than when they fell by the denial of the name: having enemies there named as his own only in name, provided that by such fraud he holds more safely, as we have already said, those whom he mocks with a false appellation: not only delighting the wretched with empty glory, but also ensnaring the greedy with royal friendship and earthly gifts.
Yet the insatiable plunderer, bearing it ill that he had not possessed all by this art, found a subtler argument for violating the sincerity of faith—the enemy of salvation. Christ, he says, is a lover of unity; let unity therefore be made: calling before the people, who had always been too obedient to him and therefore forsaken by God, the Catholic Church, so that from the prejudice of the name, those who refused to communicate might be called heretics. He sends money by which he might either capture faith, or make an occasion for avarice under the profession of law. But when against all these alluring temptations the rigid and inflexible tenor of justice resisted with greater devotion, judges are ordered to intervene, the powers of the world are compelled to compel, houses are surrounded with detachments of soldiers, threats of proscription are extended to the wealthy, the sacraments are profaned, a crowd of pagans is brought in, sacred assemblies become sumptuous banquets.
Now what was said or done there, amid the feasting of wanton youths and where the contemptuous behavior of women was at hand, it is a crime to declare, most faithful brethren. How sudden a transformation of things! The basilica has been turned into a tavern—not to say something more shameful. What grief to see so great an abomination in the house of God, that place accustomed to chaste prayers and vows, profaned by unchaste deeds and base voices! Who, I ask, of any condition whatsoever would suffer this to be done within his own walls? No one would wish this, unless one who could also do it. Who denies that such things were done by the sons of the devil as their authors, or calls the authors of the deed Christians, unless one who either wishes the devil himself to be excused, or thinks otherwise concerning Christ the Lord? How great the industry of the serpent!
How greatly he labored to bring about these evils, so that his own household, titled with the divine name, might conceal itself under the name, just as the name might be dishonored by its own works! O venerable virtue of divine patience! Which, enduring so great a spread of wickedness, suffers the deeds of the crafty enemy to be imputed to itself or to its own name. Let no one think it a light matter what happens whenever schisms and heresies arise, through whose profane ministry and adulterous work the transformation of Satan dishonors God and Christ.
But lest we wander too far from our subject, let us pass over the violations of consecrated virgins; I pass over in silence the slaughters of God's priests, the insults, the plunderings and spoliations, so that even they themselves may understand that we deliberately pluck a few things from many, and set them forth briefly and modestly, as those who strive not to exact vengeance from enemies, but to free the souls of the wretched from the jaws of the ravening wolf and from the very mouth of the dragon. The destroyer of saving discipline was therefore able to violate the chastity of faith under the name of unity—that is, to compel unity itself for himself, not for God. Which the rulers of this world and of these darknesses commanded to be done, so that what was commanded might indicate the character of the one commanding. How many and how great glorious examples of the Church of God and of Christ were produced amid these things? What signs of Christian profession? What exiles?
The proofs of true faith and whole devotion were made public, by which being openly shown, truth could have been hidden from no one, unless one who, against his own conscience, according to the sentence of the Prophet, had determined to place his hope in a lie.
Let us come to those final things which, when deceptions had failed and the machinations of treachery were exhausted, broke out into open threats and manifest frenzy. One could then see bands of soldiers serving the frenzy of the traitors, hired for pay to carry out the work of so great a crime: they stood around with most diligent watchfulness, observing lest anything might be done there more mildly than mercenary cruelty allowed, whose attention to so curious a spectacle professed not so much the defense of a perverse assertion as the exaction of contracted bloodshed.
But the people of God, though they had both heard the rumor of the coming slaughter beforehand and recognized it from the very disposition of things, were not only not put to flight by fear of imminent deadly death, but rather flew with greater courage to the house of prayer with the desire of suffering, where faith is nourished by sacred readings and the commanded fasts are filled up with continual prayers, and where by prayer itself the souls about to be delivered into the hands of the wicked are commended into the hand of God; behold, from the camp, after the likeness of the Lord's passion, a cohort of soldiers advances for the slaughter of Christians, procured by the modern Pharisees. Hands armed with clubs are raised against innocent hands stretched out to the Lord, as though they would call it less a martyrdom if men were slaughtered not with swords but with clubs in impious slaughter.
Although the sword of the tribune did not pierce, yet it pricked the throat of Honoratus, the most holy bishop of Scilli, and so there too the fury of the devil's ministers was revealed, just as the patience of the glorious bishop manifested the Church of Christ: because no other was shown to be a servant of Christ the Lord than he who suffered those very things which the Lord himself suffered. The servant, he says, is not greater than his lord; if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. Let those servants of God who are loved by the world, who have been beaten, show that the Lord himself was loved by the world. But if the world loves none but its own, it must needs hate those whom the Lord Jesus has chosen out of the world. If you were of the world, he says, the world would love what is its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
Finally, the outcome of this hatred has always been marked by the shedding of blood, just as now they concluded the pact and agreement of crime by nothing other than the sealing of blood, when every age and sex, with eyes wholly closed, was struck down and slain in the midst of the basilica. The basilica, I say, within whose walls numerous bodies were both slain and buried, and where even to the end the memory of the Caecilianist persecution is prolonged by the inscriptions of names: lest the parricide might at some later time deceive others who were strangers to the deed under the name of episcopate.
For the anniversary day is celebrated with religious devotion, and not undeservedly: for this day is to be honored, on which both the whole Church of God made confession, and was afterward crowned by the right hand of Christ the Lord, the eternal judge. For let supreme piety see why it did not permit all to be slaughtered; yet beholding the hearts of all, it rewarded with the prize of martyrdom those whom it foresaw had wished to suffer with complete devotion—he who seeks not the blood but the faith of believers. But he who is not uncertain to have hired out the whole people to be killed must necessarily be held guilty of the blood of all.
Moreover, what was of greater madness, even after so abominable a deed the murderer thought the same basilica was to be possessed, as though he would yield to love of the place. The other Christians who had escaped, from whom he saw that even the life of the present world was despised, he thought, I suppose, that he would please them after the stain of blood—those whose blood he had sought; after the ruin of betrayal, those whom he persecuted for this reason, that they shunned the contagion of his communion—he promised that they themselves would communicate with him after the perpetration of homicide. O imprudence mingled with vanity and madness! Blinded by which, the most wicked robber thought that plan should be adopted by which he would unknowingly be hindered by his own arrangement.
Now the violence of that power itself, which then seemed fit to be set before the eyes, must now be turned over in the mind. When a priest of God was being slaughtered before the altar of the sacred name, when a catechumen boy, ignorant of the discipline of the sacraments and nearly lifeless, most eagerly begged for the grace of the saving bath: Help me, he said, a catechumen—a soul already near to God, that is, signifying with his last voice that he had wished this great thing to befall him, that after the likeness of the Lord's passion water might be joined to blood.
But the aforementioned bishop, coming as a guest to Carthage from the town of Advocata, was received with such great humanity of Catholic hospitality that he did not take even a small amount of water after the labor of so great a journey before he had satisfied the most eager throats of the traitors with the cup of his own blood. Whence I think it must be asked what kind of apostasy this can be, if such a one is worthily called Catholic. For the enemy also took great pains to bring this injury upon the name, so that he caused it to be commonly called Catholic, where whatever is condemned by public law is committed with impunity.
Meanwhile, when the tribune had prepared to comply with the wishes of the traitors, and when the abundance of blood had satisfied the ardor of savagery, some brethren entered the basilica again and rendered to the martyrs such services as they could for the time. What perturbation of minds was there then! What floods of tears! What groans of lamentation! What piety, running among the bodies of the slaughtered, hastened to recognize the face of each one lying there! When sons found the prostrate bodies of parents, and parents of sons, you might see some clinging to the embraces of their own, others struck by the sudden sight and sunk down half-lifeless, some lending pious hands to gathering up the bodies; while they cover the bodies of both sexes lying otherwise than was fitting, while they restore limbs shattered by savage blows, if not to their proper offices, yet to their proper places.
