§ I. PONTIFICATE OF ST. EVARISTUS (A.D. 100-109).
1. The second century opens with the third general persecution under Trajan. The persecution of the Christians by this prince presents several points which distinguish it from the cruelties of Nero and of Domitian. The rapid propagation of the Gospel had already made the Church powerful, as well by the number as by the union and devotedness of its members. Roman policy began to be alarmed at the progress of a religion which threatened to leave neither purchasers for the victims, nor adorers for their false gods. The emperors had accustomed the people to an idolatrous worship, the ceremonies of which excited the ridicule of their own ministers. The Caesars thought in sustaining polytheism to support their authority—to strengthen their power—to save the empire. There was no want of legal enactments to repress a new religion which they deemed seditious. One of the most ancient ordinances of Roman legislation prohibited the recognition of any god, without the approbation of the senate; and Trajan, although he was resolved to oppose the progress of the Church, published no sanguinary edict, but interdicted associations and nocturnal assemblies in the provinces. The persecution was merely a political affair; the Christians were accused of no crime; their innocence was not denied; still less did the judges institute rigorous inquests respecting the character, the doctrines, or the aims of the religion of Jesus Christ. It sufficed that this religion was new, that it opposed the established worship, that the senate had not sanctioned it, to make it the duty of the magistrates to sentence its disciples to death; and they were applauded “for preserving the multitude from a superstition, whose confessors obliged themselves by an oath to avoid any crime.”
2. Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, the friend of Trajan, wrote to him: “I have examined the conduct of the Christians for myself. They are accustomed to assemble on a certain day before sunrise, and to sing together hymns in honor of Christ, whom they revere as a God. They oblige themselves by an oath to avoid all crimes—to commit neither fraud, nor adultery, nor robbery; never to break their word nor violate a trust. They then retire, and reassemble to partake together of an ordinary and innocent repast.”* These last words evidently refute the popular prejudice which accused the Christians of immolating, in their assemblies, an infant, which they divided among themselves and devoured; an absurd interpretation of the dogma of the Eucharist.
“By this proscription of the Christians,” adds Pliny, “a multitude of persons of every age, sex, and condition, are placed in peril, for this superstitious contagion has gained not only the cities, but the towns and rural districts. The temples of the gods are abandoned, the solemn sacrifices have long been interrupted, and none purchase the victims. I have hesitated not a little, to decide whether there ought not to be some difference allowed in cases like these, with respect to age or rank; whether tender infants ought not to be otherwise dealt with than adults; whether the penitent should not be pardoned; or whether it be not sufficient that they renounce Christianity, if they have once professed it; finally, whether they are to be punished for the name only, without any other crime, or for other crimes attached to the name.”*
3. The emperor replied by an unheard of rule—not to search for the Christians, but to punish them if they persevered in their profession of faith when they had been denounced and convicted. “Conquerendi non sunt: si deferantur et arguantur puniendi sunt.” “It was,” said Tertullian, “a strange decree, which, in forbidding the Christians to be searched for, implicitly recognizes their innocence, and which nevertheless ordains their punishment as criminals, upon a simple denunciation.” Such, in regard to the Christians, was the Roman policy, caring little for virtue or truth, but fully alive to providing for the interest of the moment.
4. The proconsuls, sent into the different provinces of the empire, met everywhere Christians who, it was made to appear, were enemies of the law. While Pliny governed Pontus and Bithynia, Arrius Antoninus persecuted the faith in proconsular Asia. In his passage through a city of his government, all the Christians presented themselves at once before his tribunal. Alarmed at their multitude, he sent only a limited number to execution, and said to the others: “Wretches that you are, if you are so determined to die, can you not find precipices or cords?”
5. About the same time, Atticus, governor of Syria, ordered the arrest of the holy Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, first cousin of our Lord, and then a hundred and twenty years old. He was tortured during several days, and he endured his sufferings with such constancy as to astonish even the proconsul, who did not expect so much strength in a man of his age. Finally, he was fastened to a cross, and thus closed his glorious career—having governed for forty years the Church of Jerusalem, which he had the happiness to preserve from any invasion of heresies or sects, during his whole pontificate. But when all the disciples who had seen the Lord with their own eyes had passed from earth, error began its work in the Church with more success.
