§ 27. Rise of the Worship of Martyrs and Relics.
§ 27. Rise of the Worship of Martyrs and Relics.
I. Sources.
In addition to the works quoted in §§ 12 and 26, comp. Euseb. H. E. IV. 15; De Mart. Palaest. c. 7. Clem. Alex.: Strom. IV. p. 596. Orig.: Exhort. ad mart. c. 30 and 50. In Num. Kom. X. 2. Tertull.: De cor. mil. c. 3; De Resurr. carn. c. 43. Cypr.: De lapsis, c. 17; Epist. 34 and 57. Const. Apost.: l. 8.
II. Works.
C. Sagittarius: De natalitiis mart. Jen. 1696.
Schwabe: De insigni veneratione, quae obtinuit erga martyres in primit. eccl. Altd. 1748.
In thankful remembrance of the fidelity of this "noble army of martyrs," in recognition of the unbroken communion of saints, and in prospect of the resurrection of the body, the church paid to the martyrs, and even to their mortal remains, a veneration, which was in itself well-deserved and altogether natural, but which early exceeded the scriptural limit, and afterwards degenerated into the worship of saints and relics. The heathen hero-worship silently continued in the church and was baptized with Christian names.
In the church of Smyrna, according to its letter of the year 155, we find this veneration still in its innocent, childlike form: "They [the Jews] know not, that we can neither ever forsake Christ, who has suffered for the salvation of the whole world of the redeemed, nor worship another. Him indeed we adore (proskunou'men) as the Son of God; but the martyrs we love as they deserve (ajgapw'men ajxivw") for their surpassing love to their King and Master, as we wish also to be their companions and fellow-disciples."67 The day of the death of a martyr was called his heavenly birth-day,68 and was celebrated annually at his grave (mostly in a cave or catacomb), by prayer, reading of a history of his suffering and victory, oblations, and celebration of the holy supper.
But the early church did not stop with this. Martyrdom was taken, after the end of the second century, not only as a higher grade of Christian virtue, but at the same time as a baptism of fire and blood,69 an ample substitution for the baptism of water, as purifying from sin, and as securing an entrance into heaven. Origen even went so far as to ascribe to the sufferings of the martyrs an atoning virtue for others, an efficacy like that of the sufferings of Christ, on the authority of such passages as 2 Cor. 12:15; Col. 1:24; 2 Tim. 4:6. According to Tertullian, the martyrs entered immediately into the blessedness of heaven, and were not required, like ordinary Christians, to pass through the intermediate state. Thus was applied the benediction on those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, Matt. 5:10–12. Hence, according to Origen and Cyprian, their prayers before the throne of God came to be thought peculiarly efficacious for the church militant on earth, and, according to an example related by Eusebius, their future intercessions were bespoken shortly before their death.
In the Roman Catacombs we find inscriptions where the departed are requested to pray for their living relatives and friends.
The veneration thus shown for the persons of the martyrs was transferred in smaller measure to their remains. The church of Smyrna counted the bones of Polycarp more precious than gold or diamonds.70 The remains of Ignatius were held in equal veneration by the Christians at Antioch. The friends of Cyprian gathered his blood in handkerchiefs, and built a chapel over his tomb.
A veneration frequently excessive was paid, not only to the deceased martyrs, but also the surviving confessors. It was made the special duty of the deacons to visit and minister to them in prison. The heathen Lucian in his satire, "De morte Peregrini," describes the unwearied care of the Christians for their imprisoned brethren; the heaps of presents brought to them; and the testimonies of sympathy even by messengers from great distances; but all, of course, in Lucian’s view, out of mere good-natured enthusiasm. Tertullian the Montanist censures the excessive attention of the Catholics to their confessors. The libelli pacis, as they were called—intercessions of the confessors for the fallen—commonly procured restoration to the fellowship of the church. Their voice had peculiar weight in the choice of bishops, and their sanction not rarely overbalanced the authority of the clergy. Cyprian is nowhere more eloquent than in the praise of their heroism. His letters to the imprisoned confessors in Carthage are full of glorification, in a style somewhat offensive to our evangelical ideas. Yet after all, he protests against the abuse of their privileges, from which he had himself to suffer, and earnestly exhorts them to a holy walk; that the honor they have gained may not prove a snare to them, and through pride and carelessness be lost. He always represents the crown of the confessor and the martyr as a free gift of the grace of God, and sees the real essence of it rather in the inward disposition than in the outward act. Commodian conceived the whole idea of martyrdom in its true breadth, when he extended it to all those who, without shedding their blood, endured to the end in love, humility, and patience, and in all Christian virtue.
So Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xviii. 52, but he mentions Antoninus for Marcus Aurelius. Lactantius counts six, Sulpitius Severus nine persecutions.
Ex. chs. 5-10; Rev. 17:12 sqq. Augustin felt the impropriety of referring to the Egyptian plagues, and calls this a mere conjecture of the human mind which "sometimes hits the truth and sometimes is deceived." He also rectifies the number by referring to the persecutions before Nero, mentioned in the N. T., and to the persecutions after Diocletian, as that of Julian, and the Arian emperors. "When I think of these and the like things," he says, "it does not seem to me that the number of persecutions with which the church is to be tried can be definitely stated."
On the relation of Christianity to the laws of the Roman empire, see Aubé, De la legatité du Christianisme dans l’empire Romain au Ier siècle. Paris 1866.
See the remarkable passageAd Scapulam, c. 2: "Tamen humani juris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere, nec alii obest, aut prodest alterius religio. Sed religionis est cogere religionem, quae sponte suscipi debeat non vi, cum et hostiae ab animo libenti expostulentur. Ita etsi nos compuleritis ad sacrificandum, nihil praestabitis diis vestris. Ab invitis enim sacrificia non desiderabunt, nisi si contentiosi sunt; contentiosus autem deus non est." Comp. the similar passage in Tertullian, Apolog. c. 24, where after enumerating the various forms of idolatry which enjoyed free toleration in the empire he continues: "Videte enim ne et hoc ad irreliqiositatis elogium concurrat, adimere libertatem reliqionis et interdicere optionem divinitatis, ut non liceat mihi colere quem velim sed cogar colere quem nolim. Nemo se ab invito coli volet, ne homo quidem."
Apol. I. c. 2, 4, 12
Instit. div. V. 20.
As reported by Justin M., a native of Palestine and a contemporary of this destruction of Jerusalem. Apol. l.c. 47. Tertullian also says (Adv. Jud. c. 13), that, "an interdict was issued forbidding any one of the Jews to linger in the confines of the district."
Ad Zephan. 1:15 sqq. Schürer quotes the passage, p. 363.
"The Wailing Place of the Jews" at the cyclopean foundation wall is just outside of the Mosque El Aska, and near "Robinson’s Arch." There I saw on Good Friday, 1877, a large number of Jews, old and young, men and women, venerable rabbis with patriarchal beards, others dirty and repulsive, kissing the stone wall and watering it with their tears, while repeating from Hebrew Bibles and prayer-books the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Psalms 76th and 79th, and various litanies. Comp. Tobler, Topographie von Jerusalem I. 629.
On the literature of the Talmud see the articles in Herzog, and in McClintock & Strong, and especially Schürer, Neutestamentl. Zeitgeschichte (Leipz. 1874), pp. 45-49, to which I add Schürer’s essay: Die Predigt Jesu Christi in ihrem Verhältniss zum Altem Testament und zum Judenthum, Darmstadt, 1882. The relation of the Talmud to the Sermon on the Mount and the few resemblances is discussed by Pick in McClintock & Strong, vol. ix. 571.
"Non licet esse vos." Tertullian, Apol. 4
The History of Rome, translated by Dickson, vol. IV. P. II. p. 559.
"Nisi publice adscitos."
ajnavgkaze, according to Dion Cassius.
Apolog. c. 24 at the close: "Apud vos quod vis coler ejus est praeter Deum verum, quasi non hic magis omnium sit Deus, cuius omnes sumus."
