ON SAINT JUSTIN, PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR.
ABOUT THE YEAR 170.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Justin, Philosopher and Martyr (Saint)
§ I. Veneration among the Latins and Greeks. Manner of death. Another Justin with companions, distinct from this one.
BY D. P.
[1] Eusebius Pamphilus, ending chapter 15 of book 4 of his Ecclesiastical History with the memory of Saints Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonicus, as having been crowned around the same time at Pergamum He is praised by Eusebius after Saints Carpus and his companions in which Saint Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, suffered, begins chapter 16 with these words: "About the same time also Justin… after he had offered a second book in defense of our faith, was crowned with holy martyrdom through the deceit and machinations of the philosopher Crescens." Usuard, as also Ado of Vienne, finding the aforesaid Martyrs (perhaps in some copy of the Hieronymian Martyrology) commemorated on April 13, and is placed by Usuard together with them on April 13 and deeming it unworthy that so illustrious a champion of the Christian faith as Justin, praised immediately afterward by Eusebius, should nowhere be lauded in the Latin calendars, inserted him himself on the same day, appending these words to the elogium of the aforesaid Martyrs: "With whom also that admirable man Justin the Philosopher, laboring much in writing on behalf of the Catholic religion, received as the reward of his faithful tongue the gift of martyrdom." Usuard was followed by Bellinus of Padua, then by others, and Francesco Maurolico, and finally in the most recent revision of the Roman Martyrology by Cardinal Baronius, with some words added from Eusebius, and with the designation of a place that Usuard did not seem to have conceived as different from Pergamum, and which we confess to be unknown to us.
[2] Peter Galesinius composed a fuller elogium of the same Saint Justin in this manner: "On this very day, of Saint Justin Martyr. He at first adhered to the Stoic, then to the Peripatetic, then to the Pythagorean, and afterwards to the Platonic school of philosophy; and by Galesinius with a fuller elogium. at last, every philosophic sect having been rejected, it came about by divine disposition that he embraced the faith of Christ Jesus: of which he proved so very zealous a defender that he could be deterred from defending it neither by threats nor by any tortures, nor even by death: which is sufficiently declared by the distinguished books he wrote in defense of the Christian religion. Against every class of men who shrink from the doctrine of the Gospel, he showed himself severe—most of all against the philosophers, and especially against Crescens the Cynic, whose wicked life and morals he had reproved before many listeners; and because of this, through the plotting of that man, he suffered many things in the Antonine persecution, and at last, in defense of Gospel truth, he obtained by illustrious martyrdom the exceptional crown of eternal glory."
[3] The Greeks, in the printed and handwritten Menaea and Synaxaria, and from these Maximus Cythereus ἐν βίοις Ἁγίων ("in the Lives of the Saints"), relate these things concerning Justin the Philosopher: He is honored by the Greeks "This man was from Flavia of Syria, the son of Priscus Bacchius. Having gone to Rome, he presented to the Emperor Antoninus books against the error of idols in favor of the faith and profession of Christians; in which he confirmed the latter by clear demonstrations and overthrew the former. Then by the envy of the philosopher Crescens, after many tortures first endured, he was put to death. He attained by purity of life and innocence to the summit of virtue, and full of all knowledge both divine and human, he left to all the faithful most learned and most useful books which bring outstanding understanding to their readers." This the Greeks relate on the first day of June. as if extinguished by poison, They explain the manner of his death, after the usual prefixed distich, thus:
Ἰουστῖνον κώνειον ἧρεν ἐκ βίου, Ὡς εἴθε πρῶτον τοὺς πιεῖν δεδωκότας.
The cruel hemlock gave Justin to death, But first, as is wont, those who offered it.
[4] The day of the death he endured for the faith might seem to be marked in the metrical Ephemeris in a hexameter alluding to the poisoned draught, which, because it brought salvation and purgation of soul to Justin, June 1 ought to be reckoned as a drink of hellebore most efficacious against poison. The verse is this:
Πρώτη Ἰουνίου Ἰουστῖνον ἑλλεβορίζει.
"The first light of June purges blessed Justin."
But whoever reads the aforesaid Ephemeris through, as it is noted in the first volume of this month and likewise in the first of March, on the occasion of another Justin, will plainly perceive that only the day of veneration in general is noted, even when the words speak as it were of a day of birth into eternity. Therefore we can have no certainty about the day of death from this, and space is left for the opinion that the first of June was assigned to Saint Justin by those Greeks who first judged him worthy of ecclesiastical memory (as he indeed was most worthy) because on such a day there was celebrated among them with solemn Office another Justin, who suffered at Rome with his companions under the prefect Rusticus, whose Acts exist among the Greeks and are now available in Latin in Lipomanus and Surius, and also his elogium in the Menaea and Synaxaria, wholly different from that which is given to Saint Justin the Philosopher.
[5] Different, I say: for the Greeks think so, and the Acts of both show it clearly enough. distinct from this one and slain by the sword, For they celebrate on the same day the different death of each with different elogiums and verses, praising the first as consummated by poison, the other by the sword; and in the Typicon, printed at Venice together with the other sacred books, or the Order for celebrating the divine Office, they expressly note: Εἰς τὴν ά. Τοῦ ἁγίου Μάρτυρος Ἰουστίνου τοῦ φιλοσόφου, καὶ ἑτέρου Μάρτυρος Ἰουστίνου, καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ. "On the first day: of the holy Martyr Justin the Philosopher, and of another Martyr Justin and his Companions." In the Chifflet manuscript Menaeum, from which many defects of the printed Menaea are supplied, we found four pairs of senarii concerning that other Justin and his companions, lacking in the printed texts before the elogium, the first of which senarii are these:
Οὔπω τεμεῖν Ἰοῦστον ἔφθη τὸ ξίφος Καὶ τὴν κεφαλλὴν ἦν κλίνων Ἰουστῖνος
"Not yet had the sword come to sever Justus, and honored with the whole day's office together with his companions. when Justin stood with bent neck."
Concerning Justus, the seventh companion of this Justin, whom only the Chifflet manuscript has—how he came to be added to the others—we shall inquire on June 1: it is enough here to have noted how distinctly the senarii prefixed to the elogium of each express the different manner of death. Nor does it make against this that Saint Jerome rendered these words of Eusebius concerning Crescens, ὃς Ἰουστίνῳ τῷ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς θείῳ φιλοσόφῳ τὸν μαρτυρικὸν συνεσκεύασε θάνατον, in this Latin way: "who stirred up a persecution against Justin, philosopher of our religion, in which he gloriously shed his blood for Christ." For it is clear that this is the looser interpretation, since the original text indicates only a martyric death—that is, a violent one for the faith: for it is well known that a violent death is often called "bloody," and conversely only that death is called "bloodless" in which someone dies naturally in peace. And in this way Photius too must be understood, where he praises Justin for having confirmed philosophy by the blood of martyrdom, Μαρτυρικοῖς ἅιμασι.
[6] As concerns his Acts, we have none of Justin the Philosopher except such as can be gathered from his own writings and from Eusebius and other ancient sources; which suggest nothing other than this: that after his constancy had also been tried by torments, he was secretly taken out of the way—which was indeed suitable for soothing envy, Since the Acts of both are very different, lest, by subjecting to public execution so illustrious a philosopher, who had vanquished in debate all the wise men of the city of Rome, and had defended the cause of the Christian faith in writing before the Emperors themselves, they should make his victory over themselves and their superstitions more widely known to the whole world. By such obscurity of the death inflicted, we suppose it came to pass that neither was the day known, nor his memory entered into the older calendars of Martyrs, nor could his body be preserved for veneration. The other Justin with his companions was so brief a guest at Rome that no house in Rome besides his own lodging was known to him; and he was so unknown to the Prefect Rusticus that he had to be asked by him to what kind of learning and discipline he belonged. This one, tried by no torments, but after the interrogation of himself and his companions and after the sentence of death passed against them, and after the customary scourging, was beheaded with an axe, and his body taken up by the faithful: which, together with the very Acts of the interrogation, having been carried off into Greece, it came about that those dead remained unknown to the Latins, who while living had been known to but few; but among the Greeks they obtained an illustrious veneration to this very day.
[7] It is, moreover, quite astonishing that Cardinal Baronius, weaving those Acts into his Annals for the year 135, it is strange that these Acts were attributed to the Philosopher and commending the same in his Notes to the Roman Martyrology as genuine and sincere and circumscribed by no paraphrases, but as they were transcribed from the Acts of the magistracy—astonishing, I say, that Baronius could be persuaded and could persuade others that those Acts are certainly those of Justin the Philosopher, on account of the passage of Epiphanius—enormously corrupt, as he himself is compelled to admit—in which it is asserted that the Philosopher suffered under the prefect Rusticus, under whom the other Acts have him put to death; and on account of his experience in every kind of doctrine,
in which this Justin also professes to have been instructed. It is not impossible, nor even strange, that two men of the same name and doctrine should have suffered martyrdom under the same prefect: why then should we believe that those Acts are those of Justin the Philosopher, which contain nothing of his chief titles to praise, in which nothing is read either of the petitions offered to the Emperor, or of the disputes against the philosophers, or of the machinations of Crescens the Cynic? Surely all these things, as they were by no means obscure but most famous to the whole City, and especially to the Christians triumphing through Justin, deserved more to be recorded by him who collected the Acts than only the headings of interrogations and responses, if the matter concerned such and so great a man as Justin the Philosopher.
§ II. Epiphanius concerning Justin restored: the Apologies of Justin for the Christians distinguished.
[8] A corrupt passage of Epiphanius concerning the same man, The passage of Epiphanius, cited in the preceding section from the Panarion, heresy 26 or 46, against the Tatianists, now reads in all editions as follows: Οὗτος ὁ Ἰουστῖνος Σαμαρείτης ἦν τὸ γένος, εἰς Χριστὸν πεπιστευκὼς, καὶ μεγάλως ἐξασκηθεὶς, ἀρετῆς τε βίον ἐνδειξάμενος, τὸ τέλος ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ μαρτυρήσας, τελείου στεφάνου καταξιοῦται, ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων, ἐπὶ Ῥουστικοῦ ἡγεμόνος καὶ Ἀδριανοῦ βασιλέως, ἐτῶν τριάκοντα ὑπάρχων, ἐν καθεστώσῃ ἡλικίᾳ. "This Justin was by birth a Samaritan, and having embraced the faith of Christ, and greatly exercised in it, having displayed a life of virtue, and at last having witnessed for Christ, he was deemed worthy of the perfect crown in the territory of the Romans, under the governor Rusticus and the Emperor Adrian, when he was thirty years old, at a settled age." And here, as many as handle this passage, charge Epiphanius with wondrous carelessness in writing, in that he should say a man to have suffered under Hadrian whom he knew to have offered the first book in defense of the faith of Christ to Hadrian's successor Antoninus; nor could he doubt that he was at least fifty years old when he met death, inasmuch as he is praised as being next to Apostolic times.
[9] if corrected by transposition of lines. But they would have done far more wisely if they had asserted that by the customary carelessness of copyists the lines were first transposed (for this happens most easily; and once so done, it could have passed into all subsequent copies), and that the passage was thus corrupted; which it does not seem to us unsuitable to restore to its integrity and truth in this way: Οὗτος ὁ Ἰουστῖνος Σαμαρείτης ἦν τὸ γένος, ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονείας (for Plutarch also calls the consulship ἡγεμονείαν, which others perhaps call ὑπατείαν) Ῥουστικοῦ καὶ Ἀδριανοῦ βασιλέως, ἐτῶν τριάκοντα ὑπάρχων, ἐν καθεστώσῃ ἡλικίᾳ εἰς Χριστὸν πεπιστευκὼς, etc. "This Justin was by birth a Samaritan; but under the Roman consulship of Rusticus and the Emperor Hadrian—that is, in the year 119 of the common era, he teaches that he was converted in his 30th year, in the year of Christ 119, when he was already thirty years old, at the perfect age (according to the division of human ages received among authors), having embraced the faith of Christ," etc.; or thus: ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς Ῥωμαίων ὑπατείας (substituting this word for the second ἐπὶ which is redundant) Ῥουστικοῦ ἤγε Ἰουνίου καὶ Ἀδριανοῦ, "when Rusticus or Junius (for by this praenomen is Q. Junius Rusticus called) and Hadrian were Consuls," etc.