The evening hour was now striving to shut out the light of that day, and so numerous bodies were carried at once and in haste from various places, yet the Spirit enriched those laboring religiously in such a way that where the shepherd lay struck down, there also the flock of sheep was gathered from the passion, which the very event declared to have been done by divine providence; so that those who had offered themselves as a sacrifice to God might crown the altar of God round about on every side, and that the bishop, to whom the people rendered service as he administered the priesthood, being advanced also to martyrdom, might enjoy the company and attendance of his fellow martyrs.
O truly divine, and far different from human wisdom, as the Lord himself says through the prophet: My thoughts, he says, are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways as my ways: for as the heaven is distant from the earth, so are my ways distant from your ways, and your thoughts from my understanding. In the battle line of nations, to have slain the adversary is victory: in our contest, to be slain by the enemy is triumph. For he conquers most wretchedly who lives as a murderer after victory. Rejoice and exult, O holy mother Church, who, instructed in heavenly disciplines, dost contend in blameless and undefiled conflict. For if resistance must be made, you resist with mind, not with arms; if you engage not with hand but with faith. This diversity of battles proves you in the world, crowns you in heaven, commends you to the Lord Christ. Thus he conquers who after victory knows not how to be conquered: thus he triumphs whose triumph has no end.
To you alone it is permitted to contend piously, to obtain a benefit from another's wrongdoing, to be crowned with a pure and virgin conscience through Christ, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
8th day before the Kalends of December
Since the passions and glories of many martyrs, set forth in lofty discourse of old with distinguished eloquence, are of great benefit to peoples, while they are always recited to the ears as an incentive to virtue and to the praise of the Church; therefore both the honor of so great a martyr and the common advancement of the devotion of all have inflamed me also to run through the passion of the glorious Marculus, resplendent even with priestly honor, recently consummated by the crime of the traitors, in speech unworthy indeed, but full of love. For it is just and altogether fitting that the virtue of recent martyrs also, joined to the praises of the ancient witnesses, should be bound together with them. For as pagan savagery, serving the devil, destined those to the kingdom; so also the rage of the traitors, serving Antichrist, sent these to heaven.
And because the memorable course of his earlier life must not be passed over, concerning the virtues of the glorious Marculus, even if not all things can be told on account of their multitude, yet a few things must be said for the sake of testimony.
For he, chosen and predestined by the Lord from of old, as soon as he first received the rudiments of the blessed faith, immediately spurning worldly letters, trod down with mind lifted to heaven the practice of the forum and the false dignity of worldly learning, and passing from the calumnious enclosures of the tribunals to the most holy school of the Church, while he chose Christ as his true master, he merited to be honored among the chief disciples of Christ. What the uprightness of his conscience was, what the innate modesty of his illustrious character, what the spiritual grace in his countenance—I think there is no need to labor long and much, since that fact proves his earlier life, that he merited the priesthood. But how he discharged the priesthood is made clear from this, that the Lord deigned to grant him martyrdom as his reward.
Therefore, while he was laudably conversing in these offices of heavenly precepts, while he, established as high priest, enjoyed his good priesthood together with the other saints; behold, suddenly from the tyrannical house of King Constans and from the citadel of his palace the polluted murmur of the Macarian persecution resounded: and with two beasts sent to Africa, namely Macarius and Paul, an utterly execrable and dreadful contest was declared against the Church; so that the Christian people might be compelled to make union with the traitors by the naked swords of soldiers, and by the standards of the dragons present, and by the voices of the crowds. But Macarius, who of these two beasts was the more terrible, when he had long attempted this business of blood in the other provinces by subtlety, yet in Numidia and against the glorious Marculus published open proofs of barbarous cruelty and unheard-of ferocity.
For when the most holy company of the most ancient fathers and the assembled council of priests had sent ten bishops chosen from their number for the purpose of an embassy, who might either call him back from so great a crime by wholesome admonitions, or certainly—as happened—might themselves be the first to spring forward to the field of most devoted contest and to the battle line of faith; the care of the noble shepherds was so divinely governed that whatever cruelty was hanging over the sheep, it first tore their own limbs.
Among these, then, came also the most holy Marculus: and when they had found him on a certain estate called Vegesela, they were received at once with such courtesy by him who presided over the sacrilegious unity, that, bound each to separate columns, with their priestly limbs publicly bared, they were beaten with harsh blows of cudgels. Who now could suffice to recount the constancy of the glorious Marculus? Who could prevail to set forth with the powers of eloquence either the unheard-of madness of the persecutor, or the present and stupendous protection of Christ the Lord around His martyr? For against him a fiercer savagery of brutal cruelty was stirred up, because both the devil was goaded by envy of the future martyr, and the wickedness of the Antichrist's forerunner could not escape the notice of the Holy Spirit. Since he could not endure a mind fortified by divine constancy, he declared a contest of pain against the weakness of the body.
The bloodstained hands of brigands, therefore, surround Christ's most valiant warrior, and barbarous companies of soldiers suddenly transformed into executioners. And when they endeavored to bind him to a column with hard fetters, he promptly seized at once so great an opportunity of displaying the power of God: for he bound himself to the very column so willingly with the knots of his arms and fingers, that no punishment could tear him thence, no cruelty could separate him from it. By this deed the persecutor could understand that the servant of God desired rather than feared torments for His name; and that those whose spirit embraces Christ and whose hope already possesses the kingdom cannot feel bodily pain.
And so a manifold number of executioners raged against one man, and the hard punishment of cudgels tore apart his consecrated limbs, and as the torment alternated, to the degree that the blows of punishment struck from behind, to that same degree his chest was battered by the hardness of the column. Cruelty beat upon his body from every side, and his illustrious tongue uttered nothing but the praise of God. The frenzy panted on; already, through the weariness of the torturers and the perseverance of the sufferer, the savagery languished, overcome. At last Christ, clothed in the limbs of His martyr, showed such a miracle there at that time, that He not only did not permit pain to approach him, but also wiped away from his body all the marks of savagery and all the signs of the executioner's work. The enemy, conquered and subdued in that struggle, no longer content with any cruelty of punishments, destined him for a sentence and a suffering most atrocious, as it seemed to himself.
Then, leading him through certain cities of Numidia as a kind of spectacle of his own cruelty, the savage, unknowing, was displaying to the pagans astonishment, to the enemies of Christ confusion, and to the faithful servants of God an incentive to glorious contest.
But after he had devised an exquisite and savage manner of death, he straightway brought him with him under the closest military escort to the fortress of Nova Petra, which is joined both by name and by proximity to the precipice of a steep mountain. In that place the Lord granted His martyr such joy, such gladness at the nearness of his passion, that those four days during which he was delayed there from the crown that hung over him ought to be reckoned not among the hardships of worldly tribulations, but among the triumphs of heavenly kingdoms. For how greatly could he exult, who, after the laborious pilgrimage of flesh and world, was hastening to behold God and Christ with his journey completed; who, setting out to the fellowship of angels, was already almost crossing the very threshold of paradise, together with the embrace of the saints?
His was an assiduous and unceasing prayer, his was a continual meditation on devotion; he had the Gospel on his lips, martyrdom in his thoughts; and devoted to divine virtues both in voice and in mind, he uttered with his mouth what he bore enclosed within his breast. Still thirsting for spiritual righteousness, and serving God wholly in the endeavor to merit His favor, he closed the last day of those four with a fast, so that, with the Lord's Day dawning—on which his own passion too was to be consummated—the devoted soul of the priest might become more acceptable to God for the offering of a twofold sacrifice: that the high priest, estranged not only from the allurements of the world but also from its food, might approach the laying of victims upon the altars of Christ so pure as to merit himself to become a victim for Christ.
Finally, so great was his power with the Lord through that fast, so greatly did that purification draw the presence of Christ into himself, that by a heavenly revelation the reward of his passion was shown to him before his passion. For when the greater part of the night had passed and the time near to light arrived—which time has always been welcomed for prayers and all divine matters because it is already reckoned to the day that is being born, yet human works and affairs are still at rest—at this time, therefore, the priest rising to celebrate the sacraments, not so much awakened from sleep as kindled to pray to God by the joy of a fresh vision, yet before the mysteries themselves were approached, disclosed in faithful speech, to the joy of the brethren present, what had been shown to him by divine agency.