6. The death of Simeon having left the See of Jerusalem vacant, a schism arose, where hitherto all had been peace. Thebutis, a converted Jew, aspired to the honor of succeeding the holy bishop. The Christians made choice of Justus, whose doctrines and morals inspired greater confidence; and Thebutis, in revenge, set himself at the head of a new heresy. He taught, with the other sectaries educated in Judaism, the necessity of the works of the Mosaic law for salvation, and that baptism and the other sacraments were insufficient for spiritual regeneration.
7. The principle of unity in government established in the Church by Jesus Christ Himself, as a safeguard of her doctrine, had been misunderstood by certain Christians of Philadelphia. The illustrious bishop of Antioch, St. Ignatius, surnamed Theophorus, happened to pass by this place. While he was in the midst of the faithful, who had assembled to hear this heir of the apostolic traditions, who was the most celebrated bishop of the East, he suddenly exclaimed, inspired by the Spirit of God, who revealed to him the secrets of men’s hearts: “Stand fast by your bishop, your priests, and deacons; be immovable in unity and subordination.” At these unexpected words, the culprits supposed that he had been informed of their tendencies by the bishop of Philadelphia; but he called God to witness that no human voice had mentioned them to him, but the Holy Spirit had inspired him to say: “Do nothing without the bishop, love unity, and fly dissensions.” His exhortations re-established calm among the Christians of Philadelphia. This was, in some sort, the testament of the holy bishop to the churches of Asia.
8. A short time afterwards, Trajan came to Antioch, on his return from an expedition against the Parthians. St. Ignatius was summoned before his tribunal. “Who art thou, malignant devil?” demanded the emperor. “No one has ever so named Theophorus,”* he replied. “And who is Theophorus?” “He who bears Christ in his heart.” “Dost thou not believe that we also bear in our hearts the gods who have aided us to vanquish our enemies?” “There is but one God, who created the world; there is but one Jesus Christ, His only Son,” returned St. Ignatius. “What!” said the emperor, “that Jesus Christ whom Pontius Pilate nailed to the cross?” After this interrogatory, Trajan pronounced his sentence. “We ordain that Ignatius, who boasts that he carries the Crucified in his heart, shall be chained and taken to Rome, to be exposed to the beasts of the amphitheatre during the public festivals.”
9. Was it the intention of the emperor, by transporting the holy bishop to meet his death at Rome, to remove from the Christian population in Asia the contagious spectacle of his constancy, so that the blood he was about to shed might not become the fruitful seed of new martyrs? Did he hope, in exposing Christian bishops to the outrages of the people in the capital of the world, by showing them mixed up with the vilest criminals and barbarian captives, to extinguish their religion by public contempt? Or did he perhaps rely on the long and wearisome voyage, the weight of his chains, the privations and fatigues of captivity, to triumph over the strength and patience of an infirm old man? However this may be, the event falsified all his calculations. Never had the sanctity of Ignatius attracted such homage as in his fetters—never was his eloquence so far-reaching, so brilliant. His voyage was a continued triumph. Arrived at Smyrna, St. Polycarp, the bishop, came to kiss his chains. He received three deputations from the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, and sent to each of them epistles which breathe the true charity of the Apostles. Above all, he feared that the faithful, through their prayers, might obtain from God the delay of his martyrdom, or that, by human means, they might obtain his pardon of the emperor. He addressed to the Church, “which presides at Rome in charity,” touching supplications on this point.
From Smyrna he was taken to Troas, and embarked for Macedonia, which he traversed, and, taking ship at Epidamnus (Durazzo), passed down the Adriatic gulf, and by the straits of Sicily entered the sea of Tuscany. He hastened to reach Rome before the close of the festivals, that he might soon consummate his martyrdom. The soldiers who guarded him, revering his sanctity, were grieved at their approaching separation from the holy man. Finally they landed. The faithful came to meet him with mingled joy and sadness; happy to embrace the saintly bishop, afflicted at his approaching death. Some flattered themselves with the hope of gaining the people to his cause, and perhaps of procuring his pardon. St. Ignatius, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, was aware of their thoughts, and besought them to love him with a true love, and not to hinder his happiness by delaying his martyrdom. He then knelt on the shore, and prayed with the whole assembly, imploring the Son of God to have mercy on His Church, to put an end to the persecution, and to preserve among Christians the spirit of charity. At length, conducted to the amphitheatre, he was, by the emperor’s orders, exposed to the wild beasts. Torn in pieces by two lions, he had the happiness which he had so much desired, to be ground, as he expressed himself, like pure wheat, in order to be admitted to the feast of the Lamb. His martyrdom occurred December 20th, A.D. 107. His acts were recorded by eye-witnesses, and sent to the churches of Asia, so that the remembrance of his death might continue to confirm the faithful whom his eloquence and example had edified during his life. The deacon Philo of Cilicia, and Reus Agathopodus, who had accompanied the holy martyr on this last voyage, piously conveyed to Antioch his larger bones, which the teeth of the lions had spared, as most precious relics.