[10] and so that he was more than sixty years old. With either correction admitted, and the transposition of one line, the whole passage stands very nicely, and Justin, born before the year 89 of the Christian era, in the 13th year of Antoninus Pius, the year of Christ 150, would have been more than sixty when Eusebius was commonly believed to have written in his Chronicle: "Crescens the Cynic is known, who prepared the death of martyrdom for Justin the philosopher of our divine teaching, being refuted by him as being a glutton and an impostor"—which George Syncellus so transcribed as if in that year Crescens had been the author of Justin's death; and looking to the same passage of Eusebius, Glycas wrote in the third part of his Annals that Justin the Philosopher lost his life under Pius, to be a witness of the Christian doctrine. But if, with the more common, more certain, and more express opinion of Eusebius in his History, you say that he died under Marcus Aurelius Verus and Lucius Antonius Commodus, or 77 years old, he would have been nearly eighty years old, dying according to the Chronicle commonly called Alexandrian (but really Constantinopolitan), in the consulship of Orphitus and Pudens, in the 5th year of those same Emperors, the year of Christ 165.
[11] even if he had died under Antoninus Pius, Henry Valesius, the most illustrious illustrator and commentator of Eusebius, embraces the former opinion of a death endured under Antoninus Pius; which if it were established for us by more certain authority, the passage of Epiphanius could be saved by the mere transposition of a few words in this way: Σαμαρείτης ἦν τὸ γένος, ἐτῶν δὲ τριάκοντα ὑπάρχων ἐν καθεστώσῃ ἡλικίᾳ εἰς Χριστὸν πεπιστευκὼς … στεφάνου καταξιοῦται ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων, ἐπὶ Ῥουστικοῦ ἡγεμόνος καὶ Ἀδριανοῦ (add or understand Ἀντωνίνου) βασιλέως. "He was by birth a Samaritan, but when, in his thirtieth year, a man of perfect age, he had believed in Christ… at length he obtained the crown at Rome, under Rusticus the prefect of the city (for that he was such is clear also from the Acts of the other Justin and his companions) and under Emperor Hadrian Antoninus, which however we do not think, to whom the cognomen Pius was commonly added." This alone displeases, that ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥωμαίων, namely πόλεως, is taken otherwise than the preposition ἐπὶ is wont to be added to names of places, not when we signify rest in a place, but motion toward a place. But it could be said that the word ἀφικνούμενος has fallen out, so that the sense is: "when he had come to Rome." From this, meanwhile, it is manifest, by so multiple a correction that can be applied to Epiphanius (and that some is necessary, all admit), that nothing certain concerning the time of the death suffered can be had from Epiphanius: only it is probably asserted that he was a man of thirty when he was converted to the faith of Christ, under the Emperor Hadrian, under whom, as Cedrenus says, he bravely fought against all heresies.
[12] "Justin," says Eusebius in book 4, chapter 18, "left us very many monuments of his genius, of his learning, and of his zeal devoted to divine things, though we acknowledge that the 1st Apology is what is commonly called the 2nd, full of manifold usefulness." Of these, whatever came to his notice, the aforementioned Eusebius recounts by their titles; and from him, Jerome in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 23, and Photius. Peter Halloix our fellow Jesuit, in the second volume On Eastern Writers, in the Life of this Justin, chapter 25, and Philippe Labbe treat of the same, adding to those earlier ones certain lucubrations of the same holy Martyr unknown to them, some as certain, others as doubtful, concerning which it does not belong here to dispute. "The first place among his books," says Eusebius himself, "is held by his oration to Antoninus surnamed Pius, and to his Sons and the Roman Senate, written in defense of our Religion. Another of his orations, likewise containing a defense of our faith, was addressed to Antoninus Verus, the successor and namesake of the above-mentioned Emperor." The first is without doubt that which we have in all collectors of the works of Saint Justin, and the writing commonly called the 1st Apology. under the very title which Eusebius indicates: and it is the same from which both he and other Fathers transcribe and quote various passages. Before this in all editions is prefixed a certain writing, as if to the Senate, with this beginning: "Those things which yesterday and on the recent days in your city, O Romans, happened under Urbicius." That this writing is directed not to the Senate alone but also to the Emperor, Valesius, the commentator of Eusebius, shows from more than one passage where Justin himself addresses the Emperor; and he rightly wonders how it could have occurred to Peter Halloix to deny that he there addresses the Emperor even once.
[13] Now, lest we can doubt whether it is Pius or Verus whom he addresses in this writing, the rebuke of the Christian Ptolemaeus against Urbicius makes plain, and that it too is directed to Pius: reproaching him for judging οὐ πρέποντα Εὐσεβεῖ Αὐτοκράτορι, οὐ Φιλοσόφῳ Καίσαρος παιδὶ, "not as befits the Pious Emperor, or a Philosopher, the son of Caesar," namely Marcus Aurelius, adopted by Antoninus Pius while he was still a Caesar, at the command of Hadrian. So Valesius more fully in his Annotations on chapter 17 of Eusebius: with whom, in so evident a matter, we cannot so far fail to agree. But whereas, following the crowd of his predecessors, he took that writing as a second Apology, distinct from the Oration already mentioned, and consequently as that which, believing it to have been addressed to the successor of Antoninus, So that as a preface to the 1st Apology itself, Eusebius shamefully erred; in this we cannot agree with him. Wherefore, though we judge that they are convicted of error, by the opinion of Valesius and of almost all the learned, who have called the Oration presented to Antoninus Pius the Second Apology, since by all the ancients it is cited as the first, as indeed it is; yet we do not suffer this writing, which the editors of Justin's works have wrongly called the first, to be called by Valesius the second. What then? It is a kind of preface or introduction for preparing the minds of the Emperor, the Senate, and the people, by an exposition of the most unjust action carried out against the Christians, on whose occasion he had written the apologetic Oration; so that, when a decree of the Senate had been written for no longer persecuting the Christians, this petition—that is, the Apology itself which he was offering, most perfect in all respects—might be prefixed; whence, he says, "our affairs may be known also by others, and those very men freed from false suspicion, who, without their own fault, become liable to punishments." Since this preliminary writing cannot accomplish this, it is clear that it is not itself the petition which the holy Martyr commends to be published throughout the whole Empire.
[14] and not to be distinguished from it according to Eusebius, But these things being so laid down, it is gratuitously assumed by Valesius that Eusebius had no other cause for delaying the martyrdom of Saint Justin to the times of Antoninus Verus and Aurelius Commodus, than that he had falsely persuaded himself that Justin had offered another book to those same Emperors in defense of our faith. If indeed he truly did this (for how could Eusebius and Jerome and all subsequent writers have been so blind about a fact so recent?), the second book, not received with the same favor and success as the first, was either suppressed by the pagan Emperors and not permitted to be made public, or at any rate today is nowhere extant, which is Scaliger's opinion in his Eusebian Animadversions, p. 201. That it was suppressed is suggested by the deep silence concerning it among the ancients, none of whom is found to have cited anything from Justin's Apologies that is not found in the first oration, or in what we have called its preface. For Eusebius not only takes the Preface and the Oration for one and the same first Apology, when in chapter 16 he adduces from the said Preface a notable passage against Crescens the Cynic—The Second, which was offered to Verus, seems to have been suppressed. where we should read ἐν τῇ δεδηλωμένῃ ἀπολογίᾳ—but also seems to imply that only the first Apology came out into publication. For what is δεδηλωμένῃ? Valesius, supporting his own conjecture, translates "Preface," so that the second book is to be understood, of which Eusebius had spoken immediately before.
Christopherson, in accordance with the mind of the author and the truth, translates it far more aptly, as we just now noted, so that the passage is understood as taken not from the second book, but from the first Apology, of which he had treated in chapter 8. But if the word itself is looked into more carefully, it will signify nothing other than "published" or "made manifest," so that it is thus distinguished from that one which, suppressed by the Emperors, did not come out into publication. Nor let anyone be troubled that in Valesius' version, in that chapter of Eusebius, the "Most August Emperors" are named, so that two co-reigning ones are understood, Verus and Commodus: for these words are absent from the Greek, even in Valesius himself, and only ὑμᾶς is found, that is, "You"—those namely to whom the address is made, the Emperor and his sons the Caesars. There were those who thought that the Legatio pro Christianis which exists under the name of Athenagoras, offered to Verus and Commodus a little after the year 175, is the second Apology of Justin: but Halloix solidly refutes them, both from the great diversity of style, and from a passage of the same Legatio which is cited by the words and name of Athenagoras himself by Proclus, a contemporary of Origen, in Epiphanius, heresy 64, excellently corrected on this occasion.
[15] Photius in the Bibliotheca, coming to Justin's works, says, "The Apology of Justin the Martyr was read, Four treatises of Justin against the Greeks, both against the Greeks and against the Jews" (meaning not one treatise, namely, but several of his little works against both, designating them under the one name of "Apology"); then enumerating one by one what the same man wrote against the Greeks, he says, "He composed four treatises against the Gentiles; of which he offered the first (perhaps first not so much in time as in dignity and preeminence) to Antoninus surnamed Pius, his sons, and the Senate; the second (which we complain does not exist, and which we cannot sufficiently know from this manner of speaking was read by Photius) likewise to his successors: in the third he discoursed on the nature of daemons"—which is the λόγος παραινετικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας, "an exhortatory oration to the Greeks or Gentiles," placed first among the works; "the fourth discourse, also composed by him against the Gentiles, is entitled ἔλεγχος (refutation)," which now is held, after the Apology, the book On the Monarchy of God, and another against Aristotelian doctrines, and their order. under the title of Questions and Answers to the Greeks. And in that fourth book are contained ἐρωτήσεις χριστιανικαὶ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, Christian questions to the Greeks, ἀποκρίσεις ἑλληνικαὶ, Greek responses, and τῶν ἀποκρίσεων οὐκ ὀρθῶς γενομένων ἔλεγχοι, refutations of responses not rightly made: which Halloix in chapter 26 rightly judged to have been his first work after becoming a Christian, since it so begins: "Do not suppose, O Greeks, that this defection of mine from your rites is without reason or judgment." But before he offered the first Apology to Antoninus Pius, both perhaps several other books and, above all, that one he certainly wrote which he entitled "Against All the Heresies That Have Been," as he himself testifies in the said Apology. But the Dialogue with Trypho is later than the Apology itself, since Justin in the Dialogue clearly cites its passage about Simon Magus, and indeed as from a writing presented to Caesar, ἐγγραφῶς Καίσαρι προσομιλῶν.
§ III. At what times were the aforesaid Apologies presented?
[16] Someone will now perhaps ask, in what year Justin presented that first book of his to Antoninus Pius, defending (as Jerome writes to Magnus, Ep. 84) "the ignominy of the Cross, The 1st Apology is known to all and praised, and preaching the resurrection of Christ with all liberty." This cannot indeed be precisely defined; yet we can say this, from the book itself, that the book was presented in the second century of the common era as it was tending toward the middle, or was already advanced that far; for he himself raises the objection that "we assert Christ to have been born under Cyrenius a hundred and fifty years ago." And if you take that number most precisely, presented around the year 150, subtracting from the one hundred and fifty those five years which we have taught should be inserted between the nativity of Christ and the beginning of the common era, you will have the year 145 of the said era; however, it does not appear from that objection of the Gentiles that the years are so precisely taken that a round number, commonly used, cannot be understood—to which several years still had to be added. Therefore we can only say this: that the aforesaid Apology was offered around the year 150 of the common era.