I saw, he said, these three gifts offered to me from the eternal treasures of the Lord bestowing them: a cup fashioned from most brilliant silver, and a crown gleaming with ruddy gold, and a most lofty palm, which, full of joy, would complete the number of preceding triumphs. Great, brethren, is the confidence of imminent glory that the Lord has granted to His martyr, great the truth of His future favor toward him that He has expressed. For there is nothing that appears obscure or ambiguous in this revelation, in which he received the cup that he was to drink in his passion; in which he took the crown that was owed to him upon the completion of his martyrdom; in which he also merited the palm, through which, hoping for victory, he might already be secure concerning the contest.
After these things, when the customary solemnities had been performed, while some moments of night still remained, suddenly there arrived, with the fatal commands of Macarius, a wakeful messenger of wickedness, who, bearing the manifest sentence of a most cruel death, was to consummate both the innumerable glories of the martyr and the execrable crime of the persecutors. When the care of the guards had opened the still-closed doors for him, and he had learned what his so untimely arrival had brought, their hearts were immediately turned to lamentation. O how great was the grace of that man! How universal the love of all toward him! How common the longing, that at his passion even the ferocity of the guards and the hardness of the soldiers should be bent to pious tears. In which weeping and perturbation of all, he alone persevered undaunted, who rejoiced that the hour of his consummation had drawn near. For he could be neither troubled nor sad whom faith had made joyful and the divine revelation had made peaceful.
Then one from the number of those very soldiers, a most foul executioner and one who, while the others were afraid, had been prepared by the devil alone to accomplish the death of the illustrious man, running ahead of his deed with words, began to recount to all who were listening what kind of dream he himself had also seen.
While I was held, he said, in the quiet of the night, I suddenly saw you appear to me bound as it were with very hard fetters, and altogether laden with heavy chains, and that those same chains were afterwards loosed by my hand, on account of which I hope that pardon and indulgence will follow. Not incongruous, therefore, was the vision, nor was the absurd dream that the executioner saw without cause, nor did he recount without reason what he had seen, following of course the example of the sacrilegious Caiaphas; so that he who was himself about to kill the Lord should himself prophesy concerning His passion. For he had rightly seen the martyr bound—him who, still dwelling in the habitation of the body, and enclosed in the twofold prison of world and flesh, was constrained by the straits of temporal life. For he feels the bond of the body, he feels the prison of the world, who is agitated by its temptations.
Nor had he dreamed without reason that he was loosed by himself, by whose cruel hands it was fitting that he should be separated from the body by the intervention of death; who was to make for him in his passion, after the most grievous bonds of worldly tribulations, a way to the freedom of the heavenly kingdoms. For the Apostle proves that we are released from great bonds when, freed from this world, we hasten to the Lord, saying: To be dissolved and to be with Christ is far better. Which likewise the most just Simeon also demonstrated, who, kindled by the assurance of approaching death, rejoiced that he would escape the troubles of this life: Now thou dost dismiss, he said, O Lord, thy servant in peace, because my eyes have seen thy salvation. He would never have testified with all joy that he was to be dismissed, unless he who was held by the condition of the body were held as it were by certain bonds.
No delay, no interval of time intervened before the most cruel executioner straightway set about fulfilling in the pre-dawn robbery what he had seen. For he pressed on aggressively at once, so that the witness of God, brought out from custody, should be led to the sheer height of a natural rock and the precipice of a most rugged cliff. For this most savage manner of death had been chosen both by the bloodthirsty and barbarous exactor of the profane unity, and by the detestable cruelty of the traditors, abominable to all ages. And so the glorious Marculus went forth from the house, surrounded by the watches of the guards and a company of soldiers, and honored by his very persecutors. He went forth, raised up by the constancy of Christian vigor, now leaving behind the dwellings of men and hastening to the mansions of angels. He went forth joyful of countenance, swift of step, thinking not so much of the present punishment as of the future glory.
Even the very road by which he was led to execution had been so arranged for him, that, with mounds of earth heaped up on every side and embankments gradually raised on high, he arrived at the distinguished summit of his passion, with the very nature of the mountain serving him: so that, first treading the low ridges of the hill, then its steep peaks, ascending as it were by certain steps into the heights, he drew near even in body to the sky and the stars; so that, still placed in the world, he was loftier than the world; and whatever is precious, whatever is exalted in the age, he rejoiced to have lying beneath his feet.
But as soon as the ascent to the very summit of the rock had been made, all the soldiers withdrew from there, partly from fear, partly from grief, and though they were present in conscience to so unheard-of a crime, they were unwilling to be present in deed.
Then the most savage executioner, who, armed with a twofold cruelty of both precipice and sword, bore a double death in his hands, thrust the martyr headlong with his cruel right hand, and believed he had plunged into a dark abyss him to whom the height of the heavens was owed. But indeed the most sacred body, drawn away from the solidity of the earth, descending from the height to the depths, was borne through the empty spaces of the fluid air, and finding no obstacle in that void, doubled the swiftness of its course by the very impetus. By the speed of this journey a whirling was nurtured in the space amid the rushing sounds of the stirred air; yet so great a moderation was divinely provided, that the limbs, unharmed by all roughness, were laid above the very hardness of the rocks as upon the softest couches and most tranquil embraces.
Then the victorious soul sought heaven by its natural course more swiftly than the body had descended to earth; so that, with the passion completed, each substance might be restored to the most ancient principles of its origin by the hands of almighty God, working mercifully around His whole martyr: who both commanded his spirit, with the assistance of Angels, to be placed in the eternal abodes, and his body, untouched, encircled by gentle breezes, gently borne by ministering winds, to be set in the midst of a ledge of rocks.
The cunning devices of the persecutors, therefore, and the wicked counsels of the traditors were confounded by the powers of Christ—they who had devised such a punishment so that the memory of the martyr might never be honored by the peoples of God in testimony against them. For they had supposed that in that precipice the body would be torn to pieces and lacerated on the sharp rocks, so that he from whom they had taken life might not even have a burial remaining. They had supposed that nothing could reach the ground which the pious brotherhood, gathering it, might bury. Since, through the rugged places of that steep mountain, individual rocks would have held individual limbs for themselves, or certainly since the body, once whole, would have been swallowed up among the fissures of the rocks or the crannied hiding-places of the crags by some opening: behold, the hard rocks and rough cliffs spared the consecrated limbs; and the mountains feared to harm him whom the traditors did not fear to kill.
For, excepting these, every creature venerates its Creator; nor in this cause could mountains lack the sense to merit God's favor—mountains to which Scripture has granted even a voice for His praise.
Meanwhile, that the glorious Marculus had completed the blessed victory of his contest was being concealed within the knowledge of the soldiers alone. For they had consummated their stealthy crime in the silence of the night in such a way that not even in the fortress where he had been kept could it have become known, whether among strangers or among the brethren, had not the power of divine virtues and heavenly signs betrayed the deed. For as soon as the entrance of the whitening day had spread the pallor of the orb of night, and the discord of darkness and light varied the discolored face of the sky, straightway beneath the bosom of that same mountain a shining cloud appeared, which from time to time, with a gleam flashing forth, bore witness with gentle light that it was privy to the martyr's body.
Nor had it, heavy with morning dews, overshadowed the living hills with a dark covering; but shining wholly with white fleece, it so covered the blessed limbs that, with human offices for a while suspended, it seemed itself in the meantime to offer a kind of garment of burial; which, at times rent asunder at its trembling edge, quivered through its winding openings with coruscating fire, so that it might either warn those ignorant of so great a passion by its stupendous signs, or, since there was still some darkness from the nearness of night, might show to those devoutly seeking it the way to find the body.