10. Nearly at the same time, St. Evaristus gave his life for Jesus Christ, whose representative he had been on earth. During this century, the chair of St. Peter was but a throne for martyrs. Pope Evaristus gave titles to the churches of Rome, and appointed priests for their spiritual government. He ordained that seven deacons should accompany the bishop when he preached, either to sustain the dignity of his ministry or to serve as witnesses of the truth, propter stylum veritatis. In the course of his pontificate, from A.D. 96 to 109, he instituted and ordained fifteen bishops.
§ II. PONTIFICATE OF ST. ALEXANDER I. (A.D. 109-119).
11. St. Alexander, by birth a Roman, succeeded Evaristus. In the midst of the persecutions by which the rising Church passed through a baptism of blood, he ordained that the priests should recall the remembrance of the passion of the Saviour before the consecration; a remembrance expressed in the words: “Qui pridie quam pateretur,”* &c. He also ordained the mingling of water with wine in the chalice. To repel the attacks of the devil, the most fearful enemy of Christians, he recommended that the dwellings of the faithful should be purified by water mixed with salt, which had received the blessing of a priest. In this solicitude of St. Alexander for the spiritual wants of the Church, we recognize his vigilance to preserve and fix by decrees the Apostolic traditions. These three institutions came, in fact, from the Apostles. The last had particular advantages for the recently converted people. It sanctified a pagan custom, and replaced the lustral waters by a Christian symbol of tears of penitence; and it was a reminder of the waters of baptism, to which the blood of Jesus Christ, as a divine salt, had imparted a regenerative virtue. There have been, from that time, special prayers for the blessing of water. Some of these which the Church has preserved for this ceremony, and which breathe a perfume of holy and ancient simplicity, are, perhaps, the same of which St. Alexander regulated the use in the second century. Thus, according to the remark of Baronius,* the pious traditions that came from the Apostles were confirmed, and received a regular sanction from their immediate successors.
12. While Antioch sent her saintly bishop to Rome to receive the crown of martyrdom, the church of Ephesus had the same glory. St. Onesimus, a disciple of St. Paul, was taken, enchained for Jesus Christ, to the capital of the empire, where he was stoned. It seemed that the greatest examples of constancy and of noble sacrifices were to be given in the very centre of paganism; that the prodigious fecundity of Christian blood, on so vast a theatre, might be made still more glorious. A little earlier, St. Timothy, also the disciple of St. Paul, to whom St. Onesimus had succeeded in the episcopal See of Ephesus, had likewise sealed his faith with his blood. Titus, bishop of Crete, had preceded him in the same glorious end. He was martyred at the age of ninety-four.* St. Antistius, bishop of Dyrrachium, in Macedonia, died, like his divine Master, on the cross. St. Phocas, bishop of Synope, in Pontus, gave also his life for Jesus Christ. The persecution extended to the extremities of the earth, in order to strike everywhere, at once, a religion which, though yet in its infancy, already embraced the whole world. In proportion as the sword of the executioner removed the bishops from their churches, the election from among the clergy and the faithful in union with the See of Rome gave successors to the martyred prelates. Heron succeeded St. Ignatius in the See of Antioch; Zaccheus succeeded the bishop Justus, in the See of Jerusalem; Primus succeeded the bishop Cerdon,† in the See of Alexandria. The other churches, also, had their episcopal succession; and the tyrants, in sending her bishops each day to die, made still more resplendent the immortality of the Church, and the divinity of an institution which had from that time such an abundance of life, that she developed it only the more in proportion as she was persecuted.