[17] But Eusebius in his Chronicle, on the 4th year of Antoninus Pius, which is the 142nd of the common era, writes thus: which Eusebius will seem to have noted in the Chronicle, "Justin the Philosopher presented to Antoninus a book written in defense of our religion." We acknowledge that this is now read in Eusebius: but at the same time we also observe that on the 13th year of the same Pius, which for Christians is 150, it is written in the same Chronicle thus: "Crescens the Cynic becomes known, who was the cause of martyrdom for Justin, the divine philosopher of our teaching, being reproved for gluttony and imposture." But now, who reads Justin's Apology and does not at the same time recognize that Crescens was most well-known at Rome before Justin wrote that Apology? We think, therefore, that those passages have been exchanged with one another, and that not recently, but around the times of Jerome, or perhaps by the example of Jerome himself if his two passages concerning Justin are exchanged with one another, in making a Latin version of Eusebius' Chronicle: namely because that passage about Crescens, plotting Justin's death, was thought to be an indicator of the year in which Justin received the crown of martyrdom. But just as Jerome sufficiently retracted this in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, acknowledging that Justin was still contending for the faith under Marcus and Verus, so perhaps he would have corrected this too, if it had been his task to treat elsewhere of the beginnings of Crescens. Wherefore nothing prevents us from holding that Crescens became known at Rome in the 4th year of Antoninus, and that afterwards Justin, having arrived at Rome, confuted him in manifold disputations, and at last in the 13th year of the said Emperor or thereabouts offered the book in which there is much discourse about Crescens, and no vain foreboding of the author himself of the death to be prepared for him by that man.
[18] Eusebius, in book 4, chapter 12 of his History, treating of this book of Justin, after it there will be established a rescript on behalf of Christians, adds the following words: "The same Emperor, being appealed to also by other Brothers in Asia, who were being harassed with every kind of wrong by the provincials, sent a Constitution of this sort to the Common Council of Asia." This Constitution forms chapter 13 of the aforementioned book: but marvelous to say, with this beginning: "The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Armeniacus, Pontifex Maximus, of Tribunician Power the 15th time, Consul the 3rd time. To the Common Council of Asia, greeting." Nobody shall persuade us that Eusebius was so blind as to have taken some Constitution of M. Aurelius and substituted it for a Constitution of Antoninus Pius, whose Acts and times he was treating there, although Scaliger and Valesius saddle him with this charge: but we shall believe that the title was added by a rash hand, having perhaps been missing in an ancient codex; or that the residual marks of names and times were unskillfully supplied. if the title, corrupted in Eusebius, is restored? What if, with certain letters rubbed out, there was still read: "Imperator Caesar …elius Antoninus Augustus …icus, of Tribunician Power the 15th, Consul the 3rd"? Surely then some more expert person might have supplied it thus: "Imperator Caesar T. Aelius Antoninus Augustus, Parthicus, of Tribunician Power the 15th; Consul the 4th, and last." Now Antoninus Pius entered his fourth consulship in the 8th year of his reign, in the 8th or 9th year of Tribunician Power, and thereafter he is found written as Consul for the fourth time. The aforesaid Constitution therefore would belong to about his 15th year, so that in its being passed Justin's Apology thus far commended could have contributed no small weight: after which the same letter of Pius is found in the printed exemplars of Justin, much more authentic than in Eusebius, especially in the title, as we shall see below in the Life.
[19] When the second Apology—which we lament does not exist—was written and presented, we do not know: the 2nd Apology seems to have been offered, it is credible, however, that it was not done before the persecution against the Christians was revived. Now it was revived not by any Imperial command (for it is established that, from the time when Saint Abercius, Bishop of Hierapolis, freed Lucilla, wife of Lucius Verus, from a demon, the Emperors favored the Christians, against whom no law was passed by them, as Tertullian testifies: so that on this head those are excusable who thought the aforementioned Rescript from Eusebius should be attributed to Marcus Aurelius), but as Eusebius writes in the proem of book 5, at the time when Eleutherus succeeded Soter, in a persecution raised up by the populace around the year 170, namely around the year 171, "when in several parts of the world a more violent persecution had been stirred up against ours by the incursion of the populace, nearly countless Martyrs shone forth throughout the whole earth." Who, then, would doubt that the second Apology was written to quench this persecution, and to seek a remedy from the Emperors, by no means hostile to the Christian name, if Justin was then still alive and in the same estimation of doctrine even among the Gentiles?
[20] But why was he not then much more than eighty years old? Indeed the authority of the Alexandrian Chronicle, which we mentioned, on which occasion Crescens the Cynic used it, alleged in number 10, is not of such weight to us that on its account we should fear to prolong Justin's life by six or seven years. Further, it is by no means fitting: for it is credible that Crescens, his rival, did not long sleep on an opportunity to crush his adversary, through magistrates eager to please the people, by denouncing him for Christianity—which denunciation would have had no place while the Christians were at peace. But since, even in that commotion, it seemed safer to attack a man of so famous a name by poison rather than by the sword, the impious used it; and thus the noble circumstances of his martyrdom, most worthy of the memory of posterity, nearly escaped the notice of the Christians, so that neither about the day nor the place of the death inflicted has anything come down to us. he plotted the death of Justin in his absence. Yet it is probable that outside the city of Rome and outside the sight of the Emperors, the hidden machinations of Crescens against Justin prevailed. For when you hear "hidden machinations," you easily conceive that it was not at all necessary that Crescens should be thought to have left Rome: for the more remote he was in place, the more hidden the machination could have been; and in Asia the malice of Crescens did not need laboriously to seek fit ministers of his frauds, who could know that the Jews were signally provoked against Justin by that notable volume which, under the title of Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, On the Truth of the Christian Religion, he wrote to Pompeius, arising from a conversation which we shall recall below in the Life as having taken place with the aforesaid Trypho at Corinth.
[21] In the year 1623, in the Abbey of Hersfeld near Fulda, nine bodies of Saints were discovered and shortly afterwards brought to Eichstätt to the church of our Society, whose names were indicated in the choir register in such a way that in the second place was "Saint Justin Martyr, on the 10th day before the Kalends of April." If it were read "the 12th day before the Kalends," we could suspect that the deposition of Justianus or Justinianus was
of Justinianus, Bishop of Vercelli (whose memory alone Vercelli keeps on that day, displaying no relics of the body nor knowing any Acts), brought hither perhaps from Italy, as other bodies from among those mentioned were brought from the same place. Now our Fathers have chosen to celebrate April 13 for the same, as if it were of Justin the Philosopher, with a double-rite Office. But whichever Justin, Justianus, or Justinianus it may be, we do not think it is that of the one we are treating: nor, elsewhere, are the relics of any Saint Justin of his—such as the piece of the skull at Floreffe, an Abbey of the Premonstratensian Order near Namur, or elsewhere his relics? according to Raissius in his Hierogazophylacium Belgicum; a certain particle in the College of Saints Willibrord and Boniface at Cologne, according to Gelenius in his book On the Greatness of Cologne Agrippina, p. 616; another in the church of Saint Mary of Sapientia at Naples, according to Beyerlinck in his Theatrum Vitae Humanae; and a notable portion at Bologna in the church of Saint George of the Servite Fathers, according to Masini in his Bononia Perlustrata; although on this day they themselves venerate it. For we think altogether that for the same cause for which the day and place of the death of Saint Justin the Philosopher remained obscure, the Relics also remained hidden: of which, if there had been any notice among Greeks or Latins, they would have had with them also a certain annual veneration from the very beginning; nor would his name have been so fortuitously, and on occasion of others, inserted into the sacred calendars. In all, Halloix in the Preface to his Annotations on the Life enumerates seven Justins known with ecclesiastical veneration to the Latins, besides this Philosopher, whom you may consult, about to find more in the Hieronymian Martyrology.
[22] Concerning the Eichstätt relics we shall treat on October 16, on which day Saint Lullus, Archbishop of Mainz, is venerated, whose undoubted and more certain relics were brought to Eichstätt before the others. Now nothing remains for us concerning Justin the Philosopher except that we should present some Life of him. And we shall present that which exists in the work of Peter Halloix our fellow Jesuit, A Life collected by Peter Halloix. On Eastern Writers, p. 155 and following, not unhappily collected, with digressions omitted; with certain points also, where his chronology deceived him, relegated to the Annotations, and some placed in another order for the same reason, as if the whole composition were our own. Another, briefly compiled by Joachim Perionius the Benedictine, is sufficient to be read before Justin's works, especially since Laurentius Surius inserted the same into his own work on this day, prudently judging that the one whose Martyrdom with his companions he gave from Lipomanus under the month of June is different from the one we are treating, although he does not set forth all the things that easily persuade us he is not the same. After the Life, the same Halloix collects many other things concerning Saint Justin's ecclesiastical teachings, works, and fragments of works, as well as some of his opinions now less approved, but not yet defined in that beginning of Christian affairs; which we prefer to be read in Halloix himself, content with having given the history of the Life and a synopsis of his principal virtues.
LIFE BY PETER HALLOIX OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS,
WOVEN TOGETHER ALMOST ENTIRELY FROM THE SAINT'S OWN WORKS.
Justin, Philosopher and Martyr (Saint)
BY PETER HALLOIX.
PREFACE.
[1] We are undertaking in the present work the life of a Philosopher-writer; but of that philosopher who, having curiously wandered through nearly all the sects of earthly wise philosophers, Encomium of Saint Justin, at last most happily brought the vessel of his studies to anchor in the true philosophy of Christ, as to the safest harbor of eternal truth: but of that writer who in his writing had nothing else proposed to himself than the protection of innocence, the patronage of religion, the worship and honor of the one true God: and finally that life which in studies, in morals, in all deeds was most abundant in singular diligence, industry, piety, and, in one word, in all doctrine and virtue worthy of a true and Christian philosopher. Whence it seems to me that at present I can neither wish for anything better nor ask of God anything more wholesome than that he whom the ancient Fathers vied with one another in praising, a some calling him "great," some "admirable," some "most admirable," b others "divine," all lovers of true Philosophy should especially admire, love, honor, imitation commended, and emulate. Which indeed I trust they will do, if they have thoroughly imbibed with their whole mind that distinguished saying of this same Philosopher (which he expressed happily not more by words than by the whole tenor of his life): namely, that this one end is set before those truly philosophizing, c "to be made like unto God, as much as is possible"; that is, to strive to draw as near as possible (as much as is lawful for a man dwelling on earth) to the very fountain of all wisdom, both in integrity of doctrine and in sincerity of morals. Therefore, by the divine merits of this most holy man, his suffrage invoked, and by the heavenly-infused abundance of supernal goods to that great soul, I earnestly pray and implore God Most Good and Greatest to add both strong powers to my wit, and that firmness to my pious will, by which I may be able to write the Life, teaching, and distinguished deeds of the Saint in a style most fit for stirring minds to imitation; and that He Himself, who alone is able, may make my readers ready and apt to grasp and emulate what they have read.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
Saint Justin's birth, studies, calling to Christ.
[2] Justin was born at Neapolis, a city of Samaria, which was first called Sichem by the Syrians, a then by the inhabitants Mabartha, and finally b Flavia Caesarea by the Latins, colonists having been sent there by Flavius Domitian Caesar. Born in Syria of Gentile parents, And he was born of the father Priscus Bacchius, a noble man, but a Gentile. c He was of a keen wit, a ready memory, and of good and constant judgment: accordingly, having been placed in schools, he first devoted excellent labor to humane letters, in which he was most thoroughly instructed beyond his peers. From these afterwards, though still a Gentile and ignorant of our faith, he advanced with incredible ardor of mind to higher studies: for God had placed in his mind, fit for great things, a certain immense and insatiable desire of seeking and knowing Him. having received humane letters, Wherefore, after the reading of the ancient poets, after the exercises of oratory, after the investigation and knowledge of various histories, he transferred himself wholly to the studies of philosophy: not that he made much of the subtleties and knots of disputation, but singularly and chiefly (as he afterwards testified of himself) in order that, thirsty in his whole soul, he might drink up the knowledge of the true God, which he thought was to be found among the philosophers if anywhere else; for nothing was now of greater importance to him than to hear, speak, and discuss concerning God. first with a Stoic master, Accordingly, he first gave himself up to the discipline of a Stoic philosopher; with whom having spent some time, since concerning other matters indeed he heard much, but concerning God hardly anything (for neither was that philosopher acquainted with so great a matter, and accordingly he kept saying that such knowledge was not even necessary to a philosopher), he bade him farewell, and passed to another, a man of the Peripatetic sect, as it seemed to him, then to a Peripatetic, keen and subtle. By whom, when in the first days he had been kindly admitted and received, he was shortly after asked what fee he would promise to his master: for it did not please the Peripatetic to share his company without a pecuniary profit. Noticing which, Justin immediately dismissed him, judging that nothing was more foreign to the dignity of philosophy than the sordidness of avarice and the desire for base gain; and that that man did not seem nor was at all a philosopher who so panted after scraping together money.