Stirred therefore by these wondrous works of God, the fervor of brotherhood blazed up, and that whole place was suddenly filled with exultant clamor, and in their devout rushing about they announced to one another their shared vows. Then, leaving their homes, every sex and age poured out in haste and flocked together toward the mountain and the cloud alike, drawn by longing for the martyr: nor could the weakness of old age, nor the frailty of childhood, nor the fragility of sex hold back any soul there. For the ardor of one faith had kindled them all. But when the hastening crowd had come to those places that lay beneath the precipice, those whom a single purpose of running had gathered into one mass, the care of searching for the body soon scattered over the whole mountain. There one could see the offices of piety divided among individuals.
For some with swift hands were pulling apart thickets dense with hard thorns, others were inserting watchful eyes into the winding hollows of gaping rocks; others, lest their haste should prove deceived, were scanning with anxious gaze even the stones they had already examined. Finally, because even this could not be without the Lord, the lightning bolts that had been sent for this purpose revealed to all the longed-for place, and the brightness of the cloud as a guide showed the brethren the body they had desired. What mingling of tears with joy was there then among all, what embracing of those glorious limbs? At last, when all had received their fill, the last rites were celebrated with great rejoicing of the brethren, and the devout honor of burial was rendered with the greatest triumphs. For the Lord had restored to the glory of His name everything that the enemy had attempted to steal away. O memorable and distinguished martyrdom of blessed Marculus! O example of unshaken virtue, to be sought after by all the devout!
O necessary lesson for all ecclesiastical ranks, to what a palm the merit of his praiseworthy life attained—renouncing the world at the beginnings of faith, showing himself worthy of the priesthood in his novitiate, in the priesthood winning the honored gifts of martyrdom, in martyrdom the testimony of divine virtues! To whom be honor and glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Here ends.
Here begins the Passion of the Holy Martyrs Isaac and Maximianus, which falls on the 7th day before the Kalends of September
A timely and joyful ardor of glorious exhortation kindles me to write to you, brethren, and a distinguished occasion, since as an unworthy witness of the witnesses of Christ I have composed this letter, so that I who am less fit to bear witness to the Lord might at least be admitted to speak testimony to His martyrs. And even this—to set forth in writing anything at all about such persons from such a source—I would not dare at all, were I not announcing such things to you through another, and were I not envying with the blameless emulation of a devoted heart. For I know that no one can relate anything more fully than one who was himself able to suffer or to act. But he who has merited neither commits only the fault of not relating fittingly; yet another cause is revealed, and not one that is often disclosed, except that they carry out with impunity whatever they have boldly done to the praise of Christ with joy.
It is fitting therefore, brethren, I believe, that an example of sudden virtue has been provided for you, so that the Lord might have caught up to heaven in like manner the twin martyrs of the Church at Carthage, Isaac and Maximianus, or Maximinianus and Isaac together, whose triumphs I believe it is as difficult for anyone to set forth in order as it is impossible for not only earthly praises but even heavenly ones to number whatever Christ has done. For indeed the deeds of their whole contest were run through so swiftly all at once that I know not which are first, which second, or which third, and they so confounded all their immense glories at once with headlong speed that they had almost completed them before they had begun, or, to speak more truly, both were born in them at once. Where then shall I begin, where shall I enter the threshold of such great praise, where again shall I close the exit of that same threshold?
I am troubled to open it, and wearied to close it. If I begin by recalling the character of their whole life, I shall seem to do injury to the martyrdom as I return to it; if I direct my steps toward the proclamation of the martyrdom, I shall be held bound as a despiser of so great a life. I am pressed to run through everything, and I know I am unable to run through everything. On every side the burden of devoted labor comes upon me, but against it one relief comes to my aid, recalled from the sentence of the Gospel, so that, secure in the monument of martyrdom, I may attempt to set forth when the Lord Jesus Christ was seen to have praised the end of life.
The savagery of persecution had fallen silent here at Carthage, so as to nourish worse treacheries by the respite of a longer time, and while the enemy raged everywhere, here alone fears and terrors were silent, so that you would say the very powers of the world were now about to stir nothing. No longer did the first terrors shake ears and hearts; only the consolation of report concerning you, the infinite martyrs of Numidia, was drawing out the spirits of the brethren, and a kind of personal rejoicing over your glories was celebrated among all, just as you today rejoice together as though over your own martyrdom, when suddenly the devil, roaring again, kindled the slumbering flames of his fury in torments, and stirred up the mad weapons of his ravaging. I think he had ceased from these for so long because he had supposed he had enslaved to himself all the armies of Christ.
But when he recognized that the Church of the Lord was growing stronger than all through daily exercise, he perceived at once that he was mocking himself with the deceits of his hope, and, goaded by more savage spurs, he sought out whose heart he might choose as fit for himself as judge; nor was the Proconsul slow to offer himself as a match for his desires, and he commanded by edicts that the covenant of the sacrilegious unity be celebrated again with appointed torments, adding moreover the law of the traditores, that those whom Christ commands to be received by all should be driven out for ever, lest they should work against the covenants of unity, and Christ, not enduring the delays of His triumphs on that account, did not permit His own armies to be divided sluggishly when the enemy provoked. But He straightway chose a strong soldier from among brave men, Maximianus, whom He would make glorious from such a contest.
Not that the others were unequal; but so that from one man the whole war might be laid low in single combat—one whom He already knew well to be great-souled from his first confession, and brought forth armed with accumulated virtue, so that what the Lord had deigned to show him before the day of his passion should not be empty or vain. For on the previous day he had had a dinner with certain brethren in the house of a praiseworthy man, a dinner of Christian sobriety, and when he was about to take the cup to drink, and had presently mixed it, behold, a crown descending poured itself within the rim of the cup, and enclosed within, clinging on both sides to the walls, it mingled with and enclosed the cup itself, shining with so splendid and blood-red a color that it betokened in blood and splendor alike the likeness of the passion to come and the dignity in heaven.
This miracle he joyfully showed to all who were present, and with a spirit of love he invited all to reckon it together with him from that point, and he wished whatever had befallen him to be shared. But after he himself began to drink, the circle of the crown was in no way broken, but, gradually withdrawing and diminishing of itself—or rather gathering itself—it strove to be drunk along with the diminishing quantity of the drink, so as to make crowned inwardly the soul to which it had come. Thereafter he, straightway relying on such assurance for the day to come, was belching forth the intoxication of the previous day's cup, and with great-souled magnanimity enclosed within the marrow of his fruitful breast, he seemed to hope for victory. But why say more—with the swiftness of a keen mind he straightway ascended, about to provoke the contest of feet, and with a swift hand scattered the deadly placards as though he were tearing apart the limbs of the devil there.
Thence he was immediately seized and brought to the tribunal, and by order of the Proconsul was hemmed in without any delay in a dungeon and a savage band of torturers. From this point, therefore, who could relate the power of Christ, or the ferocity of those who tore him, the torments of the executioners, or the victories of Christ; the long-lasting madness of fury, or the persistence of Christian endurance? The dreadful torturers rose up for the blows, doubling the force of the leaded whips with their own efforts, and bearing the wrath of the judge in their hands they strove in their savagery—who could be found more fierce? But against them Christ was present, who, clothed in the limbs of His soldier, repelled from within whatever the raging executioner inflicted from without. They applied the torments with sharper pain, indignant that they had inflicted so great a cruelty in vain, and the Lord in turn increased and strengthened the endurance with His own fortitude.
They exchanged fresher and more cruel executioners of their madness, and so many relentless companies changed for the slaying of one innocent man were too few, nor on the other side did the Lord cease to change the constancy of His perseverance for the better. The force of the heavy punishment would not have failed, had it not been ordered that he be torn apart afterward also by the lashing of rods, so that what that violent bruising had sent into swelling, the later blows might open with the limbs cut apart: which had so lacerated the whole body that all the lacerations of the limbs had made one wound. Yet he did not yield even to these, he who triumphed over all as though a stranger to his own body.