13. St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, a disciple of St. John the Evangelist, inherited the influence which St. Ignatius had exercised over the churches of Asia. On the occasion of the martyrdom of the bishop of Antioch, his friend, he wrote to the Philippians a celebrated epistle, which, in the times of St. Jerome, was still read in the solemn assemblies of the faithful of Asia. Although it is rather a moral exhortation than a dogmatic treatise, it contains precious evidence on the dogmas of the incarnation, of the atonement of Jesus Christ, of the reality of His human nature and His passion, and on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In the rules of conduct which he addresses to all conditions of life—to young men, to virgins, to the faithful engaged in marriage, to widows, to deaconesses, to ministers of the altar themselves, and to deacons and priests—he insists particularly on the necessity of prayer, fasting, and other mortifications; and on the fear of the last judgment, on chastity, on subordination, on condescension, and mutual charity. His words, often borrowed from the Holy Scriptures, especially from the New Testament, the Evangelists, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John, superabundantly prove the respect in which at that time the Church held those Apostolic monuments.
14. Nearly at the same time, Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, the friend of St. Polycarp, and perhaps, like him, a disciple of St. John, made a collection in writing of the oral traditions concerning the Saviour and His Apostles. He composed five books, entitled Exposition of the Discourses of the Lord, of which Eusebius has preserved some fragments. Antiquity has praised the eloquence, zeal, and piety of this holy bishop. He fell, nevertheless, into the error of the Millenarians, attributed before him to Cerinthus. Misled by a false interpretation of this passage of the Apocalypse, “The just shall rise, and shall reign a thousand years with Christ,” he concluded that after the resurrection there would be a reign of the just on earth. Yet he did not people this new Eden with material enjoyments or carnal delights, as Cerinthus had done, who was imbued with the gross ideas of Judaism upon the reign of the Messiah. Papias, in maintaining this second advent of Jesus Christ, admitted nothing but a spiritual happiness, more worthy of Christian hope. The austerity of his doctrines and his known virtue caused several Fathers to adopt, somewhat later, the error of millenarianism, often called chiliasm, from the Greek word χίλιοι.
15. Among the contemporary writers of these holy personages, the name of St. Dionysius the Areopagite must not be omitted. Certain critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have very unwisely endeavored to contest the authenticity of the works which bear his name. This error has been learnedly refuted by the Reverend Fathers Honoré de St. Marie and Natalis Alexander. The books of this doctor which have come down to us are the Treatise on the Divine Names, The Books of the Celestial Hierarchy, of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, a book on Mystical Theology, and Letters. Embracing in a sublime trilogy the entire world of the intelligences, “his eagle flight,” said St. Thomas Aquinas, “has borne him successively to the heaven of the most Holy Trinity, to the heaven of angelic nature, and to the heaven of human nature.” The magnificence of his style is worthy the grandeur of his subjects, yet sometimes there is found an obscurity, which the critics attribute to three causes: 1st, the difficulty of expressing with perfect clearness so abstruse a doctrine; 2d, the peculiar style of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who wrote in the manner of the Platonists, of whom the moderns have preserved no clear knowledge; 3d, the Discipline of the Secret, which interdicted precise developments or explications, from the fear of exposing the mysteries of our religion to the contempt of the pagans.
16. In the book of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he speaks of the faithful who in his time gave themselves up to contemplative life in separation from the world. This passage should be placed beside that of Philo the Jew, a contemporary writer, on the subject of the Therapeutes, or monks of the church of Alexandria. “They construct,” said this author, quoted by Eusebius in his ecclesiastical history, “small oratories in retired places in the country, to which they give the name monasterium. There they pass their life, far from other mortals, in the exercises of piety, and celebrate the august mysteries. The law of God, the oracles of the prophets, and other Scriptures, are the continual subjects of their meditations. The whole day, from dawn till sunset, is consecrated to pious exercises, to singing Psalms and holy canticles. They reproach themselves if they lose, in the care of their bodies, any part of the day, which they reserve entirely for the contemplation of heavenly things. Only after sunset they permit themselves to partake of a frugal and scanty meal. To animate their solitude, they have the writings of the ancients who founded their religion, and from these they take their rule of conduct, and the models whom they ought to imitate.” The writings which Philo mentions, adds Eusebius, are nothing else than the Gospels, the Epistles of the Apostles, and some commentaries composed by the doctors of the Apostolic age. These witnesses of Christian antiquity, which place monastic institutions in the very earliest days of the Church, are not without historic interest. What a spectacle the Christians, newly withdrawn from the errors and corruption of paganism, offered to the world! Whilst the maddest cruelty and the most degrading passions sat in turn on the throne of the Caesars, and so pervaded the morals of society that they scarcely excited a movement of indignation, the disciples of Jesus, recalling the exiled virtues to the earth, gave the degenerate Romans examples of disinterestedness, of mortification, of contempt of earthly interests, of abstinence, and of virtue, unknown to the best days of the republic; or rather they proved, in the midst of the amphitheatres, in the jaws of the lions, in the flames of the pyre, under the sword of the executioner, that a divine virtue flowed from the very name of Jesus into their hearts.