Hence the reproachful designation "Hostes Caesarum et populi Romani."
Comp. Arts. 19:24; 16:16.
Or prohibited clubs. This is the meaning of hetaeria (eJtaireiva or eJtairiva), collegium, sodalitas, sodalitium, company, brotherhood, especially a private political club or union for party purposes. The Roman sodalities were festive clubs or lodges, and easily available for political and revolutionary ends. Trajan refused to sanction a company of firemen in Nicomedia (Pliny, Ep. X. 34, al. 43). Comp. Büttner, Geschichte der politischen Hetärien in Athen (1840). and Mommsen, De collegiis et sodali us Romanorum (Kiel, 1843).
In three recensions, two in Greek, and one in Syriac. The seven shorter Greek Ep. are genuine. See below § 165.
The rescript of Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus (124 or 128), preserved by Eusebius in a Greek translation, (H. H. E., IV. V. 8, 9), is almost an edict of toleration, and hence doubted by Baur, Keim, Aubé, but defended as genuine by Neander (I. 101, Engl. ed.), Wieseler, Funk, Renan (l.c. p. 32 sqq). Renan represents Hadrian as a rieur spirituel, un Lucian couronné prenat le monde comme un jeu frivole (p. 6), and therefore more favorable to religious liberty than the serious Trajan and the pious Antoninius and Marcus Aurelius. But Friedländer (III. 492) accepts the report of Pausanias that Hadrian was zealously devoted to the worship of the gods. Keim regards him as a visionary and hostile to Christianity as well as to Judaism.
He always offered sacrifice himself as high-priest. Friedländer III. 492.
So Waddington, who has made it almost certain that Quadratus was Roman consul a.d. 142, and proconsul in Asia from 154 to 155, and that Polycarp died Feb. 23, 155. He is followed by Renan (1873), Ewald (1873), Aubé (1875), Hilgenfeld (1874), Lightfoot (1875), Lipsius (1874), 0. v. Gebhardt (1875), Zahn, Harnack (1876), Egli (1882), and again by Lightfoot (1885, l.c. I. 647 sqq). Wieseler and Keim learnedly defend the old date (166-167), which rests on the authority of Eusebius and Jerome, and was held by Masson and Clinton. But Lightfoot refutes their objections (I. 647, sqq.), and sustains Waddington.
Med. xi. 3: Mh; kata; yilh;n paravtaxin, wJ" oiJ Cristianoi;, aJlla; lelogismevno" kai; semnw'" kai;, w{ste kai; a]llon p ei'sai atragw/vdw"
Bodek (l.c. p. 82 sqq.) maintains, contrary to the common view, that Marcus Aurelius was personally indifferent to heathenism and Christianity, that his acts of respect for the worship of the gods, related by Capitolinus and others, were simply official tributes, and that the persecutions of the Christians did probably not originate with him. "Er wareben so wenig ein Feind des Christenthums, als er ein Feind des Heidenthums war: was wie religiöser Fanatismus aussah,war in Wahrheit nur politischer Conservatismus" (p. 87). On the other hand, Bodek claims for him a friendly sympathy with Judaism in its monotheistic and ethical features, and assumes that he had intimate relations with a Jewish rabbi. But there is nothing in his twelve books "Do seipso et ad seipsum," which is inconsistent with an enlightened heathen piety under the unconscious influence of Christianity, yet hostile to it partly from ignorance of its true nature, partly from a conscientious regard to his duty as the pontifex maximus of the state religion. The same was the case with Trajan and Decius. Renan (p. 262 sqq.) calls the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius "le livre le plus purement humain qu’il y ait. Il ne tranche aucune question controversée. En théologie, Marc Aurèle flotte entre le déisme pur, le polythéisme enterprété dans un sens physique, à la façon des stoïciens, et une sorte de panthéisme cosmique."
"Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitio numinis terrerentur, Divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit."Dig. XLVIII. tit. 19. 1. 13, quoted by Lecky in Hist. of Europ. Morals, I. 448. 9
Legio fulminatrix, keraunofovro". The twelfth legion bore the name Fulminata as far back as the time of Trajan; and hence it cannot be derived from this event.
filovqeo" pallakhv
Unless we should prefer to derive it from aeL
and gIb;iil
Yet he meant no more than toleration, as Lampridius says, 22 (21): Judaeis privilegia reservavit, Christianos esse passus est.
"Maximus fratrum numerus," says Cyprian.
See Franz Görres, l.c.
Eusebius, H. E. VIII. 1.
So Arthur James Mason begins his book on thePersecution of Diocletian.
Maximian (surnamed Herculius) ruled in Italy and Africa, Galerius (Armentarius) on the banks of the Danube, and afterwards in the East, Constantius (Chlorus) in Gaul, Spain, and Britain; while Diocletian reserved to himself Asia, Egypt, and Thrace, and resided in Nicomedia. Galerius married a daughter of Diocletian (the unfortunate Valeria), Constantius a (nominal) daughter of Maximian (Theodora), after repudiating their former wives. Constantine, the son of the divorced Helena, married Fausta, the daughter of Maximian as his second wife (father and son being married to two sisters). He was raised to the dignity of Caesar, July 25, 306. See Gibbon, chs. XIII and XIV.
Lactantius (De Morte. Persec. c. 9), calls him "a wild beast, " in whom dwelt "a native barbarity and a savageness foreign to Roman blood." He died at last of a terrible disease, of which Lacantius gives a minute account (ch. 33).
Lactantius charges the incendiarism on Galerius who, as a second Nero, endangered the residence for the purpose of punishing the innocent Christians. Constantine, who then resided at the Court, on a solemn occasion at a later period, attributes the fire to lightning (Orat. ad Sanct. c. 25), but the repetition of the occurrence strengthens the suspicion of Lactantius.
Gibbon, ch. XVI., intimates the probability of a political plot. In speaking of the fire in the imperial palace of Nicomedia, he says: "The suspicion naturally fell on the Christians; and it was suggested, with some degree of probability, that those desperate fanatics, provoked by their present sufferings, and apprehensive of impending calamities, had entered into a conspiracy with their faithful brethren, the eunuchs of the palace, against the lives of two emperors, whom they detested as the irreconcilable enemies of the Church of God." The conjecture of Gibbon was renewed by Burkhardt in his work on Constantine, pp. 332 ff, but without any evidence. Baur rejects it as artificial and very improbable. (Kirchengesch. I. 452, note). Mason (p. 97 sq.) refutes it.
See Lactant., De Morte Persec. ch. 18 and 19, 32, and Gibbon, ch. XIV. V. (vol. II. 16 in Smith’s edition). The original name of Maximin was Daza. He must not be confounded with Maximian (who was older and died three years before him). He was a rude, ignorant and superstitious tyrant, equal to Galerius in cruelty and surpassing him in incredible debauchery (See Lact. l.c. ch. 37 sqq.). He died of poison after being defeated by Licinius in 313.
See on this edict of Maximin, Euseb. Mart. Pal. IX. 2; the Acts of Martyrs in Boll., May 8, p. 291, and Oct. 19, p. 428; Mason, l.c. 284 sqq.
Lightfoot vindicates him in his learned art. Euseb. in Smith and Wace, Dict. of Christ. Biogr. II. 311.
Or ten years, if we include the local persecutions of Maximin and Licinius after the first edict of toleration (311-313).
As "Nomine Christianorum deleto; superstitione Christiana ubique deleta, et cultu Deorum propagato." See the inscriptions in full in Baronius (ad. ann. 304, no. 8, 9; but they are inconsistent with the confession of the failure in the edict of toleration, and acknowledged to be worthless even by Gams (K. Gesch. v. Spanien, I. 387).
For details see the Martyrologies, the "Lives of Saints, " also Baronius Annal. This historian is so fully convinced of the "insigne et perpetuum miraculum sanguinis S. Januarii," that he thinks; it unnecessary to produce; my witness, since "tota Italia, et totus Christianus orbis testis est locupletissimus!"Ad ann. 305 no. 6.