Thus was the battle waged there between body and torments, between the sacrilegious and the devout, between the forces of the soul and those who tore, between the soldier of Christ and the soldiers of the devil, between the one who suffered and the judge, and one afflicted man sufficed to fight more gloriously against so great a multitude of torments and enemies, so that in one contest he had carried off not one victory. There the trial of the supreme torture could have attained its end, which sends one to death with triumph, but it was fitting that he should meanwhile be delayed for the one whom Christ had appointed as his companion. For then the illustrious Isaac there, unable to contain his joy at the struggle of his companion, was borne among the brotherly crowds in public exultation of the Holy Spirit, and filled with heavenly constancy he proclaimed more freely: Traditores, come, save the madness of your unity. At his voice the furious Proconsul was urgently troubling his officers to seek out the author of the outcry.
But the traditores were not wanting who had gone before the soldiers: from among whom the very ministers of sacrilege, not satisfied with one, straightway also betrayed the other with their own hands to be similarly sacrificed; so that the measure of those fathers might be more manifestly fulfilled upon them. Immediately the judge, violently inflamed, setting aside the one he had been torturing a little before, turned more fiercely upon this one what he was raging with: as though one who had not yet digested one anger were conceiving another. The exhausted torturers repeated again their furious assault, whose already weary arms cruelty alone made stronger. That company of flesh-eaters kept plying the violence of the leaded whips in turn, and bearing down with all their weight, pressing out their efforts, they raged with groaning fury, as though they themselves were suffering what they inflicted. Such was the endurance of the one who suffered, while the ravaging of those who raged was groaning!
But neither in the second case was the devil permitted to prevail, because it was not right that the victory of Christ, which was burning, should be able to succumb in anything. Finally, after the torments of the leaded whips had again availed nothing, the furious savagery likewise applied rods, so that the heavenly warriors might not differ in any unequal kind of endurance, and the enemy might be seen to be appeased by no lighter punishment.
Isaac was being lacerated—a name indeed of a victim—by the breaking rods, imitating the patience of his name, and with the blows repeated again and again, the devotion of the confessor remained unshaken. All the joints had been laid open with their connections broken and drenched; and as though through so many wounds a way out were being found, that voice seemed to resound with the proclamations of confession. For let no one think that the blows of the rods were then a light chastisement, which had certainly surpassed the butchery of the iron hooks: so much so that the iron hooks were disdained by the judge himself. They were no longer wounds, but the inner parts of the body laid bare; nor could anyone say he had been struck, who had been unmanned with dripping shreds of flesh. Already the bundles of rods had given way, they would have been blunted had axes or scythes broken up so many.
Already the fierce ministers, with the faint gasps of their weary ferocity, were panting with languid blows, and still the limbs, hungry for all punishments to be chewed and devoured, were gaping. Then the body triumphed over the torments, the joyful mind over those who raged, one man both tortured and judged against so many torturers, and no delay at all held back the sentence of the judge, but the judge, joining both with equal lot, bound them to exile: and when they were thrust into prison, Isaac straightway completed the effect of martyrdom; and, what is more, at once he dismissed all prisons and his body and the world, lest the revelation of his vision should be falsified in any point. For he ran through everything in order, so that even in the very revelation he had almost already suffered beforehand what his passion had been.
For when he was held for a little while in the slumber of rest, he seemed to himself to be having a contest with the ministers of the emperor, from no other source, of course, than that from which he had sustained his passion. And this plainly was nothing other than a sign of devotion, so that what he was turning over in desire while waking he might also suffer while sleeping: so that what the Prophet declared of himself might be fulfilled in the same. I sleep, he says, and my heart watches.
That devotion, then, was watchful, already exercising the efforts of virtue, and was repelling the ministers of wickedness, together with the king's commands, more boldly as they fought back more fiercely. When it had overcome them in prolonged struggle, it also looked up at the emperor himself suddenly approaching; and when it was pressed by him to carry out the command, it refused more resolutely the authority of the sacrilegious order and the savage punishments he threatened. He himself likewise, terrible with frequent threats, promised to gouge out his eye as well. While they were fighting among themselves more fiercely in these prolonged contests, he did not suffer his victory to be so long deferred: but boldly laying hold with his hand, he broke through the delay of his own threat, and violently tearing out the eye, he emptied the socket of its light from the bereaved face.
Over his victory a youth of wondrous brightness was thereupon seen to triumph, and to place upon his head a radiant crown; in whose rays the faces of many brothers and sisters appeared to be fixed; and when he joyfully handed it to him as a reward, he also mocked the adversary with great reproaches, laughing at him. Then the enemy, driven by violent grief, ordered him to be torn apart with raging torments, as though he might be able to avenge his own punishment. But he, already victorious, saw himself being drawn upward by the hands of those who bore him, and being lifted swiftly, flying up to the heights of heaven; and as he ascended there in joy, he heard from above the voice of a certain old man crying out and saying: Woe to you, O world, for you have perished. When this cry had been repeated three times, he reached the end of the vision, and afterward repeated in deed what he had seen.
What then could be plainer than this vision? What could be expressed more clearly of what might be done by day, when the vision was laid out in its acts? Now he saw himself in the night, to himself alone, having fought against the ministers of the king, just as he afterward showed us by day: thus he had gouged out the light of the emperor, thus he had blinded him by conquering him, thus he obtained the rewards of the crown, thus also he was publicly crowned; thus he had seen many faces clinging to the rays of the crown, just as the whole people had been destined to keep watch at his passion: thus he flew to heaven, just as he swiftly merited to attain martyrdom.
This one thing alone of his words is known to have remained unfulfilled until now, that he prophesied the destruction of the world; which, since we all know he did not lie, perhaps some one of the brethren may be alarmed, and may say that Maximianus is unequal to him, because, having confessed first, he survived and was kept for a little time. Far be it, brethren, that they should be divided, because they fought in equal combat; for if the Lord equalized the wage agreed upon for those who came to the vineyard at different hours, how does he judge unequal those whom he found laboring at the same time? But because Isaac seems to have departed first, I say the Lord compared them all the more for this reason: so that just as the one had suggested to the other the incentive of confession, so the other might likewise provoke him to the crown.
The Lord willed both to be teachers to one another, so that by the exchange of instruction he might have made them equal; lest one should precede in all things, and one should seem always to follow himself. Now indeed both have gone before each other, and both have followed each other.
But meanwhile, with them shut up in the custody of the prison, a ship is being prepared for exile: which I believe was not arranged by human counsel, because it shone forth as provided by heavenly condescension. For the Lord willed them to be confined to one another by the delay of a single day for this purpose, that according to the vision of his martyr he might cause them to be honored by the vigils of the peoples; for with Isaac's perfect martyrdom accomplished, the news had more widely filled the ears of all. To his body the entire brotherhood had immediately hastened with joyful running; and when burial of the body was denied them by the executioners, all kept watch, lest the unburied body be cast away, with great exultation, and the triumphant people, throughout that whole day and night, sang gloriously in testimony to all with psalms, hymns, and canticles: and every age and sex rejoiced with ardent desire to be present at such great celebrations.
How great was that, brethren, which the Lord deigned to procure for the honor of his martyrs, that on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of September, a Saturday, the people were permitted to celebrate vigils after the manner of Easter. Thus then the day was completed, and the night was consumed in this way. As soon as the next day had dawned, and the proconsul was being awaited to give judgment on the burial of the body—what he might perhaps concede, wretched man, which no judge is accustomed to deny even to murderers and adulterers—unless on the contrary the savage wickedness of the traditores was keeping watch to seize upon counsels of cruelty! By whose suggestion the proconsul was then compelled to order the people to be driven away from the prison, and the living man together with the dead to be plunged into the waves of the sea, lest he should seem to permit them to venerate the dignity of the martyrs.
How foolish a cruelty, which wished to deny their bodies to our hands, as though it could take away our veneration by this madness: or as if, were they not buried in the earth, they could not otherwise enter the heavenly kingdoms? But there was added to them as a proof of their blessedness, that even the dead, after earthly torments suffered for Christ, should also be buffeted by the afflictions of the sea, so that no place might remain in the world where they had not mocked the enemy. This the Lord had provided for them as an addition to their triumphs, that they had labored in greater hatred of the world, and that in their dead bodies he could display his power just as also in their living ones. Soldiers and light-armed troops therefore come to the prison, laden with clubs, and driving back the people with a path of blows, they had made nearly all of them wounded.