17. The Jews, after the ruin of Jerusalem, were dispersed abroad, and carried with them everywhere in their exile a hatred of the Roman name. Towards the end of the reign of Trajan, A.D. 114-117, they revolted at Alexandria, in Egypt, and in Cyrenaica, where they were very numerous. It would be difficult to conceive how this unhappy nation dared to match itself against the forces of the empire, and at the very moment when the victory of Trajan over the Parthians had given new power to the Roman arms, if we did not remember that, always seduced by false prophets, they believed themselves at length called to inaugurate the reign of the Messiah, whom they still expected, and to enter into the realization of these chimerical hopes. This insurrection was marked by unparalleled cruelties. Not satisfied with the murder of the Greeks and Romans among whom they lived, their infuriate rage led them to eat their flesh, to drink their blood, to make girdles of their intestines, and to cover themselves with their skins. Great numbers were cut through the middle of the body, some were exposed to beasts, or forced to kill each other like the vilest gladiators. It was computed that two hundred thousand victims were sacrificed to their fury in Libyan Cyrenaica. Two hundred and forty thousand were massacred in the isle of Cyprus.* Trajan sent Martius Turbo against them in Egypt and Libya, who destroyed an immense multitude of the insurgents by the sword. Lucius Quietus made an equal carnage in Mesopotamia. This first sedition was thus stifled in the blood of its authors.
18. Trajan was not destined to see the end of these troubles. Insatiable of triumphs, after having conquered the Parthians, subjugated Armenia and Babylonia, and ravaged a part of Arabia, he laid siege to Afra, a city of the Agarenian Arabs. A check obliged him to retreat, and he went to die at Selinonte, in Cilicia, A.D. 117, at the moment when his recent conquests were escaping from his authority, and throwing off the yoke which he had imposed on them. A wise administrator in peace, a skilful general in war, Trajan merited the love and admiration of the Romans; but he tarnished his glory by the indulgence of shameful passions, and by his cruelties towards the Christians. The persecution which he ordered against the Church placed him in personal relations with some of the most heroic among her martyrs, most venerable among her bishops and confessors. He did not comprehend that the vitality of the empire was weakened by the loss of those Christians whom he commanded, on a single denunciation, to be thrown to the lions. He was not capable of a sentiment of admiration for the constancy and generous intrepidity of St. Ignatius and the other pontiffs, whom he sent to die for the entertainment of the Roman populace.
19. He bequeathed the purple to Adrian, his adopted son, whom the Empress Plotina charged herself to make acceptable to the senate. The new Caesar had all the vices opposed to his good qualities. He loved the arts, yet sometimes sentenced artists to death from jealousy; he was eager in the pursuit of knowledge, but descended to the ridiculous superstitions of judicial astrology and magic; he affected a profound respect for the senate, to whom he owed the throne, yet had no scruple in condemning the most virtuous senators to death to gratify a caprice. With these inconsistencies in his character, the diversities of opinion respecting Adrian are readily explained. He changed nothing in the last decisions of Trajan respecting the Christians, who saw themselves still exposed to the hate of the pagans.
20. Pope St. Alexander experienced about this time its effects. He had converted to the faith many of the principal citizens of Rome, among whom was Hermas, prefect of the city. The priests of the idols and the pagan magistrates, irritated by his zeal, condemned him to death, with his two priests, Eventius and Theodulus. They were beheaded May 3d, A.D. 119. In the course of his pontificate he consecrated five bishops. Besides the decrees relative to the Passion of the Saviour, on mingling wine and water in the chalice, and on holy water, he is regarded as the first who, from respect to the Divine Victim, ordered unleavened bread to be used in the holy sacrifice. Of the flourishing condition of the Roman Church at this time, we are enabled to judge from the high eulogium pronounced by St. Ignatius, in his epistle from Smyrna. He calls it “the well-beloved Church, filled with light, worthy of God, abounding in sanctity, justly blessed, meriting all praise, perfectly governed, presiding in charity, having the deposit of the law of Christ, bearing the name of the Father, united according to the flesh and the spirit, full of the grace of God, without division or any impure alloy.”
§ III. PONTIFICATE OF ST. SIXTUS I. (A.D. 119-128).