[3] Afterwards to a Pythagorean, His mind meanwhile burned more and more with that which is proper to philosophy and far preeminent, that is, with love of the knowledge of God. He therefore met with a certain Pythagorean, a man of great name indeed, but of equally great haughtiness from his opinion of his own wisdom: with whom, having conversed, he earnestly desired to be admitted into his discipline and familiarity. But that man said: "What then? Are you versed in music, in astronomy, in geometry? Or perhaps do you think that without these arts, which lead the mind away from corporeal things and prepare it for what is perceived by the mind, you can attain anything of those things which look to blessedness? You err, my friend, by a whole heaven, if you think so." Finally, when he had greatly and much praised those disciplines and had taught that they were eminently necessary for a candidate of true philosophy, he quickly dismissed Justin, who confessed that he did not know them; Justin sadly indeed and very much taking it ill, that he was being thrust down from so great a hope as he had conceived of making profit with him. For weighing with himself the longer delay than he could bear, in the time that must be spent on those disciplines; what he was so avidly seeking was being deferred so long, at last he betakes himself to a Platonist: he could not endure it. Wherefore, when he had wavered for some time in doubt and in want of counsel, at length he decided to consult with the Platonists (whose honor and authority was great at that time), and to try whether anything was taught among them concerning God and divine things. For the Lord God seemed to wish to lead this man, still then a Gentile but one day to be initiated into the mysteries of the faith and to contend for them, through all the sects of the philosophers, so that afterwards, well known and examined, he might more conveniently and more strongly refute them in his own time (as indeed it came to pass); and might prove by their own weapons that nothing equal or like to the true and Christian philosophy is contained in them.
[4] Now it opportunely fell out that about the same time, to Flavia, or Neapolis of Syria Palaestina (of which we have said Justin was a citizen), there came a certain wise man and easily the chief among the Platonists. under whom, when he had made excellent progress, Into whose friendship and familiarity he eagerly insinuated himself; to him, as to a good and learned man, he adhered; and he profited so much in his company that he acquired no small name in that philosophy. How from it he afterwards passed to a far nobler and more divine philosophy, which is taught in the Christian school—a matter full of wonder—I shall undertake to relate at present. Wonderfully did Justin delight, in that Platonic school, in the subtle understanding of incorporeal natures, with which was joined a sublime contemplation of ideas, which so (as he himself proclaimed of himself in nearly as many words) lifted him up as on certain wings on high, that in a short space, having become wise in his own eyes, and from a foolish persuasion, he seemed about to see God immediately (for that is the end of Platonic philosophy). and was meditating alone with himself in the country, In this state, it seemed good to him at some time to seek solitude and retirement outside the city walls, and for the sake of meditation to avoid the ways and meetings of men,
[to] turn aside. He therefore withdrew to a certain place not far from the sea; to which, when he had drawn near, and was about to be alone with himself there, behold, a man of great age, of venerable appearance, bearing before him a certain affability with a remarkable gravity, and at a small distance, seemed to follow him. To whom he himself, turning, and holding back his step, when he had sharply fixed the edge of his eyes upon him, the old man, addressing him first, said: "Do you recognize me?" "Not at all," said Justin. by an unknown but venerable old man "Why then," the old man added, "do you look at me so?" "Because I am astonished to find you here with me," Justin answered. "For I was not expecting to find any mortal in this place." Then he said: "Certain friends of mine, having set out abroad, were the cause of my coming here. For I have come to look for them, if perhaps they may appear from somewhere. But you, indeed, what are you doing here?" "I delight in these solitary walks," said Justin, "for thus I converse with myself without interruption; for these places are most fit for the cultivation of reason."
[5] Then the old man, as though Justin had said that those places were most fit for the cultivation of speech (for the word φιλολογία, which Justin had used, could be taken either way), playing on the word, said: "You are, then, only a lover of speech, and not at all of work and truth? And do you not strive rather to become an active philosopher than a wordy sophist?" he is asked about his pursuit, To whom Justin, understanding "philosophy" under the name of "reason," said: "For what better or more excellent thing could anyone do than to show that reason is the guide and director of all things? And that one who attains to it and uses it as a vehicle, may at length, as from a watchtower, look down upon the errors and pursuits of others, and contemplate how nothing sound, nothing pleasing to God they accomplish? For without philosophy and the right use of reason, prudence can by no means stand. Hence all mortals ought to philosophize, and indeed to judge this the greatest and most excellent work; but to reckon all other things in second and third place: which things themselves, however, if they are perfected by philosophy, will then be moderate and worthy of embrace; but if they lack it, base and sordid." After which the old man said: "Does philosophy then bring happiness?" and about the manner of knowing God, To whom Justin: "It does so altogether, and indeed it alone." "Tell me then," said the old man, "if perhaps it is not troublesome, what philosophy is, and what is its happiness?" Justin answered: "Philosophy is the knowledge of that which is, and the cognition of truth. And happiness is the reward of the same knowledge and wisdom." "Now then," he said, "what do you call God?" "That which is always the same in the same way, and to all other things is the cause that they exist—that I say is God," Justin answered. Delighted with his answers, the old man persisted in questioning, and asked: "Is the name of 'knowledge' common to different things? For in all the arts, whichever of them anyone may master, he is called knowing of that art, whether military or navigational or medical, and similarly in others, both divine and human. Is not the matter so? Come then again. Is there some knowledge which begets at the same time the knowledge of things both divine and human?" "Most certainly," said Justin.
[6] "What then?" pressed the old man. "Is it the same to know God as to know music, or arithmetic, or astronomy, or anything else of that kind?" different from that by which other things are learned, "Not at all," answered Justin. "Then you have not answered me rightly," said the old man: "since of the sciences we acquire some by instruction, some by practice, others by direct sight itself. Just as if someone should tell you that in India there is a certain animal like no other animals, but such and such, variously colored and multiform, you would not, I think, know it before you had seen it; nor could you speak of it at all, unless you had first heard from one who had seen it." "Not at all," answered Justin. To whom the other said: "How then can the philosophers rightly understand concerning God, or by what means can they say anything true of Him, when they have no knowledge of Him—who have neither ever seen Him nor heard Him?" "But the divine Being, O Father," said Justin, "is not seen with these very eyes, like other living beings, but can be conceived only by the mind, as Plato says, as being attained only by the intellect, to whom I give credence." "Is there then," added the old man, "in our mind any power of such kind and so great that by it anything can be perceived and known more swiftly than through the senses? Or perhaps shall the soul of a man, not instructed by the Holy Spirit, ever see God?" "But this very thing," Justin added, "is what Plato calls the eye of the mind, and he teaches that it is given for this, that, clean and purged, it may be able to behold Being itself: which Being is indeed the cause of all things that are perceived by the mind; bearing no color, no figure, no magnitude, nothing else visible to the eyes; but it is Being above all essence, ineffable, inexplicable, alone both good and beautiful, and first implanted in well-born souls, on account of the kinship and love with which He desires to be seen by them." These things and many others concerning God, the world, which the schools of the Philosophers cannot rightly prepare for, the soul, when they had disputed back and forth (which, since they are drawn from the middle of Plato's philosophy, it is no more fitting to relate here, I pass over), this at last was the sum and end of the whole conversation, that the old man should teach Justin that he must not rest in the opinion of Plato, nor of Pythagoras, nor of any other philosopher, especially concerning God, concerning the soul, and concerning divine things, as though the truth had been found.
[7] Hearing these things, Justin, struck with astonishment, said: "What other master then shall one use? Or whence finally can one be helped, if not even in these is truth to be found?" Then the old man, boldly approaching the matter for which the whole disputation had been set up, said: "There were, in the age of the ancients, men much older than all these who are called philosophers—blessed men, he is taught to hope for the knowledge of God from the writings of the Prophets, just, dear to God, who inspired by the Holy Spirit prophesied those things which are happening today; they are called Prophets. These alone both understood the truth and announced it to men. In which matter they neither feared anyone, nor were led on by anyone, nor were ever overcome by glory, even slightly to feign anything; but they spoke out purely and sincerely only those things which, full of the Spirit of God, they had either seen or heard. Whence their writings exist even today, which can bring very much help to those who read them and give them faith, and, whether it be a question of the beginnings of things, or of the ends, or of other matters that are of interest for the philosopher to know, can furnish great light. Nor did they support their sayings with any forces of demonstration; since they themselves were, above all demonstration, most faithful witnesses of the truth: for both those things which have happened before and those which are still happening now compel us to assent to their sayings as to oracles. Although even for the miracles alone which they wrought they would merit all credence, especially since they both worshiped God the Creator of the universe, and foretold His Son Christ: which certainly those false d prophets, full of a deceiving and impure spirit, neither ever did nor now do, but only contrive certain wonderful works for terrifying men, while glorifying demons and spirits of error." When the blessed old man had said these things, with earnest entreaty added. he at last thus admonished Justin: "But before all things," he said, "pray to God, that He may open to you the gates of light: for these things can neither be seen nor understood indiscriminately by all, but only by those to whom this faculty is granted by God." When he had said these and many other things which it is not necessary to recall at present, and had exhorted Justin to pursue them, he departed from his sight, nor was he ever afterwards seen by him, nor recognized.
[8] But what Justin experienced when the old man had departed, and what he felt within himself, he himself related long afterwards to Trypho the Jew, a most noble man, Justin obeys the one rightly admonishing. in a certain conversation: "Immediately," he said, "after the words of that old man, a certain fire was kindled in my soul, and the love of the Prophets and of those men who are friends of Christ seized upon me; and while I was silently turning over the words of the old man with myself, I grasped that this alone was the safe and useful philosophy, which had been proposed to me by him. Thus therefore, and through such means, I became a philosopher." Namely, having read the books of the Prophets and the Apostles, he professes that he began to be a true philosopher, that is, a Christian. Then, as if rejoicing and growing warm with the memory of such a calling of his, he makes a pious and fervent vow to God for the like conversion to the faith of as many as possible, when he adds: "How I should wish, further, that all, affected in mind like me, might perpetually cleave to the words of our Savior! For they contain in themselves a certain salutary fear, and have great power to recall to the way those who have wandered from the right path: besides which, to those who have diligently meditated upon those discourses, they impart much the sweetest quiet and tranquility of mind." These and other things of this kind Justin said, by which he expressed—no less by example than by word—the profit received from a pious conversation, and the outstanding advantages to be received by the same work from the reading of the sacred Scriptures. Such, then, was the beginning of Justin's conversion to the true faith of Christ, after much labor and industry spent upon profane authors and philosophers, after truth had been sought with great labor and sweat here and there, and found nowhere; such, I say, was the beginning of his conversion, from a single and indeed chance meeting e and conversation with a wise and prudent man. So greatly does it help to fall even by chance upon upright and learned men, and to give careful ear and mind to their discourses and admonitions (for they are not produced without the nod of God).
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER II.
Justin's literary labors for the faith he had taken up, and his contests against Crescens the Cynic.
[9] After Justin, by the counsel and authority of that old man, as though sent from heaven, Inclined toward the faith of Christ, had applied himself wholly with great impulse and ardor of mind to the reading through of the volumes of the sacred Scriptures, and at the same time had carefully compared the ancient oracles of the Sibyls with the oracles of the Prophets, and had noticed the most beautiful agreement of both with each other, he began little by little, the Spirit teaching and moving him within, to rise by striving to a more perfect knowledge of God and Christ. Hence the Christian religion too pleased him more and more day by day, and drew him to itself from Gentilism and other sects. But there were nevertheless some things which not moderately deterred his soul as it inclined toward it: the vanity of the slanders hurled at Christians having been learned, namely the frequent slanders against Christians, full of infamy and flying freely about; which, being held as certain by the common people, effected at least this, that he feared to join as a brother or companion to men so ill spoken of. For that they were commonly contaminated with unutterable crimes was spread by not only common but constant rumor: that they were wont to defile themselves in their assemblies by promiscuous pleasure, and together with extinguished lights to extinguish the splendor of chastity, and as it were to cover with darkness at once the foulness and shame of their sins; and so much so that they were openly accused of devouring men in the manner of wolves and feeding upon fraternal flesh. For by these and such rumors the Greeks as well as the Jews had it as their custom to make Christians hateful to all nations: namely, that men ignorant of them might begin to hate them before knowing them. But Justin here acted cautiously and prudently, and did not let himself be carried away by the crowd after the manner of the rabble, nor rashly believe the reproaches snatched from the street; but proceeded step by step and in a philosophical manner, investigated, explored, diligently and attentively discussed all things; and carefully examined whether the matter was in reality as it was being reported in speech.