So much indeed had to be granted to the dignity of the martyrs, that for the sake of their burial others too should merit to make confession. After they had with difficulty managed to exclude all, both the dead man and the survivor, an unequal number of soldiers on either side led them away. The empty savagery deceived itself unknowingly, so that it itself rendered to them the services which it denied to others. They had now reached the shore of the sea, now the ship was carrying the received martyrs in order to sink them. But when it had swiftly entered the depth of the open sea, the satellites of Satan were no less hastily completing their orders, binding them with ropes and fastening to the neck and feet of each two jars filled with sand, and separating them from each other by no small interval, they let them go, the weight dragging them down.
When the sea recognized them cast into its bosom, immediately, as though it were being burned all over with heavenly flames, it could not hold the sacred limbs: but rolling the waves downward from above, it scraped the sands from the very bottom to cast out the bodies, and overturning them from the lowest depth to the upper surface, it removed them with rebounding waves. The searching waves plunged down from the highest crests with vast force descending to the bottom to seize what was below, and the sea, driven back in due time from the depths, was stirred again, bringing forth the limbs of the saints from below, until the whirling rush of the rapid waves shook off the sunken limbs, and the wave, drawing out the immense weight, at last emerged victorious with the bodies seized.
Thereupon the crests rose more violently, lifted up with mountains of water made solid, so that the massed heap might more safely bear up the heavy limbs, lest overcome they should have labored again; and under the waves gathered together on all sides, the sea having made a vault, the wave fought with the weight, lest the mighty force of the sea should open to touch the land under the violent burden.
But there still remained the work and effort of another labor, namely to gather together in one swift assembly those who had been separated by an infinite interval, lest the sacrilege of another should remain as its negligence. The waters led from this side, from that side the volumes curving with twin horns, and with equal convergence toward each other, it gaped eagerly at the bodies borne up close at hand. Already the approaching encounter from both horns had begun to shorten the space between, and as each drew near on its side, the length of the interval, diminishing with the meeting, had come to a narrow point: when at once both sides, freed from their full extent, the whole intervening space was consumed, and all things being brought together, the harmony of the waves and the bodies was celebrated.
These shores therefore were besieged by the brethren, as though some report were already going before of the martyrs certainly approaching, and day and night, anxiously from moment to moment, with fixed gaze they hoped for what they believed would come at some time from God's accustomed power. When suddenly after twice three days they rejoiced that the temples of Christ were coming, and all running to meet them, as best they could, hung upon them with eyes of exulting eagerness: into whose outstretched hands the wave, hastening as though resounding with joy, delivered the longed-for limbs together with their trophies, and the devoted brotherhood, having obtained their desire, received them with joyful embraces.
Thus the blessed martyrs received the burial that was their due, and rendered to the brethren the service they had longed for, and Christ showed the counsels of the traditores to be frustrated, so that he neither permitted the bodies of such great men to remain unburied, nor defrauded the devotion of the people in any part, nor looked on unmoved while the wicked fulfilled the vows of their cruelty with blasphemy of his name.
Let the measureless savagery of the faithless now mourn, which was unwilling to remember the powers of the Lord: it did not fear that he who is known to be able to rescue even souls from the underworld could free bodies from the sea: or if nothing else, not even a whale that might have vomited them forth would have received them; the wretched cruelty lost that in which it believed it had found a great counsel, to which not even the sea was willing to give its consent. It ill entrusted its desires, which the deep could not refuse against its own Creator. What does human rage now do, where the sea does not persecute the martyrs? What does the ferocity of the wicked do, where the savage seas recall them to burial? Or how are they judged by their persecutors, those whom even the elements themselves feared to violate? O memorable glory of a blessed passion, in which Christ deigned to display so many great wonders!
O happy end, which befell such men, which he adorned with such great virtues for the sake of their merits! Constancy in devotion, endurance in passion, victory in death, a miracle in burial.
To you now, brethren, all things return that have led you to the heavenly kingdoms. These examples urge you on, which first urged them through you to these glories. The frequency of your confessions had made you teachers to them by repeated reports, and they themselves now suggest to you from their martyrdom. Likewise your own teachings exhort you, which have exhorted others. They stretch out their arms to you from heaven, awaiting the time when they may meet you. Hasten earnestly, run together persistently, they await to receive their dignity together with you. Come then, brethren, make haste as quickly as possible, so that we may rejoice over you in like manner. Let our return find in you that whereof it may glory, just as our departure obtained joys of glories from these. But let us come, going to your trophies: so that just as we have announced to you the victories of these, so afterward we may announce yours here to Carthage to those who shall follow.
When Gratus, bishop of Carthage, had sat in council together with his colleagues, and those who had gathered from the various African provinces. The same Gratus the bishop said: Thanks be to God almighty and to Christ Jesus, who put an end to evil schisms, and looked upon his Church, so as to raise up into her bosom all the scattered members, who commanded the most religious Emperor Constans to cherish the desire of unity, and to send the servants of God Paul and Macarius as ministers of the holy work.
First Council of Carthage
Gratus the bishop said: Thanks be to God almighty and to Christ Jesus, who put an end to evil schisms, and looked upon his Church, so as to raise up into her bosom all the scattered members: who commanded the most religious Emperor Constans to cherish the desire of unity, and to send the servants of God Paul and Macarius as ministers of the holy work.
1.
Therefore, if it please you, let us consider first the heading of rebaptism. Wherefore I ask your holiness to bring forth the judgments of your minds concerning one who descends into the water, and is questioned in the Trinity according to the faith of the Gospel and the teaching of the Apostles, and has confessed a good conscience toward God, concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ—whether it be lawful for him to be questioned again in the same faith, and to be immersed again in the water. All the bishops said: Far be it, far be it. We decree rebaptisms to be unlawful, and sufficiently alien to sincere faith and catholic discipline. Gratus the bishop said: Great blessedness has been granted by God the Father through the Lord Christ in our time, that it is permitted to religious minds to instill ecclesiastical discipline, so that hearers, receiving the right rule pleasing to God, may obtain the rewards of good merits, so that in these things God may be honored in all things and for all things.
The necessary heading of rebaptism has been discussed, in which the fury of schism lay more deeply hidden, and with moderation observed, the force of the law and the authority of faith have been preserved. This indeed I endeavor to instill into your most wise minds, although your prudence is instructed and taught by God, and merits to obtain in peace and unity the abundant gifts from above; yet I also, one of you, and one who bears an equal solicitude with you, will take care to instill this for the sake of ecclesiastical order.
2.
Let no profane person dishonor the dignity of the martyrs, nor reduce to passive bodies, which have been commanded to be commended to burial only out of ecclesiastical mercy, those whom he calls by the name of martyrs—whether those cast headlong by madness, or those separated by some such compact, or by another reason of sin, not at the proper time or season at which martyrdoms are celebrated. But if anyone, to the injury of the martyrs, should join infamy to their glory, it is agreed that if they are laymen, they be reduced to penance: but if they are clergy, after admonition and after inquiry, they be deprived of their office. All said: Your holiness has rightly decreed. This has also been decreed in individual councils.
Many harsh things were indeed done by the workers of unity: but why do you impute these to Leontius, Macarius, or Taurinus? Impute them to your own forebears, first to those who divided the people of God and built basilicas that were unnecessary. Then to Donatus of Carthage, who provoked the attempt to bring about unity in the near term. Third, to Donatus of Bagaï, who had gathered a mad multitude, to prevent Macarius from suffering violence at their hands, and to protect himself and what he was carrying, he sought the aid of armed soldiers. Then came the armed men with their quivers; every city was filled with those crying out: when unity was announced you all fled. Therefore all the bishops fled with their clergy, some died: those who were stronger were captured and banished far away. And yet none of all these things was done with our wish, none with our counsel, none with our knowledge, none with our effort.