M. de Broglie (L’Église et l’Empire, I. 182) well characterizes this manifesto: "Singulier document, moitié insolent, moitié suppliant, qui commence par insulter chrétiens et finit par leur demander de prier leur maÎ tre pour lui." Mason (1. c. p. 299): "The dying emperor shows no penitence, makes no confession, except his impotence. He wishes to dupe and outwit the angry Christ, by pretending to be not a persecutor but a reformer. With a curse, he dashes his edict of toleration in the church’s face, and hopes superstitiously that it will win him indemnity."
It is usually stated (also by Keim, l.c., Gieseler, Baur, vol. I.. 454 sqq.), that Constantine and Licinius issued two edicts of toleration, one in the year 312, and one from Milan in 313, since the last refers to a previous edict, but the reference seems to be to directions now lost for officials which accompanied the edict of Galerius (311), of which Constantine was a co-signatory. There is no edict of 312. See Zahn and especially Mason (p. 328 sq.), also Uhlhorn (Conflict, etc., p. 497, Engl. translation).
"Ut daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potestatem sequendi religionem, quam quiscunque voluisset." See Euseb. H. X. 5; Lactant. De Mort. Pers. c. 48. Mason (p. 327) says of the Edict of Milan: "It is the very first announcement of that doctrine which is now regarded as the mark and principle of civilization, the foundation of solid liberty, the characteristic of modern politics. In vigorous and trenchant sentences it sets forth perfect freedom of conscience, the unfettered choice of religion."
For a fuller account of Constantine and his relation to the Church. see the next volume.
Comp. a similar passage in the anonymous Ep. ad Diognetum, c. 6 and 7 at the close, and in Justin M., Dial .c. Tryph. Jud. c. 110.
De fuga in persec. c. 13: "Massaliter totae ecclesiae tributum sibi irrogaverunt."
JJOmologhvtai, confessores, Matt. 10:32; 1 Tim. 6:12.
Mavrture", Acts 22:20; Heb. 12:1; 1 Pet. 5:1; Rev. 17:6.
Comp. Matt. 10:23; 24:15-20; Phil. 1:20-25; 2 Tim. 4:6-8.
The number of Dutch martyrs under the Duke of Alva amounted, according to Grotius, to over 100,000; according to P. Sarpi, the R. Cath. historian, to 50,000. Motley, in his History of the Rim of the Dutch Republic, vol. II. 504, says of the terrible reign of Alva: "The barbarities committed amid the sack and ruin of those blazing and starving cities are almost beyond belief; unborn infants were torn from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were violated by the thousands; and whole populations burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers in every mode which cruelty, in its wanton ingenuity, could devise." Buckle and Friedländer (III. 586) assert that during the eighteen years of office of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition punished, according to the lowest estimate, 105,000 persons, among whom 8,800 were burnt. In Andalusia 2000 Jews were executed, and 17,000 punished in a single year.
jOlivgoi kata; kairou;" kai; sfovdra eujarivqmhtoi teqnhvkasi.. Adv. Cels. III. 8 The older testimony of Melito of Sardis, in the well-known fragment from his Apology, preserved by Eusebius IV. 26, refers merely to the small number of imperial persecutors before Marcus Aurelius.
Adv. Haer. IV. c. 33, § 9: Ecclesia omni in loco ob eam, quam habet erga Deum dilectionem, multitudinem martyrum in omni tempore praemittit ad Patrem.
67 Martyrium Polycarpi, cap. 17; Comp. Eusebius, H. E. IV. 15.
68 JHmevra genevqlio", genevqlia, natales, natalitia martyrum.
69 Lavacrum sanguinis, bavptisma dia; purov", comp. Matt. 20:22; Luke 12:50; Mark 10:39.
70 It is worthy of note, however, that some of the startling phenomena related in the Martyrium Polycarpi by the congregation of Smyrna are omitted in the narrative of Eusebius (IV. 15), and may be a later interpolation.