21. Twenty-five days after the death of St. Alexander I., St. Sixtus I., succeeded him. Under his pontificate the Gnostics developed their erroneous doctrines, and led many of the faithful into their errors. If we would have a true idea of Gnosticism, we must abstract ourselves from the intellectual centre in which we live, and return to the system of pagan theogony which Basilides, Carpocrates, Epiphanius, and Valentinus, who were the principal heads of the Gnostics, strove to adapt to the Christian dogma. This fusion was effected under the influence of the Alexandrian school, which, since the Ptolemies, had become the centre of the philosophic movement during this epoch. Oriental science met in this common arena with the systems of Pythagoras and Plato. Idolatry was purified, and elevated to the eminence of a scientific combination. They left gross forms and fabulous mythology to the superstition of the vulgar, reserving to themselves more exalted knowledge and higher science, which they concealed under this deceptive appearance. This sublime doctrine was decorated with the ostentatious name of Gnosis, knowledge par excellence.
In commencing the study of all philosophy the human mind finds two problems, on the solution of which depend the results of its investigations: viz., the existence of matter, and the existence of evil. Following the materialists, matter is eternal; according to the dualists, the principle of evil has maintained its existence parallel with that of good from all eternity. The pantheists insist that matter is God, and that evil is only the prejudice of an intelligence too narrow to embrace at once the entire proportions of being; therefore, it does not exist. Gnosticism tries another system, that of emanation. Matter was not the immediate work of the Eternal Intelligence: it owes its existence to an inferior demiurge, descended by a series of successive generations from the first principle of all being to the extreme confines of the divinity.
The first Gnostics, Saturninus, of Antioch, a disciple of Menander, Basilides, of Alexandria, Carpocrates, and his son Epiphanius, also of Alexandria, dogmatized, in the first thirty years of the reign of Adrian, and gave circulation to the principles of Gnosticism. But it was reserved to Valentinus to give their latest form to these yet fluctuating doctrines. He appeared, only twenty years later, under the pontificates of SS. Pius and Anicetus; but not to intercept the historic narrative, we will here give a succinct analysis of his system.
According to Valentinus, the First Cause of Being inhabited an invisible and unexplored abyss, which he designated under the name of Βυθος, depth. This eternal principle of life had remained many ages unknown, in silence and repose, accompanied in this mysterious solitude by Ἔννοια, thought. They engendered Νοῦς, intelligence, with Ἀλήθεια, truth. The four Hons (the name which Valentinus gave to these spiritual principles) formed the sacred Tetrada, an imitation of the mysterious Quaternas of Pythagoras. Intelligence and truth produced Λόγος, the word, and Ζωή, the life, who in their turn engendered man, Ἄνθρωπος, and Ἐκκλησία, the church. From these eight superior Hons proceeded, always by Syzygies, twenty-two other generations, completing the whole of the superior world, which he named Pleroma, Πληρωμα, plenitude. The last Eons of Pleroma produced, by successive generations, three essences: the pneumatic, or spiritual, immutable, and indestructible; the psychic, or animal, capable of good and evil; the hylic, or material, subject to destruction and death. To these three constitutive elements of the human race corresponded three different classes of men. The first was that of pneumatics, or spirituals; in them all was life, worth, and light: the Gnostics ranged themselves in this category. The second, the psychites, mixed natures, who led an animal life, yet preserved a ray of intelligence. The third, hyliques, or materials, an effete race, who led an earthly and abject life of the senses.
The pneumatics only can reascend to the eternal principle in the joy of the Pleroma, as a subtile vapor traverses all the lower strata to resume its place in the higher regions of the air. The psychites, to be lifted up from their lower state, must be redeemed by the Eon Jesus, who was incarnate in the womb of Mary, and who withdrew at the moment of the Passion, so that only the animal Christ suffered. The redemption was not extended to the hyliques, who are devoted to eternal death, through the imperfection of their own substance. This presumptuous classification established the Gnostics in impeccability. Formed of a purer element than other men, their souls, in their own esteem, could never be soiled by corruption. The disorders of the senses, the movements of concupiscence changed not the tranquil peace they enjoyed in a region superior to passions or desires. Such doctrines justified every excess and legitimated every crime. All actions, even the most culpable, became indifferent. All virtues, the grace of the Incarnation, the Redemption, faith, good works, mortifications, even martyrdom, were only so many superstitions, as ridiculous as they were useless. It is not difficult to conceive the attraction which perverse human nature found in these doctrines, and consequently the Gnostics multiplied rapidly in the first two ages of the Church, and strangely compromised the true faithful, who were supposed to hold the same opinions. The accusations of nocturnal and infamous assemblies, of homicidal festivities, of execrable orgies, fell upon Catholics, whom the pagans took neither time nor pains to distinguish from the sectaries; and when the persecution was kindled, the culpable went with incense in their hands to seek their safety at the feet of idols, while the innocent and faithful Christians hastened to martyrdom.