Who can deny the matter, of which all Carthage is chiefly witness, that the emperor Constans at first sent Paulus and Macarius not to bring about unity, but with alms, by which poverty, relieved through the individual churches, might breathe again, be clothed, be fed, and rejoice? When they came to Donatus your father and indicated why they had come, he, inflamed with his customary fury, burst forth into these words: What has the emperor to do with the Church? And from the fountain of his levity he poured forth many curses: no less than he had done at some point against Gregorius, to whom he did not hesitate to write thus: Gregorius, stain of the senate, disgrace of the prefects, and other such things. To this Donatus the Prefect replied with episcopal patience. For the Emperor had sent ornaments for the houses of God, had sent alms for the poor, nothing to Donatus. Why then did he rage? Why was he angry? Why did he repudiate what had been sent?
And when those who had been sent said they were going through the individual provinces and would give to those willing to receive; he said he had sent letters ahead everywhere, that what had been brought should not be distributed to the poor anywhere. Paulus and Macarius were coming to relieve the poor everywhere and to exhort individuals toward unity.
And as they were drawing near to the city of Bagaï, then the other Donatus, as we said above, bishop of that same city, wishing to place an obstacle and a barrier to unity against those aforementioned who were coming, sent heralds through the neighboring places and through all the markets, summoning the Circumcellions called Agonistics, and invited them to gather at the said place. And at that time the assembly of those men was demanded, whose madness a little before had been seen to have been impiously kindled by the bishops themselves. For when this kind of men, before unity, wandered through individual places, and Maxidus and Fasir were called by those same madmen leaders of the saints, no one was permitted to be secure in his own possessions: the bonds of debtors had lost their force, no creditor at that time had the power to exact payment. All were terrified by the letters of those who boasted that they had been leaders of the saints;.
Whence, since envy was then being stirred up by the bishops of your party, they are said to have written to Taurinus, who was count at that time, and sent word that men of this kind could not be corrected within the Church, so that they might receive discipline from the aforementioned count. Then Taurinus, in response to their letters, ordered armed soldiers to go through the markets where the fury of the Circumcellions was accustomed to wander. In the place of Octava very many were slain, many were cut down. Whose bodies up to this day could be counted by the whitened altars or tables. When some of their number had begun to be buried in the basilicas, the presbyter Clarius in the place of Subbulen was compelled by his bishop to make the burial unburied. Whence it was revealed that what was done had been ordered to be done, since not even burial in the house of God was permitted to be given. Afterwards their multitude had grown strong.
Thus Donatus of Bagaï found the means by which to gather a furious mob against Macarius. It was from this very kind that those came who hired their own assailants for themselves out of a desire for false martyrdom to their own destruction: from there also those who, casting their worthless souls from the tops of high mountains, threw themselves headlong. Behold from what sort of number the other bishop Donatus had formed his cohorts. Terrified by this threat, those who were carrying the treasures to distribute to the poor found counsel in such great necessity, to seek armed soldiers from the count Silvester; not to do violence to anyone by them, but to prevent the violence arranged by the aforementioned bishop Donatus. You set forth your complaint in order: that very many were injured under Leontius, under Ursacius, that some were killed under Paulus and Macarius, that certain persons were for a time proscribed by those who followed them. What is this to us? What to the Catholic Church?
Whatever you object, you yourselves did it, you who were unwilling to receive willingly the peace commended by God. Some consider unity to be something to be accused or fled, because Marculus and Donatus are said to have been killed or to have died: as if in the vengeance of God absolutely no one deserves to be killed. For we read in the prophet Ezekiel of the whitewashed wall, against which God threatened a storm, rain, and hailstones, and accusations. And these four things could not happen at one time. There was first a storm under Ursacius: the wall was shaken, but did not fall; so that the rain might have something to work upon. Rain followed under Gregorius: the wall was wetted, but did not become soaked, so that the stones might have something to work upon. After the rain came the stones under the workers of unity: the wall was scattered, but repaired itself again upon its foundations. Three things have now been accomplished
Fragment of a Letter of Macrobius the Donatist, On the passion of Maximianus and Isaac of the Donatists, to the people of Carthage
yet he did not yield, who as one estranged from his own body triumphed over all things. Thus was war waged there between the body and its torments, between the sacrilegious and the devout, between the powers of the soul and those who tore it, between the soldier of Christ and the soldier of the devil, between the one who suffered and the judge; and one afflicted man sufficed to fight against so great a multitude of torments and enemies, and more gloriously, so that in a single contest he might carry off not one victory. He who sends to death with triumph might there have attained the trial of the supreme torment, but it was fitting that he should meanwhile be delayed for the sake of him whom Christ had appointed as his companion.
For then the illustrious ISAAC, unable to contain his joy at the struggle of his companion, was borne among the brotherly peoples in a public exultation of the Holy Spirit; filled with heavenly constancy, he proclaimed more freely: Traitors, come, save the madness of your unity. At his voice the furious Proconsul urgently pressed his Office to seek out the author of the outcry. But the Traitors were not wanting who had gone before the soldiers: from among whom the ministers themselves, those sacrilegious men, not satisfied with one, straightway also delivered up the other to be slain in like manner by their own hands; so that the measure of those Fathers might be more plainly fulfilled upon them. Immediately the judge, violently inflamed, setting aside him whom he had been torturing a little before, turned more sharply upon this one the fury that raged within him, as though one who had not yet digested one anger were conceiving another. The wearied torturers again repeated their frenzied work, whose already weary arms cruelty alone made stronger.
That troop of flesh-eaters plied again and again the violence of the leaded whips, and bearing down with all its weight in exhausted efforts, advanced with groaning rage, as though it itself suffered what it inflicted. How great was the endurance of the one who suffered, when the assault of the one who raged was itself groaning! But neither in the second was the devil permitted to prevail, because the victory of Christ which burned could not in any respect be allowed to succumb. Finally, after the leaded whips had availed nothing, the furious savagery likewise applied the torments, so that the heavenly warriors might not differ in any unlike kind of endurance, and the enemy might not be seen to be appeased by any milder punishment. Isaac was torn—a name, to be sure, of a victim—by rods that broke open, imitating the patience of his name, and with errors repeated again and again, the devotion of the confessor remained unshaken.
All the joints had been laid open, their connections broken and soaked; and as though through so many wounds it might find an exit, that voice seemed to resound with the proclamations of confession. For let no one suppose that the blows of rods were then a light chastisement, which had certainly surpassed the laceration of iron hooks, so much so that the iron hooks were disdained by the judge himself. They were no longer wounds, but the inner parts of the body laid bare; nor could one who had been enfeebled by dripping shreds be brought down by any blow of the day. Already the bundles of rods had given way, and they would have been blunted had axes or scythes so great broken them apart. Already the fierce ministers, with the feeble gasps of exhausted savagery, panted with languid breath, and still the members, insatiable, gaped for all the torments to be chewed and devoured.
Then the body triumphed over its torments, the mind rejoiced at those who raged; one man, both tortured and judged before the judge, delayed the sentence by no interval at all, but the judge, joining both with equal lot, bound them to exile: and when they were thrust into prison, Isaac straightway completed the effect of martyrdom; and, what is more, at one and the same moment he dismissed all prisons, both body and world, lest the revelation of his vision should be falsified in any point. For all things ran through in order, so that even in the very revelation he had already suffered beforehand what his passion was to be. For when he was held for a little while in the slumber of rest, he seemed to himself to have a contest with the ministers of the emperor, from no other source, plainly, than that from which he endured his passion.
And this was plainly nothing other than a sign of devotion, that what he rehearsed waking with desire he might also suffer sleeping, so that what the prophet declared of himself might be fulfilled in him. I sleep, he says, and my heart watches. That devotion therefore was watching, already exercising the endeavors of virtue, and repelling the ministers of wickedness with the commands of the king more steadfastly and more boldly in resistance. When after a long contest he overcame them, he also suddenly beheld the emperor himself coming: and when he was pressed by him to fulfill the command, he more strongly refused the authority of the sacrilegious command and the savage threats of him who threatened. He himself also, terrible with frequent threatening, promised that he would likewise pluck out his eye.