[10] For he was not ignorant, being at that age and gravity a philosopher, that it often happens in the popular and turbulent judgments and wills of men that those are most innocent who are accused as guilty; and most chaste who are defamed as incestuous; and finally, most pious and most religious who are condemned as impious and irreligious. And that such base slanders did not fall upon the Christians he gathered, both from other arguments and from their admirable fortitude in meeting death for Christ. Which indeed he himself, now a Christian, and from their outstanding fortitude, did not omit to attest in his Apology. "For I myself," he says, "who was delighting in the teachings of Plato, when I observed that Christians, provoked by slanders, neither feared death nor dreaded anything of those things which seem horrible to many, reasoned with myself that it could not be that such men b were either subject to vices or entangled in the desires of pleasures. For who, whether a follower of pleasure, or a slave of gluttony, or a devourer of human flesh, would willingly meet such a death as by which he knows he would be stripped of his own goods? And would he not rather labor to prolong life in enjoying pleasures, and to hide and escape the notice of the rulers, much less to give evidence of himself leading to slaughter and death?" And below in the same place: "Would that there were some one now who would cry out from a lofty platform with tragic voice! Be ashamed, be ashamed to transfer to the innocent those things which you yourselves openly commit; and to charge against those against whom not even the slightest suspicion pertains the things that befit you and your Gods. Change, change your mind, and come to your senses. For I too, when I had learned that their perverse fictions were objected through evil spirits against the divine doctrine of the Christians, to turn men from it—I laughed both at those inventing these things, and at the inventions themselves, and at the opinion received by many; and so far was it that I wished to be held a Christian and labored for it with all earnestness, I profess." Thus Justin concerning himself. Having therefore used diligent inquiry, and from their other virtues, he found everything quite other than what the most wicked of men had spread among the common people about Christians; and that they were so far from the crimes imputed to them, that he found nowhere greater nor more illustrious piety, charity, chastity, equity, and finally contempt of wealth and honors, than among the Christian nation: which he himself afterwards professed in his writings not once but many times. Wherefore, desiring to add himself to their number, he ordered all the Academics, Stoics, Peripatetics, Pythagoreans, and philosophers of whatever sect he receives baptism: to take their things away, so that he, a new recruit, might enroll himself in the one school of Christ. Finally (to comprehend his whole conversion briefly), Justin the Philosopher, brought forward by the reading of the Sibyls and the holy Prophets to the acknowledgment of the one true God and Christ the Savior, enticed by the good odor of the Christians and the examples of their virtues to the love of the faith, and at last drawn by the eternal Father to the Son Christ by inspired faith, enrolled himself for His good warfare, and offered himself to the Church to be washed and initiated by the saving waters. c
[11] Now when the good foundation of spiritual building had been laid upon the firm rock, which is Christ, Justin soon begins to build up, and having obtained the gift of understanding, those things which he knew to be pleasing to God and commended by Paul his faithful servant—justice, piety, faith, charity, patience, meekness, and finally the rest of the most illustrious choir of Christian virtues, up to the very summit. 1 Tim. 6:11. And that he might show himself more fit for undertaking labors in the cause of God, and for taking up contests with adversaries, with far more ardent zeal than before he began to search through the sacred Scriptures, and to follow, hear, and consult their doctors and masters, namely the disciples and successors of the Apostles. But chiefly by prayers he pressed on, so as to obtain from heaven a more perfect understanding of them, until, according to the old man's word, he had the gates of light widely opened. For he indicated many times in the Dialogue with Trypho that the gift of understanding the Scriptures had been divinely conferred upon him. Lest, moreover, he should keep such great benefits of God fruitless and as it were a hidden treasure, he immediately undertook this task, that he should communicate with as many others as possible the doctrine of the sacred faith he had perceived and the gifts of the Holy Spirit poured out upon him, with no sparing of labors and sweat. For he wished not to be ungrateful for the gifts of God, so as to lose them, but much most grateful, so as to increase them. First, therefore, he applied his studies and thoughts to the conversion of the Gentiles, he writes excellently against the Gentiles and challenged them to the care of their own salvation, not only by private conversations or public disputations, but also by books brought forth into the light. In which books, partly he made manifest, by exposing the vanity of these things, why he had departed from them and from the worship of false gods; partly he opened up the way which must be held by them for finding the truth. Namely, before all things he commended the books of the Sibyls, d as necessary preliminary exercises for the oracles of the Prophets; then he taught that the Prophets themselves, and other sacred volumes thereafter, should be read through and meditated. For this purpose he composed three books: one, under the name of Elenchus or Refutation, to the Gentiles; another, under the name of Paraenesis or Exhortation to the same; a third, inscribed On the Monarchy of God; and in the first he indeed gives the reason why he had departed from Gentilism or the worship of gods to the Christian religion; in the second he contends that in the business of faith one must rely on the authority neither of Poets nor of Philosophers, but rather abide by the judgment of the Prophets, who were far older than these, and from whom these, if they had anything good, had snipped it off; in the third at length, he shows from the very books of the Gentiles that there is one God and monarch. After these things, he devoted his labor diligently to instructing and strengthening Catholics in the faith.
[12] and to the heretical For which cause also he traveled through various parts of the world in Apostolic fashion, e and, having set out to Rome, f made himself available to all who came to him for the sake of instruction: and he bravely resisted the heresiarch Marcion, then still surviving in the city and laying waste all things like a wolf, and heretics, and wrote notable volumes against him—since he had already before put forth another volume, Against All Heresies. g Nor did he cease, on every occasion, to bring forth into the open both these heresies and their authors, to pursue and attack them. For some horrid deeds were being committed by certain heretics, which, because they called themselves Christians, redounded upon the truly and piously Christian, and made the whole reasoning of our faith wonderfully hateful both to Jews and Gentiles. Wherefore this Philosopher of ours, on whose crimes Christians were defamed. a man if anyone shrewd and keen, judged nothing better, and nothing more necessary in that state of things, than to explain, distinguish the name "Christian"; to show to whom it rightly belonged, by whom it was wrongly usurped; and finally to bring it about that no one should be punished on account of this name, but on account of the crimes which each had committed. For just as no philosopher, however bad, is punished on account of the bare name of philosopher, so neither did he contend that a Christian, on account of the mere appellation of "Christian," should be punished with any penalty: and as one may find many who wrongly arrogate to themselves the name of philosopher, which fits only true philosophers, so, he said, also the name of Christian. Finally, this among other things he achieved: that by declaring the names and errors of the heresiarchs, both those who were inclined to the Christian religion might carefully attend into whose discipline they gave themselves, and those who had already been initiated into the sacraments of our faith might by no means allow themselves to be deceived by the inventions of those men. h And because he had always been a chief cultivator of poverty, sobriety, chastity, he refutes Crescens the Cynic, and now was especially so since having taken up the doctrine of Christ, hence he most turned away from and exposed those who, shamefully cast down into the vices contrary to these virtues, harassed Christians with shameless slanders. Among whom at that time, a certain Crescens of the Cynic sect easily carried off the palm—a man, if any, given over to sordid avarice and polluted with yet baser lust. With this man, therefore, the chief adversary of our religion, dwelling at Rome, he voluntarily took up enmities for the sake of Christ: and partly by reproaching him with morals unworthy of a philosopher, partly by laying open, through sharp questions, the man's ignorance joined with intolerable arrogance, he wounded him seriously. For that man, impatient of the shame and ignominy he had suffered in a great crown of mortals and afterwards in a little book scattered abroad among the crowd, and unable to contain himself, moved every stone to avenge this ignominy; and left nothing untried by which he might hurl into death its author Justin and Justin's follower Tatian.
[13] whom Tatian describes as most base in life, And concerning Justin indeed he accomplished the business, as will be explained in due time; but not, as
he wished, concerning Tatian: for this man escaped, and admirably continued his master Justin's enmities with the same Crescens. For he himself, in that illustrious oration against the Gentiles (which he composed in emulation of his master), disfigured Crescens with wonderful but true colors, as the common enemy of both. "I saw a certain man many times," he says, "and when I had seen him, I marveled; and when I had marveled, afterwards I despised him (namely, because he was other within than he pretended to be without)—a man extremely dainty and utterly broken by pleasures, partly flashing with his eyes, partly gesticulating with his hands, and raging with a muddy countenance, likened now to Venus, now to Apollo, the sole accuser of all the Gods, the epitome of superstition, the slanderer of heroic actions, the displayer of slaughters, the promoter of adultery, the master of mad avarice, the teacher of foulest lust, and finally the author and instigator of all condemnations: and such being he, I saw him praised by all. But I, detesting him who was lying in all things, and at once his impiety and his pursuits, abominated him." And in another place of the same oration, partly without naming him, partly expressly, he thus reproaches him both with the filth of his avarice and impurity: "Yet," he says, "your philosophers are so far from this contempt of death and tranquility of mind, content with themselves and their own things and not grasping after anything fluid, that there are some who receive six hundred pieces of gold yearly from the Roman Emperor, to no other benefit than to feed gratis the beard they have promised." Therefore that Crescens, nestled in the great city, surpassed all in impure and incestuous love, and was by far the most devoted of all to the pursuit of money. Who, although he preached that death was to be despised, nevertheless so shuddered at it that he was eager to object Justin, as though a great i evil, to it: namely because he, extolling truth, would that he had imitated his master's humility! was inveighing against the pleasure-loving and deceiving philosophers. Thus far Tatian against Crescens on behalf of Justin the Martyr: who, although he came to the faith by nearly the same footsteps as Justin, although he defended it with the same force and the same weapons, although he sharply and solidly attacked the enemies of religion—yet, O wondrous judgments of God! after his master's death he fell away from the right rule of faith: not so indeed as to return to Gentile fables, or to incline to Jewish ceremonies, or knowingly and willingly wholly to reject the law of Christ; but so, nevertheless, that while he pursued the enemies of that law with too great hatred, and turned away in the opposite direction, he bent from one extreme to the other, losing the middle. And his knowledge, as happens, going astray into pride, he fell into and obstinately held this opinion: that he both called marriages execrable, and nearly consecrated only continence to heaven. From which continence, those heretics who followed him were called ἐγκρατῖται by the Greeks, "Continentes" by the Latins. Thus, indeed, the laurel of martyrdom was gathered by Justin; but by Tatian, alas, nothing but a breeze of vain fame, lighter than smoke.
[14] Nor was Justin unaware with how great peril to himself he was doing these things: and therefore in the preface of his Apology, when he had shown that those who had been zealous to lead their lives by reason and virtue had always been pursued by the hatred of evil men and put to death, so he added concerning himself, as if foreseeing his death: "And I too expect to be attacked by the plots of some of those illustrious men, and fastened k to wood; and perhaps by Crescens, who is zealous for popular applause and ostentation: He foretells that his death is to be prepared by the same Crescens, for it is not fair to call a lover of wisdom him who bears public witness about things he does not know; and who disputes about Christians as impious and godless: which he himself does for the favor and pleasure of the many who have fallen into error. For if he, ignorant of Christian doctrine, inveighs against us, he is plainly wicked, and much worse than illiterate men, who often take care not to dispute about things they do not know, nor to bear false witness. But if being acquainted with it, and knowing our mysteries, he nevertheless does this lest he be held as such, then also he must necessarily be much more vile and utterly lost; namely, yielding to an ignorant and unreasonable opinion, and succumbing to fear. Justin foretells. And I should indeed wish you to know that I have proposed to him certain questions of this kind, and have learned, and indeed convinced him by arguments, that he truly and certainly knows nothing. And that you may understand that I speak true things, I am ready (if perhaps the points of our disputation have not reached you) to renew the contest with him again before you; for this would be a work fit for a King. But if you are acquainted both with his answers and with my questions, it is surely now explored by you, either that he knows nothing, or that if he knows something and dares not speak it on account of his hearers, surely indeed, as I said before, he is convicted of being not a lover of wisdom, but rather zealous for glory: he who makes little of that most praiseworthy Socratic saying, in which he said that no man is to be preferred to truth. But a Cynic man, who places the end in low and common things, cannot know any other good than that which is low and common." Thus far Justin: to whom, as he himself had foretold, plots were laid by Crescens the Cynic, impatient of truth and armed with every trick. For at his instigation, procurement, and solicitation, Justin was at last seized, cast into prison, and finally, having drunk poison (as will be more fully told later), died.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER III.