22. These calumnies had excited the popular hatred against the Christians to the highest degree in the first year of the reign of Adrian, A.D. 117. Although this prince had issued no edict against the faithful, the persecution, which towards the end of Trajan’s reign had relaxed, now assumed a new degree of fury, and everywhere resounded the tumultuous cry, “Death to the Christians!” which made many martyrs. Among those who then sealed the Catholic faith with their blood, the Church particularly honors St. Symphorosa and her seven sons. This admirable widow lived with her family on the hill of Tibur (Tivoli), near which the Emperor Adrian had just constructed a magnificent palace, which he wished to open by solemn sacrifices in honor of the gods of the empire. Following his superstitious custom, in the midst of the ceremony he interrogated the oracles. Their response, suggested perhaps by the hatred of the priests against the Christians, was that the widow Symphorosa, who lived on the neighboring heights, made them mute by invoking her God, and that she should first be constrained to offer incense to the idols.
Led before the prince, the heroic widow thus replied to his demands: “Getulius, my husband, and Amantius, his brother, were tribunes in your armies: they preferred death to apostasy; and if their punishment was disgraceful in the eyes of men, in heaven it has covered them with immortal glory.” “Hither sacrifice to the all-powerful gods, with thy sons, or I will make thee offer thyself in sacrifice with them.” “And whence comes to me the happiness to merit, with my children, to be offered as a holocaust to my God?” “It is not to thy God that I shall sacrifice thee, but to mine.” “Your gods cannot receive me in sacrifice. If you order me to be burned for Christ, the fire which consumes me will torment your demons far more than me.” “Make your choice; either sacrifice to my gods or die in torments.” “It is vain to think of moving my resolution by your threats. My most ardent desire is to rest with my husband, whom you sent to die for the name of Christ.”
The emperor commanded that she should be conducted to the temple of Hercules, that her face should be bruised with blows, and that afterwards she should be suspended by her hair. As she continued unshaken in her holy resolution, she was cast into the river, with a heavy stone fastened about her neck. The following day he caused seven stakes to be planted around the temple of Hercules, on which were extended by pullies the seven brothers, who were put to death by various modes of punishment. Crescentius, the eldest, was pierced in the throat by a sword; the second, Julian, was transfixed by many points of iron buried in his breast; Nemesius received a lance in his heart; Primitivus, in the stomach; Justin had his back broken; Stracteus was disembowelled; and Eugene, the youngest, had his body riven from head to foot.
23. About the same time St. Sabina, widow, and St. Serapia, virgin, received the crown of martyrdom in Umbria; and St. Zoe, with her children, in Pamphylia. At Rome, St. Eustachius also, with his wife and children, suffered death for their Lord. He was an illustrious captain of the imperial army; but he preferred to give his life for the King of Heaven rather than, by betraying his conscience and the truth, to pass it in glory and honor. Another soldier, probably a tribune, suffered martyrdom. His memory is preserved in the following inscription, graven on the stone of his sepulchre in the catacombs: “In the time of the Emperor Adrian, Marius, officer of the soldiers, and still young, has lived long enough, for he has given his blood with his life for Jesus Christ. He rests in peace.”
24. The Pope St. Sixtus was one of the last victims of the persecution under the reign of Adrian. He died towards the year 128, after governing the Church ten years. According to the Liber Pontificalis,* St. Sixtus made a decree which reserved to the ministers alone the power of touching holy things. He added to the Liturgy of the Mass the chant of the Sanctus. Finally, he ordained that the bishops who had been called to Rome on business should not be again received in their respective places of jurisdiction without letters from the Holy See, addressed in the form of greeting to their people. These letters were called formae. In the same manner clerics could travel only with letters of communion from their bishops; the bishops themselves were to bear letters of communion from the Holy See. By these, the hierarchy was constituted in unity of government, under the immutable authority of the pontiffs, successors of St. Peter.