While they were fighting more fiercely among themselves in these prolonged contests, he did not suffer himself as victor to be so long delayed: but laying hold boldly with his hand, he broke through the delay of his threat, and violently drawing out the eye, emptied the seat of light from the bereaved face. Over his victory a youth of wondrous brightness was straightway seen to triumph, and thereupon to place a radiant crown upon his head: in whose rays the faces of many brothers and sisters seemed to be fixed, and when he joyfully delivered it to him as a reward, he also mocked the adversary with great reproaches, laughing at him. Then the enemy, driven by violent grief, commanded him to be torn by raging torments, as though he might avenge his own punishment.
But he, already victor, beheld himself being drawn upward by the hands of those who bore him, and being lifted more swiftly as he flew to the heights of heaven: and as he ascended thither with joy, he heard from above the voice of a certain old man crying out and saying: Woe to you, O world, for you have perished. When this cry had been repeated three times, he came to the end of the vision, and afterward repeated in deed what he had seen. What then is plainer than this vision? What could be expressed more clearly through the days of action, when the vision was unfolded in deeds?
Now he saw himself in the night, to himself alone, attacking the ministers of the King, just as he afterward showed us through the day: thus he had plucked out the light of the emperor, thus he had blinded him by conquering, thus he obtained the rewards of the crown, thus also he was publicly crowned; thus he had seen many faces clinging to the rays of the crown, just as the whole people was to keep watch over his passion: thus he flew to heaven, just as he swiftly merited to attain martyrdom. This alone of his words is known to have remained unfulfilled until now, that he prophesied destruction to the world; which, since we all know he did not lie, some brother perhaps may fear, and may say that MAXIMIANUS is unequal, because having confessed first, he was kept surviving for a short time.
Far be it, brothers, that they should seem so, for they fought with equal combat; for if the Lord equalized in the matter of the agreed wage those who came to the vineyard at different hours, how does he judge unequal those whom he found laboring at one and the same time? But because Isaac seems to depart first, I say the Lord compared them the more for this reason: so that just as the one had suggested to the other the incentive of confession, so the other might likewise provoke him to the crown. The Lord willed both to be teachers to one another, so that by the exchange of instruction he might have made them equal; lest one should go before in all things, and one should seem in all things to follow himself. But now both have gone before each other, and both have followed each other.
But meanwhile, with the prison cells shut, a ship is being prepared for exile, which I believe was not arranged by human counsel, because it was shown to have been provided by heavenly condescension. For to this end, if the Lord willed them to be enclosed together for one day's delay, so that according to the vision of his martyr he might cause them to be honored by the watchings of the peoples, the announcement of Isaac's perfect martyrdom, once consummated, had filled the ears of all. To his body the entire brotherhood straightway hastened with joyful running; and when burial of the body was denied them by the executioners, all kept watch, lest the unburied body be cast away, with great exultation, and there all day and night the peoples, triumphing, sang psalms, hymns, and canticles in testimony to all of the glory of the Lord: and every age and sex rejoiced with burning desire to be present at such great celebrations.
How great was this, brothers, which the Lord deigned to procure for the honor of his martyrs, that on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of September, a Saturday, the people were permitted to celebrate vigils after the manner of Easter. Thus therefore the day was completed, and the night was thus consumed. As soon as the next day had risen, it was awaited what the proconsul had commanded concerning the burial of the body, what perhaps the wretch might concede—a thing which no judge is accustomed to deny even to murderers or adulterers—unless on the contrary the savage destruction of the Traitors were watching to seize upon counsels of cruelty! By whose suggestion the proconsul, then compelled, straightway ordered both the living and the dead to be expelled from the prison together, and to be plunged into the waves of the sea, lest he should seem to permit them to venerate the dignity of the Martyrs.
How foolish a cruelty, which sought to deny us the bodies by our own hands, as though it could take away veneration from our minds: or as though, if they were not buried in the earth, they could not otherwise enter the heavenly kingdoms? But it was added to their increase of blessedness, that the dead, after earthly torments suffered for Christ, might also be tossed by the afflictions of the sea, so that no place might remain in the world where they had not mocked the enemy. This the Lord had provided for the heaping up of their triumphs, that they might have labored also in greater hatred of the world, and might be able to show his power in their dead bodies as also in their living ones. There came therefore to the prison soldiers all laden with clubs of every kind, and driving back the peoples with a way of blows, they had made nearly all of them wounded.
So much at least was owed to the dignity of the Martyrs, that others might merit to confess on account of their burial. Afterward, because they could scarcely manage to exclude all from the dead and the survivor alike, an unequal number of soldiers on either side led them away. Vain savagery deceived itself unknowingly, so that it itself furnished them the services which it denied from others. Now the shore of the sea had been reached, now the ship bore the received martyrs in order to plunge them under. But when it had swiftly entered the depth of the open sea, the satellites of Satan were no less quickly hastening to fulfill their commands, binding them with ropes and fastening two jars filled with sand to the neck and feet of each, and separating them from one another by no small interval, they let them sink with the dragging weight.
When the sea recognized them cast into its bosom, straightway, as though it were burning all over with heavenly flames, it could not hold the sacred limbs: but rolling the waves from above downward, it scraped the sands driven to the bottom to cast out the bodies, and drove them upward from the lowest depth, removing them with resisting waves. The searching waves plunged from the highest crests downward with vast force to seize what was below, descending to the bottom, and the timely sea, repelled from below, was again stirred up from its depths, bringing forth the limbs of the saints, until the whirl of waves shook off the sunken limbs with rapid impulses, and the wave, drawing out the immense weight, at last emerged victorious with the bodies seized.
Thereupon the crests rose more violently, lifted up with solidified mountains of water, so that the massed heap might more safely bear up the heavy limbs, lest overcome they might labor again, and under the waves gathered on all sides the sea made a vault and the wave fought with the weight; lest the strong back of the sea should open to touch the violent burden.
But there still remained the work and effort of another labor, namely to gather together in one swift assembly those who had been separated by an infinite interval, lest the sacrilege of another should remain through its negligence. The waters led from this side, from that side the volumes curving with twin horns, and with equal convergence toward each other, gaped eagerly at the bodies borne up close at hand. Already the approaching encounter from both horns had begun to shorten the space between, and as each drew near on its side, the length of the interval, diminishing with the meeting, had come to a narrow point: when at once both sides, freed from their full extent, the whole intervening space was consumed, and all things being brought together, the harmony of the waves and the bodies was celebrated.
These shores therefore were besieged by the brethren, as though some report were already going before of the martyrs certainly approaching, and day and night, anxiously from moment to moment, with fixed gaze they hoped for what they believed would come at some time from God's accustomed power. When suddenly after twice three days they rejoiced that the temples of Christ were coming, and all running to meet them, as best they could, hung upon them with eyes of exulting eagerness: into whose outstretched hands the wave, hastening as though resounding with joy, delivered the longed-for limbs together with their trophies, and the devoted brotherhood, having obtained their desire, received them with joyful embraces.
Thus the blessed Martyrs received the burial that was their due, and rendered to the brothers the service they had longed for, and Christ showed the counsels of the Traitors to be frustrated, so that he neither permitted the bodies of such great men to remain unburied, nor defrauded the devotion of the people in any part, nor looked on unmoved while the wicked fulfilled the vows of their cruelty with blasphemy of his name.
Let the measureless savagery of the faithless now mourn, which was unwilling to remember the powers of the Lord: it did not fear that he who is known to be able to rescue even souls from the underworld could free bodies from the sea: or if nothing else, not even a whale that might have vomited them forth would have received them; the wretched cruelty lost that in which it believed it had found a great counsel, to which not even the sea was willing to give its consent. It ill entrusted its desires, which the deep could not refuse against its own Creator. What does human rage now do, where the sea does not persecute the martyrs? What does the ferocity of the wicked do, where the savage seas recall them to burial? Or how are they judged by their persecutors, those whom even the elements themselves feared to violate? O memorable glory of a blessed passion, in which Christ deigned to display so many great wonders!
O happy end, which befell such men, which he adorned with such great virtues for the sake of their merits! Constancy in devotion, endurance in passion, victory in death, a miracle in burial.
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