The first Apology on behalf of Christians offered to the Emperors.
[15] On behalf of Christians unjustly harassed, After the notable work performed in converting the Jews and Gentiles and likewise in refuting the heretics, he generously took upon himself a third labor, and truly a work of a King, against the unjust and cruel magistrates against the flock of Christ. For although the Emperor Hadrian, moved partly by the defenses of the most holy men Quadratus and Aristides a on behalf of our faith, partly by the letters of Serenius Granianus, had suppressed the persecution stirred up against Christians; and Antoninus Pius, Hadrian's successor, had thus far decreed nothing impiously or cruelly against them; nevertheless there were those who, at the instigation of the demon, often branded them with such base slanders that the whole Christian race labored under the infamy of the gravest crimes, though undeservedly. To these was added the savagery of the magistrates themselves, inflamed with impiety and avarice as with two burning furies. The best of the Catholics were dragged to court and to the bloody tribunals with monstrous fabricated charges; from whom, if nothing else but the pure truth could be extorted, then their servants, boys, and little women were drawn into questioning and tortures: so that namely the weaker members might by the force of horrendous torments be compelled to confession of the crimes charged against them. As this monstrosity thus grew strong, moved by the indignity of the judgment, and many in various places by the malice of Prefects and Governors were put to death without their cases being heard or examined, it happened at Rome that a certain pagan woman, having hitherto been shamefully wallowing in the mire of lust together with her husband, by the horror of divine judgment and the expectation of the goods which the faith promises, at once bade farewell to pleasures and idols. Having therefore embraced the Christian doctrine and at the same time the continent life, she urged upon her husband that he too should take up with her the same kind of life and doctrine. For obtaining which, she proposed to him both that eternal fire prepared for the impure and unchaste, and the incomparable and infinite rewards destined for the pious and chaste (as she had learned in the school of Christ). But when she saw the man persisting more obstinately in his obscenity, and that he could in no way be torn from his foul deeds, thinking it impious to keep longer cohabitation with him who, beyond the law of nature and beyond all right, sought the fruit of illicit pleasure from various e lusts, she attempted separation from him; and without doubt would then have done so, had not the authority of her kinsmen, dissuading it and urging the hope of future change, held her back. She therefore endured for a while, though unwilling, as one who knew her husband's morals better than all her kinsmen.
[16] Meanwhile he set out for Alexandria: but he changed his place, not his disposition. Wherefore when his wife, unhappy in this one thing, had learned that there too he was committing worse deeds than before, against Ptolemaeus the Christian fearing lest, if she should share bed and table with him thereafter, she might become a partaker of his impiety and wickedness, having given him a bill of divorce, she separated herself from him. But he, who should have been exulting with joy that his wife (who had hitherto used servants and hirelings for drunkenness and lasciviousness and every crime) had now, with so many crimes put away, betaken herself to the good, and was inviting him to the same, and two others were tormented by the Prefect Urbicius; on the contrary was so far from rejoicing at so good a change and invitation that he rather accused her because she was a Christian. But she (which was a mark of great prudence) presented a petition to the Emperor and asked that she might be allowed first to look to her household affairs; then she would not reluctantly
answer the charge. Upon the Emperor's assent to this, since he had nothing at present with which to proceed against her, the accusation was interrupted, and he turned instead upon Ptolemaeus—her instructor in the beginnings of faith and piety—in the following way. He persuaded a Centurion, his friend, who had thrown Ptolemaeus into chains, to go to this same Ptolemaeus and ask him one thing only: whether he was a Christian. The centurion went, asked, and found him, as a friend of truth and ignorant of deception and lying, frankly confessing. Accordingly, he ordered him to be put back in chains, and after a long interval commanded that the innocent man be held and tortured. At last Ptolemaeus was brought before Urbicius, and similarly asked this one question: whether he was a Christian. He, relying on the consciousness of his good deeds, once more intrepidly confessed the discipline of divine virtue. "For he who denies that he is what he professes," says Justin, "either denies it because he disapproves of the profession itself, or refuses to confess it because he is conscious to himself that he is leading a life unworthy of that profession and foreign to its institutions: neither of which falls on a true Christian." Urbicius therefore ordered him to be led away. And two others were tormented by the Prefect Urbicius, There happened then by chance to be present a certain Lucius, himself also a Christian, who, observing so great an injustice of judgment, accosted Urbicius: "What is the cause, Urbicius, why you order a man to be led away who is neither an adulterer, nor a seducer, nor a murderer, nor a thief, nor a robber, nor convicted of any crime, but has only confessed the name of Christian? You do not judge, Urbicius, worthily of Pius the Emperor, or of the Philosopher son of Caesar, or of the most sacred Senate." To whom he, without further reply, said: "And you too, as it seems to me, are of their number." And when Lucius answered, "I am indeed," he ordered him too to be dragged off. But Lucius said: "I give you great thanks, good sir: for I shall be freed not only from unjust and wicked masters, but I shall also go to the good Father and King, God." A third then came forward who, using the like freedom of speech, was likewise punished with the like death. Thus fraternal love, thus generous freedom for the faith of Christ, thus a fervent emulation for obtaining the crown of martyrdom filled their minds: so that they would not let themselves be sought, called, or awaited, but voluntarily ran to death and torments. b
[17] Justin, not bearing so great an indignity in the matter, thought that the cause of the whole Christian religion must be laid open by him publicly and openly before the Emperor Antoninus Pius and his sons the Caesars, having written that noble Apology which is extant, setting forth in the Preface itself the injustice of the aforesaid judgment, and asking that, together with the senatus-consult to be promulgated in favor of the Christians, there should also be sent into all provinces the Apology itself, which he dedicated to the Emperors themselves and the whole Senate with this memorable inscription: c "To the Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus, Antoninus, Pius, Augustus, Caesar, and to his son Verissimus the Philosopher; and to Lucius the Philosopher, natural son of Lucius Caesar, but adoptive son of Pius, a lover of learning, and to the sacred Senate and the whole Roman people; on behalf of those whom every kind of men unjustly pursues with hatred and slanders, I, Justin, son of Priscus Bacchius, a citizen of Flavia Neapolis of Syria Palestine, offers the Apology, one of these, have composed this oration and petition." By which words he plainly shows that he wishes neither to hide himself as a coward, nor to fear hatreds and slanders as a small-souled man: but rather that he fears lest it be unknown who he is, or whence, or indeed lest it be unknown that he is a Christian. "One of these"—as if he said, one of that number, a common soldier from those whom the whole world hates and slanders, and, willingly and gladly, sharing and participating in the same hatred and slander with them, and thus proves their innocence, for the cause of Christ. And as was the inscription of the Apology, so was the whole Apology full of fortitude and constancy. In which first he taught that Christians deserved no punishment on account of their name, nor their morals, nor their doctrine; and he made this plain both by other reasons, and by the documents of Christ himself brought forward: which documents, when compared with the institutions of the Gentiles, he evidently showed to have nothing foreign either to piety or to right reason. Then, sharply refuting the fables and filthiness of the gods, he most clearly showed that the life of the Lord Jesus had been foretold many ages earlier through the oracles of the Prophets, with their testimonies praised. As for Simon Magus the heresiarch, who by magical illusions had so bewitched Rome itself that he was commonly held as a God, a statue erected and inscribed "To Simon the holy God," e he rightly defamed; and together with him f Menander, the sower of a new superstition; and he judged that Simon's statue ought to be overthrown, as a wicked monument of a deceiving and cheating man, and openly demanded this. Finally, he did not hesitate in his very writings to make public the hidden mysteries of our initiation and sanctification themselves, that is, of Baptism g and the Eucharist, and their rites (lest perhaps by concealing them he might seem to act not faithfully). At the very end he concluded the whole Apology by saying that he could indeed demand from the letters of the Emperor Hadrian, their father, that nothing more severe should be decreed against Christians except on the grounds of crimes; but that he demanded it not so much because of that precedent and authority, as because of the equity of his request. Then he added a copy of Hadrian's letter itself, so that his good faith and truthfulness in this too might be established.
[18] The fruit of this Apology, moreover, was the clemency and kindness of Emperor Antoninus Pius toward Christians, as Paulus Orosius attests. h For Antoninus Pius also gave letters to the Prefects and Governors of the provinces on behalf of the Christians, conformable to the letter of his father Hadrian, that he obtained from Antoninus Pius an excellent rescript on their behalf. and likewise a rescript to the Asians, which still exists today, and is of this kind:
"The Emperor Caesar, Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus, Augustus, Pius, Pontifex Maximus, of Tribunician power the 15th time, Consul for the 4th time, Father of his Country, to the peoples of Asia, greeting. I should have thought that the gods themselves were concerned that such men should not escape notice. For much more would the gods, if indeed they could, punish those who are unwilling to adore them: against whom you stir up tumult, stigmatize their opinion as that of the impious, and bring forward certain other charges which you cannot prove. And it would indeed be useful to them, for the things of which they are accused, to meet death: for while they throw away their souls, they triumph over you more than if they yielded and performed your demands. As for the earthquakes, both past and present, it does not seem out of place to recall how, when they happen, you lose courage and transfer to them what is proper to yourselves. For they indeed trust God more than you do; since through such a time you seem both to be ignorant of the gods and to neglect sacred things. For you do not understand religion toward God; whence you pursue those who observe it with envy and harass them even unto death. Concerning such men others also, Governors of Provinces, have written to my most divine father: to whom he wrote back that no trouble must be given to such men, unless they are found to have attempted something against the Roman empire. And many have written to me about these same men, to whom I responded in conformity with my father's sentence: namely, that if anyone having business with a Christian man denounces him as a Christian, he who has been denounced shall be absolved of the charge, even if he really is a Christian; but he who has denounced him shall be liable to punishment." i
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER IV.
The disputation with Trypho, the second Apology, the death met for the faith.
[19] After offering the Apology to the Emperors in the city of Rome, and obtaining the above edict on behalf of the Christians, Justin set out for Asia, and brought with him, as is most probable, a copy of the edict; and he obtained, by the indulgence of Caesarean authority, that it should be proclaimed at Ephesus in the common council of Asia. For both the fact that the edict was posted there is expressly attested by Eusebius, and it is certainly established that at about the same time Justin was at Ephesus. For when he was tarrying there at this time and, under the philosophic mantle a which he never put off, was hunting souls, it happened opportunely that Trypho, a Jewish man b, and one well-versed in the sacred letters (according to the custom of his nation and the rationale of his condition), having met Trypho the Jew at Ephesus, came upon him as he was walking in the xystus c; and
as a philosopher (for he did not know he was a Christian) sought a meeting with him; and from the meeting provided the occasion for that Dialogue which, written by Justin, is still extant. For whatever of conversation and disputation took place between them then, which lasted a full two days, this Justin afterwards published into the light, and dedicated to Marcus Pompeius. Trypho, therefore, thinking from Justin's garb that he had encountered one of the Academic philosophers, approaches him up close; and, together with his companions, accosting him said, "Greetings, Philosopher!" To whom, turning, Justin said, "What is the matter?" To whom he said, "I have been taught by Corinth the Socratic, at Argos, that those who use that garb are not to be despised; but their acquaintance and familiarity is altogether to be sought: since the hope of some benefit to emerge on either side always shines forth; and what has profited either shall profit both. Hence I, when I have seen anyone in such a garb, am accustomed most gladly to approach and address him, just as I have now gladly addressed you. But these my companions and followers likewise desire to hear something useful from you." To whom Justin, bending Homer's little verse slightly to the present matter, graciously jesting, thus in turn inquires:
"But who of men are you? Tell us, most excellent." Iliad 6. d
To whom he, frankly exposing both his name and race, said: "My name is Trypho: but I am a Hebrew of the circumcision, and a refugee from the war recently waged, [e] and I am accustomed to dwell in Greece, and especially at Corinth."
