Ezekiel the Prophet

ON ST. EZEKIEL THE PROPHET,

IN CHALDEA.

Ezekiel, Prophet (St.)

BY D. P.

Whoever would have noted the memory and name of Ezekiel the Prophet on this day in the Martyrology, before Bede no one is to be found; [Bede inscribed in the Martyrology the name, as of the other Prophets and Apostles,] nevertheless, that this was not done by him without a more ancient precedent in the old calendars is argued by the very brevity he employs. For when I consider that, in that work which we published before the second volume of March, and which we demonstrated to be genuinely Bede's, with the same brevity of two or three words by which commemorations of the Prophets are noted, all the feasts of Christ the Lord and his Apostles are also indicated, and in this simple fashion, and very many names also of the most prominent Martyrs and Confessors are found inscribed with similar brevity; I am altogether persuaded that Bede, about to begin weaving his Martyrology, first noted down in the margins of his notebooks in kalendar form each day of the whole year, adding the feasts then universally known and received, among which were also those of the Prophets, just as they are found noted by him: afterwards, however, from the Acts of the Saints he was able to obtain, he took others to add to the earlier, not without a brief eulogy of martyrdom or sanctity; and at times also he added to those already previously inscribed eulogies taken from similar Acts: which nevertheless he neglected to do with the Prophets and Apostles; partly because they were better known to the faithful than to require being commemorated in more lengthy words; partly because concerning most of them, besides what is reported in the sacred Scriptures, he had scarcely anything certain.

[2] Florus, following Bede's footsteps and setting himself to supply what he had omitted, which others followed, did indeed rather liberally add much concerning the Apostles, supported by the common tradition of the Church and the testimony of ancient writers: but he left the Prophets as he found them, content with the inscription of the name alone. Ado and Rabanus did the same. Notker prefixed the name of Nativity or Birthday, with the title of Saint or Blessed. Usuard, Usuard added some things concerning death and burial, lest in this almost sole respect his style should be unlike itself, not only adorned the Prophets with the prerogative of first place (which all others before him had also done, even when they were about to report the Apostles, as happens on the Kalends of May), but also added something to each concerning the manner of death and the place of burial. He thus begins the present day, "On the fourth day before the Ides of April. Ezekiel the Prophet, who, slain by the Judge of the people of Israel at Babylon, was buried in the sepulchre of Shem and Arphaxad": which are read somewhat enlarged in today's Roman Martyrology. More explicitly, the author of the unfinished work on Matthew, Homily 46, introduces God upbraiding Israel with these words: "I sent Ezekiel, and dragged upon stones you beat out his brains": and the books On the Life and Death of the Prophets, and On the Life and Passing of the Saints of the Old Testament, attributed to Epiphanius and Isidore, say the cause of his death, though not sufficiently certain, was that he too vehemently attacked the impious superstitions of his fellow-countrymen: but those books are rightly rejected by learned men, as being either not by those whose names they bear, or having many things invented by the Rabbis and received without proper proof.

[3] Therefore, if the whole Prophecy of Ezekiel is obscure, woven throughout with perpetual allegories and inscrutable mysteries, we know only that he was a Priest, the history of his life is much more obscure to us, except insofar as he himself testifies in the beginning of his Prophecy that he was the son of Buzi the Priest, to whom, while he was in the land of the Chaldeans, at the same time when Jeremiah (to be venerated on May 1) was prophesying at Jerusalem, in confirmation of what Jeremiah had there denounced and was denouncing as to come, came the word of the Lord beside the river Chebar, that is, the Euphrates; and this in the thirtieth year of his age (as most agree), on the fourth day of the month: and that he began in the fifth year of the Transmigration, which is the fifth year of the transmigration of King Jehoiachin, after the 3440th year of the world, 613 before the beginning of the vulgar Era, according to our Salian's calculations; which it is not worth lingering to examine. For others calculate differently; and indeed Cornelius goes so far as to combine the fifth year of the transmigration with the year 3316 after the creation of the world, and the year 632 before the common era. The Synaxarium to be cited below says that the incarnation of Christ was preceded by 477 years. In the first volume of this month we have arranged Christian chronology, as far as we were able, from the most ancient monuments and from the consensus of almost all antiquity: let others take care to arrange the years from the creation of the world and to trace them down to the nativity of Christ, whether true or commonly estimated: since that study is both complicated in many ways, and by no means necessary to our purpose; in which very few things about the Saints of the Old Testament occur to be said.

[4] The book of the Prophecies of Ezekiel lies open to the eyes and hands of all, that he prophesied for 22 years, in whose 29th chapter, when the 27th year of the Transmigration is noted, it appears that he prophesied for twenty-two years at least; but how much time either of prophecy or of life should be added remains obscure: as also the manner of his death, except that St. Athanasius in his book On the Incarnation of the Word says, "He suffered for the people, because he was preaching things to come to the people." As for the place of his burial; although it is held from apocryphal writings, it is credible that it proceeds from the truth, as that of one whose venerable memory long remained among the Jews and Christians: they say it was called the Field of Maur; among the Greeks in the Synaxarium it is written Μιθοὺρ. That moreover in the same place Shem and Arphaxad, ancestors of Abraham, were once buried, though Baronius, the reviser of the Roman Martyrology, did not disapprove; was he buried with Shem and Arphaxad? we judge this freely handed down by the Rabbis, or rather made up: since concerning the place of their life and burial the sacred scriptures have nothing, nor is it credible that so long-lasting a memory of them survived among the idolatrous Chaldeans. For the rest, these and many other things of the same kind, taken mostly from whatever Epiphanius, we find at length gathered in the Greek Manuscript Synaxarium of the Parisian College on July 21, on which day certain other Greek manuscripts report him, while the rest with the printed Menaea refer it to July 23. Indeed, even the features of the Prophet's face are added, equally freely invented. One may see the miracles of Ezekiel which Surius has from the pretended book of Epiphanius, teeming with Hebrew fables, and those which Peter de Natalibus collected from the same book and others in book 4, chapter 41, concerning which Salian says, what credit can be given to the miracles narrated concerning him? "the suspicion of many is not improbable, that these were invented by the Rabbis, in accordance with their license and temerity in this kind of matter…"

And indeed how could no Daniel, no Baruch, no Ezra, no Josephus or Philo have recorded such and so great things in writing, or have not signified with some word that the Jews had been persecuted by the Chaldeans? How moreover could they be persecuted, to whom, as they were living peacefully and patiently in Chaldea, God had promised much happiness, until the time of their return, destined and designated through Jeremiah the Prophet?