[20] Then Justin, having seized this occasion to direct the conversation to salutary matters, he commends to him the study of divine things, and to lead him step by step from the Jewish to the Christian rites, said: "But can you get as much profit from philosophy as from your Lawgiver and the Prophets?" "Why not?" he answered. "Do not philosophers weave their whole discourses about God? Or is anything the subject of their questions other than to dispute about monarchy and providence? Or perhaps is it not a part of philosophy to scrutinize divine things?" "It is altogether," added Justin; "this is our opinion too. But many do not even care about this: whether there is one God or many; and whether their providence extends to each one of us, or otherwise. As if such knowledge bore no weight at all for happiness. Indeed they even contend that God administers the care of the whole universe, and of genera and species, but by no means of me and you and each one of us individually. For, if it were otherwise, they say, we would have no reason for wearying him with prayers day and night. But it is not difficult to see where these things tend. For they cherish liberty, and the license of saying whatever they please, and of following those who teach that all things are lawful to say and to do by one's own will, fearing no evil from God and hoping for no good. For how else should those think who boast that all things shall ever be in the same state? That so, indeed, men have lived hitherto, and so shall live hereafter, no worse, no better. Others, holding the soul to be immortal and incorporeal, if they do anything wickedly, think they shall suffer no penalty (for what is incorporeal, they say, is also impassible), nor therefore, since it is immortal, do they think they need God." At which words Trypho, smiling urbanely, said: "But do you explain to us what you think about these things, and what opinion you hold about God." "I shall set forth, then," said Justin, "what seems to me. which he denies are perfectly learned from the Philosophers, Philosophy is certainly a very great good, and most pleasing to God: for it alone leads us to Him, and commends us to Him. And those indeed are truly just and holy who devote their mind to philosophy. But what philosophy is, and why it was sent down to mortals, escapes very many. For if they knew, indeed, since it is one and the same knowledge, there would be neither Platonists, nor Stoics, nor Peripatetics, nor Theoretics, nor Pythagoreans. But whence it became many-headed, I shall say. Those who first touched on philosophy were in great honor and glory among men. Hence their followers, investigating nothing about truth, but admiring only the fortitude, continence, and novelty of doctrine of those men, thought that whatever each had learned from his master was true. They then, transmitting these and other like things to posterity, began to be called by the name by which the parent of the discipline himself had been called."
[21] Finally Justin, having by these steps as it were entered upon the subject about God, insofar as it is handled by the philosophers, gradually transferred the whole discourse to the narration of his own conversion, and thence to a disputation on the true faith, and at last to those matters which are in controversy between Christians and Jews. In the course of which indeed it is observed that he grew heated against Trypho and his Jewish companions with nearly the same zeal, whether in exhorting or in rebuking, which Saint Stephen long ago had used against their fathers and ancestors at Jerusalem. Which is allowed to be understood from many other passages, but shows that they are to be sought among the Christians, and from that part of this dialogue where he reproaches their ungrateful, impious, and harsh mind. For so he said: "Just as you always did, who once indeed forged a calf, were always ungrateful and slayers of the just, and inflated with pride because of your lineage." And again: "Though you often hear these things," he says, "yet you do not blush, nor do you shudder at the threatening God, but you are a foolish and witless people. Isaiah 29:13 Therefore behold, I shall proceed to transfer this people, says the Lord, and I shall transfer them, and destroy the wisdom of the wise, and hide the prudence of the prudent. And rightly so: for you are neither wise, nor prudent, but sharp and crafty; wise only to do evil, but for knowing the hidden counsel of God, and the faithful testament of the Lord, and for finding the everlasting paths, not at all." Thus he. Things like these he often gathered elsewhere as well, when occasion from Scripture offered itself, with just anger, as it were, prompting him; which they nevertheless, struck rather with admiration of his zeal than with hatred of the man, heard silently and patiently. At last, he brought forward so many and so clear testimonies from the Old Testament on behalf of Christ, and showed so evidently that they consonate with the New Testament, that captured by his discourse, they demanded to hear him the next day too, once and again. and brought with them to the hearing many others.
[22] When the disputation of the second day also was ended, when he had indicated his departure, and they had shown great desire to retain him, and at the same time declared that his wisdom had surpassed their expectation, and that had it been permitted to use his company longer, more benefit would have accrued to them: but they asked him, since he was about to depart, at least, though absent, to remember them as friends. To whom Justin said: "For my own sake, if it should happen that I remained here, I should seek such meetings daily: but since I await from hour to hour the time of setting out, I exhort you, God being the author and helper, seriously pressing on in this greatest contest for your salvation, to strive to prefer Christ to the teachers of Almighty God far above your own." After which words, as they wished him a good second sailing and were now departing, saying the last farewell, he said: "I can wish you nothing greater from God than that, recognizing that by this way the minds of men are illumined, you may do what we do; and that you may be persuaded that this our Christ is the Christ of God." Thus an end was put to the two-day conversation. Whether the seed of Justin came out to fruit, and whether Trypho and his companions afterwards embraced the faith of Christ, although it is not at all clear, yet good hope can be entertained from their declared affection. Certainly, whatever finally happened concerning them, Justin's own labor did not perish: but the price for the works of his ready will and spent charity stood in heaven.
[23] Whither Justin, having left Ephesus, directed his journey; and whether he at once betook himself to Italy, or first elsewhere, wherever the necessity of the Christian cause or some other useful occasion invited him, Having traveled in various places, by no footprints indeed could I observe. For it was proper to great men, and especially those of that age, bound to no region, to fly most readily from place to place, like eagles, wherever any hope of spiritual prey shone forth. Whence Justin's own companion and follower Tatian, in his oration against the Greeks, after the narration of many admirable things, says of himself and his own journeys: "These things, indeed, I have told not as heard from elsewhere, having traveled over a great part of the earth, after the custom of that age, and having both professed your studies, and achieved various arts and discoveries, and at last having stayed at Rome, I learned about the various statues brought there by you: lest perhaps someone think that I, as many are wont to do, rely on the opinions of others; but all those things of which I am myself an eyewitness, I undertake to write down." Which words can apply no less to the master Justin than to the disciple Tatian, as Justin's own writings most fully persuade: inasmuch as in them from time to time, though doing other things, after having related some memorable things, whether about the Seventy Interpreters in Egypt, or about the Sibyl of Cumae in the region of Campania, he then attests that he had gone to see the little cells of the former when he was at Alexandria; and that he had personally beheld the huge basilica made from a single stone of the latter in the city of Cumae, where his Sibyl was accustomed to give forth her oracles; indeed even that the bronze coffer, in which her relics were said to be preserved, he returns to Rome. had been shown to him by guides of such things. Although, therefore, his other peregrinations are unknown, nevertheless, having at length returned to Rome for the second and last time, as by a right of return, whether during the reign of Antoninus Pius, or during that of his sons Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus already reigning, he gave himself back to his accustomed exercises of speaking, discoursing, and writing. f
[24] There, while laboring to help the Catholics with all his power, both against the heretics, and against the vain and futile philosophers, and against unjust and cruel magistrates, he again collided with Crescens the Cynic. and after the Second Apology had been written As that man nevertheless exercised his accustomed license of slander, and was stirring up the Roman nobility more vehemently against the Christians, Justin, fearing lest the more violent persecution in several parts of the world, which had sprung up from the incursion of the populace and was growing, and which was reported to be making nearly countless Martyrs throughout the whole world—lest it should at length also be strengthened by the public authority of the Emperors: of whom the first wished to be seen as most religious toward the gods, and the second was in morals far most foreign to Christian virtue—he offered a second book in defense of our faith to the already mentioned Emperors. And this indeed, suppressed and destroyed by the envy of the Gentile senate, neither then brought help to Christian innocence before the magistrates, nor hereafter has profited its author for increasing the fame of his name:
yet it brought to him a great, indeed the greatest fruit, namely the sacred crown of Martyrdom, hastened by the machination and frauds of the aforementioned Crescens, who emulated a manner of living altogether fitting the Cynic appellation. For when Justin had often confounded him, He is killed by the frauds of Crescens. and perhaps had sharply rebuked him in the second treatise as well as in the first, he at last had such an end of life as he had long before foretold for himself in the Apology publicly extant; not indeed openly fastened to a stake or cross, but after bravely enduring torments secretly carried off by poison, as is understood from the ecclesiastical books of the Greeks, in which his memory, on the occasion of another Justin, is found noted on the kalends of June. His memory among the Latins on the occasion of Saints Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonicus, who suffered in the same persecution and were mentioned by Eusebius immediately before Justin, was long ago begun to be celebrated on the Ides of April, although otherwise, as his very death, so the day and place of his death has remained in obscurity. Concerning the year, later writers disagree; this one thing can be said most probably: that there is nothing to suggest that Justin triumphed long before or long after the year 170 of the common era. But whatever finally it is concerning the time, at least this abundantly suffices for the glory of so great a man, that the whole Church of the Saints conspires with unanimous consent and prayer in piously celebrating his memory.
ANNOTATIONS.
CHAPTER V.
Certain virtues of Saint Justin drawn from his writings.
[25] By the benefit of God I have thus far filled out the life of blessed Justin: now I shall briefly taste some outstanding virtues of the same, Justin's notable modesty, which I think will not be ungrateful to those who are zealous for the beautiful and the good. And first indeed from the choir of virtues, and especially necessary in learned men, lest they vanish in the sublimity of their thoughts, will here appear: true submission of mind and modesty; which, if anywhere else, certainly ought to shine forth in matters of faith and divine writings, both in Blessed Justin and in all Christian Doctors. This Justin exhibited while disputing in the city of Ephesus, when he in turn received his interlocutor Trypho, who was opposing him with something from Isaiah, as follows: "If, O Trypho, you uttered these words simply and without malice, suppressing what preceded and not joining what followed, you are surely worthy of pardon: but if you hoped so to make this disputation perplexed that I might say that the divine Scriptures are contrary to each other, you have vehemently erred. For I shall never dare either to think or to say this: but if any Scriptures are diverse from each other, and seem to bear some appearance of repugnance, I (since I am fully persuaded that no Scripture is contrary to Scripture) shall rather confess that I do not understand what has been proposed; and I shall give my effort to lead those who have thought those writings to disagree among themselves, so that they may be wise as I am." Thus he.
[26] In blessed Justin there was, together with this submission of mind, a singular spirit of the fear of the Lord; which pricked him again and again and admonished him and reverence for the divine judgment; that he should not, by the gifts of wit or doctrine received from God, abuse them either by keeping silent, or by negligently pressing on in scattering the truth. He revealed this fear implanted in his mind several times in his writings: for in his conversation with the Jews, he said, "I shall recount the Scriptures to you, not display an artful apparatus of words. For there is no such power or faculty in me; but by grace alone from God has it been conferred on me to understand the Scriptures, of which grace I exhort that all be made partakers, without price and without envy, lest, if perhaps I should not do so, I should have to give an account of it on that day of judgment, which God the creator of all things shall make through my Lord Jesus Christ." To which Trypho: "You do this indeed worthily of your piety," he said, "but yet that you put aside from yourself the faculty of artful oration, this, as it seems to me, is dissembling." To whom Justin, with even greater modesty, said: "Since it seems so to you, let it be as you will: but I am persuaded that it is as I say." So there. Likewise in another place of the same dialogue, when the same Trypho was not only marveling at as incredible, but even averse as to impious, those things which Justin had brought forward concerning the wonderful mysteries of Christ, Justin said, lest he be made guilty, fearlessly he speaks the truth "I know, as the Word of God said, that the wisdom of God almighty and creator of all is hidden from you. Luke 10:21 Wherefore, compassionating your plight, I labor and strive that you may understand these wonderful things of ours; but if not, that I at least may be guiltless in the day of judgment: for you shall hear others even more wonderful than these." And a little below, although being very much provoked by the words of the same Trypho, yet restrained by fear of the divine judgment from judging or despising him: "But at present," he said, "since I fear the judgment of God, I shall not anticipate pronouncing anything about any of your race, unless perhaps if anyone be of those who may be saved through the grace of the Lord of hosts. Whence however maliciously you may act, I shall nevertheless continue to answer whatever you bring forward and object; as I am accustomed to do to absolutely all, from every kind of men, who wish to inquire and ask about these things."
[27] To the same effect belong those things which, on the second day of the meeting (for that dialogue lasted two days), he said to Trypho and his companions: "I," he said, "shall say what I know. to the Jews For if anyone knows, I do not think it right to be silent; nor, if anyone suspects that you know, and from envy or incapacity of speaking do not wish to speak, I know that I care about that, but I know how to bring forth everything simply and without evil guile: as my Lord said, 'He that soweth went forth to sow his seed; and some fell by the wayside, and some among thorns, and some upon rocky places, and some into good ground.' Luke 8:5 And so, relying on the hope that somewhere there is good ground, I ought to speak: since that Lord of mine, strong and mighty, when he comes, shall demand his own from all. and to the Gentiles, Thus also should it be said and thought by all preachers of the Gospel. Indeed, if even it should sometimes happen that there be no good ground, which is very rare, yet neither is the labor spent not good; nor likewise the fruit, though few be converted, small." Which Justin himself elsewhere intimated using these words: "Although we perhaps persuade few," he said, "we shall nevertheless reap the greatest benefits: since, as good farmers, we shall carry back a reward from the Lord." And again in another part of the same dialogue, when mention of heretics had been introduced: "Many," he said, "have taught and now teach impious and insulting and unjust things, and whatever the impure spirit of the Devil has sown, under the name of Christ (although adulterating his doctrine); whom we strive to admonish and exhort, just as you yourselves, that they may not err. Since we know that those who could have announced the truth, and have not announced it, must be condemned by God the Most Good and Greatest: for He Himself attested this through Ezekiel: 'I have set thee a watchman to the house of Judah. Ezek. 3:17 If the sinner sins and thou declare it not to him, he indeed shall die in his sin, but his blood I shall require from thee: but if thou declare it to him, thou shalt be innocent.' We therefore, struck with such fear, are eager to institute discourses and mingle conversations according to the Scriptures, and that not for money, not for glory, not for pleasure, but only from zeal for the common benefit: since no one shall be able to convict us of any of those vices."
[28] The charity also of blessed Justin was fire and flame; and it seized and at the same time cherished with the grateful heat of holy love both friends and enemies. For this truly burned in his very marrow when he thus addressed the Jews in the dialogue with Trypho: "For you too, in your synagogues and assemblies, execrate all those who from Christ are called Christians; nor you only, embracing both with most ardent charity; but also other nations; which even add a new crime to their execration, when they kill them for this alone—that they confess themselves to be Christians: to all whom we say: You are our brothers; rather acknowledge the truth of God. And when neither they nor you listen to us, but compel us to deny the name of Christ, we prefer to die, and we die; certain indeed that we shall obtain those goods which God has promised us through his Christ. Nor do we only this, but we also pray Him that you may obtain mercy from Christ." Conformable to these are these things also addressed to them: "Whatever we suffer, when we are done away with by our own countrymen, Christ himself foretold would happen to us: sufficiently that it may appear that there is nothing either in his words or in his deeds which can deservedly be reprehended. Wherefore both for you and for all others who are hostile to us we pour forth prayers to God, that being joined to us through repentance, from hurling curses against Christ Jesus (who from his works and from his doctrine and from his miracles
performed in his name, and from the prophecies uttered concerning him, he is shown to be wholly free from all fault and reproof), you may hereafter abstain: but rather give him faith, that in his glorious coming you may obtain salvation, and not be adjudged by him to the flames." And below: "Do not, I beseech you, O brothers," he says, "do not bring forth any evil against Christ crucified; nor mock his stripes, by which all can be healed, just as we have been healed. For it will be well with you, if moved by our speech, you should circumcise the hardness of your heart: which circumcision you do not yet have, because of the opinion implanted in you; since that circumcision of yours was given not for justification, but only as a sign: for in this sense the words themselves compel it to be taken. In your conversations therefore, refrain from scattering insults against the Son of God; nor, obeying the Pharisee teachers, ever commit that you cavil at the King of Israel—which the princes of your synagogue teach you to do after prayer. For if he who touches any one of those who please God touches the pupil of God's eye, how much more he who touches His beloved?"
[29] It would be permitted to set before us many other things like these from the same blessed man's writings: but three instead of all. For his fortitude draws us to itself, which showed itself in Justin in many places and occasions. And first indeed, in his disputation with the Jews, with great fortitude of mind and their leader Trypho, not once, but many times. For what do those words mean which, when Trypho was impeaching his faith, he gave back with just indignation? "Let it be forgiven you, O good sir, and pardon be given to what you have said: for you know not what you say, but obeying teachers ignorant of the Scriptures, and as it were prophesying, whatever comes into your mind, you prattle. But if you will listen to reason, it will become plain to you that we have neither erred, nor shall cease to confess Christ, though men heap reproaches upon us, though the most cruel tyrant threaten torments." What, too, these words? "This is clear," he said, "that there is no man who can terrify or reduce to servitude us who now believe in Jesus throughout the whole world. despising death for Christ, For whether we are beheaded, or fastened to the cross, or exposed to beasts, or handed over to chains, flames, or any other torments, we never depart from the confession of the faith: nay rather, the more violently these things press upon us, the more others become faithful and worshippers of God through the name of Jesus. For just as it happens with a vine, that if anyone prunes its shoots which have already produced fruit, by this very thing he prepares it to send forth other well-flourishing and fruit-bearing branches, so it quite happens with us: for the vine planted by God and Christ the Savior is his people." And this in the same place. "And I have said these things," he said (for he had said some things which bit the Jews more sharply: that they had cut the prophet Isaiah with a wooden saw, that they had unfaithfully handled the sacred Scriptures, and other such things, very bitter for them to hear), "because nothing is of concern to me so much as to speak the truth; and that I should be deterred by consideration of no one, even if I should forthwith be torn limb from limb by you. For I had no regard for my race, I mean the Samaritans, when, addressing Caesar in writing, I said that they err in believing Simon Magus, their countryman, whom they themselves even called God, greater than every principality and power and might."
[30] even before the Emperors, Now that confession before the Emperor Antoninus Pius—how strong, how brave! For though the reading of the books of Hystaspes a and the Sibyl and the Prophets had been forbidden under penalty of capital punishment, yet he did not hesitate not only to read them but also to offer their authorities to the Emperor himself. For so he professed in his Apology to him: "By the instigation and work of evil demons it has been brought about," he said, "that capital punishment was decreed for those reading the books of Hystaspes and the Sibyl and the Prophets: namely, that men might be deterred by fear from reading them, from which they could draw the knowledge of good things, and kept enslaved to them. He commends the reading of Hystaspes and the Sibyl forbidden by them: Which nevertheless they have not yet been able to accomplish: since we not only read those codices fearlessly, but also offer them to you, as you see, to be inspected: knowing, indeed, that they will be welcome and acceptable to all." And in the same place concerning his own and his fellow Christian soldiers' strong and sincere mind: "Accordingly," he said, "we who formerly attacked each other with mutual slaughters, not only do we no longer fight with our enemies, but even that we may not lie, nor deceive those who examine us to death, we most gladly die confessing Christ. b For that saying could have been used by us: 'I swore with my tongue; I bear a mind unsworn.' But this would indeed be ridiculous: that soldiers enrolled by you should prefer that oath which they have taken to their own life, and to parents and fatherland and all their kin, though you can furnish them with nothing incorruptible; but we, lovers of immortality, not endure all things, that we may be bestowed with eternal goods by Him who can give them." So Justin there.
[31] Akin to this virtue and constancy of intrepid mind which we have just brought forward, and almost, I may say, a full sister, is confidence in speaking; which Valerius Maximus calls "the liberty of a vehement spirit," with equal liberty of spirit, and places midway between virtue and vice: but certainly in Justin the Philosopher, addressing the Emperor himself from a movement of piety in the best of causes, freely and confidently, and reproving him, is not only virtue, but also a clear and rare virtue. Therefore when Justin had undertaken the patronage of the Christian name (than which nothing was more odious in the world), and the cause was to be pleaded c before Gentile Emperors, yet he used nothing of that soft and soothing eloquence for soothing the ears, as of smoothing oil, but entering with quite a philosophic step, he taught them that no account must be taken of anything so much (especially for pious and philosophic Emperors, as they themselves wished commonly to be held) as of piety: and since the fame and esteem of the justice and piety of the Emperors was great everywhere on earth, now had come the time when it would appear whether truly or falsely. For thus he began: "Reason itself prescribes to those who are truly pious and philosophers that, the opinions of the ancients having been rejected (if indeed they were bad), they should cultivate and observe only the truth. For it forbids not only that you should follow those who do or teach anything unjustly; but also that whoever is a friend of truth should prefer the zeal for speaking and doing just things even to his own life (though death threaten). And you indeed are everywhere heard to be pious he asks that the cause of Christians be known by them, and philosophers, and guardians of justice, and lovers of learning; whether you actually are also such, will now be shown. For we have not approached you through our writings as though flattering, or seeking favor with words; but requesting that you accurately and exactly exercise judgment; and that you should not pronounce sentence against us from the opinion which has taken possession of your minds, nor from the desire of pleasing men (which is proper to the superstitious), nor, finally, from the mad impulse of mind, or from a false and already inveterate rumor. For we indeed think we ought to suffer nothing from anyone, unless we are either convicted of some crime, or judged wicked. For the rest, you can kill us, but you cannot harm us. unless they wish to be held openly unjust, And lest anyone should think this a foolish voice and an over-bold saying: we demand from you that you examine those things with which these men charge us; and if they are proved to be true, that you punish and restrain us: but if there is nothing of which anyone can convict us, it is surely not in accord with reason, because of false popular rumors and insults, to injure innocent men—nay, even yourselves, while you allow the matter to be conducted not by judgment but by perturbation. But that manner alone is illustrious and just in the administration of justice (as any prudent man would judge) by which both those who are subject show that the institution of their life and doctrine is void of fault; and those who preside pass sentence led not by violence or tyranny, but by religion and wisdom." And below: "You do not conduct the judgments by a lawful examination, but roused by a kind of brute passion and by the gadfly of evil demons, without the case being examined (for the truth shall be told) and without weighing equity, you take action against us."
[32] Finally, the whole oration proceeds in the same step: for elsewhere he openly mocks the gods themselves as fashioned and hewn by the hand of artisans, and those sometimes artisans most contaminated in their whole life; elsewhere he attacks the harsh inquisitions of the Emperors themselves and the Magistrates against the Christians so freely and undissemblingly that he dares to say: "But you seem to fear, and haters of probity, lest all should live rightly, and you should not have those whom you may afterwards punish: which is the part of executioners, not of good Princes. But we are persuaded that these things are effected and procured by perverse demons, who require sacrifices and worship and those things we have mentioned from wicked men; but we do not believe that anything contrary to reason is done by you, whom the love of piety and philosophy holds. But if you too, after the manner of the ignorant, prefer customs to truth, do what you can. For Princes who prefer opinion to truth can do as much as robbers in the wilderness. And indeed, reason itself shows that by doing these things you shall sacrifice with no happy issue: but we know no King greatest and most just, save God the Father." And somewhat further below: "And although capital punishment has been decreed against those who teach or at all confess the name of Christ, yet thus bravely to be borne by Christians. we nevertheless both embrace it and teach it everywhere. And if you with hostile mind come upon these our writings, you can do nothing more, as we said before, than to take away life. Which will bring no harm to us: but to you, and all who unjustly hate us and do not repent, it will bring eternal torments through fire." Finally the same Apology, after he has set forth the Christian manner of living, thus adds: "And these things indeed, if they seem to be joined with reason and truth, approve; but if they appear trifles, despise them as trifles: nor, as to enemies, decree death to those who have committed no injustice. For we foretell to you, unless you desist from injustice, you shall by no means escape the future judgment of God: but we shall cry out, 'That which shall be pleasing to God, let this be done.'" These, and many other such things, the diligent reader may by himself investigate, for imitation, in the monuments of writings left by this great and holy philosopher; and, as elsewhere in his life, may imitate the remaining virtues that shine forth: which is the chief and by far the most profitable worship of the Saints.