ON ST. RUTILIUS, MARTYR
IN AFRICA.
Third Century, under Severus.
CommentaryRutilius, martyr in Africa (S.)
BY THE AUTHOR P. B.
In Africa, of St. Rutilius the martyr, who, when he had often fled the persecution from place to place, and had sometimes even redeemed the danger with money, being at length unexpectedly seized, and offered to the governor, is tortured with very many torments: at last, delivered to the fires, is crowned with an excellent martyrdom. His eulogy in the Roman Martyrology, So the modern Roman Martyrology on this day. Whence this eulogy was drawn, the very words of Tertullian, On Flight in persecution, chapter 5, signify: for they run thus: Rutilius, a most holy martyr, when he had so often fled persecution from place to place; had even, as he thought, redeemed the danger with money; after all the security which he had provided for himself, being unexpectedly apprehended, and offered to the governor, torn apart with torments (I believe for the chastisement of his flight,) then given to the fires, referred to the mercy of God the passion which he had shunned. Then this is subjoined: What else did the Lord wish to demonstrate to us by this instance, than that we must not flee, because flight profits nothing, if God will it not? Nay, he says; because he fulfilled the precept, fleeing from city to city: for so a certain man wished to argue, but himself too a fugitive, and who accordingly are unwilling to understand the sense of the Lord's pronouncement, so as to use it for a veil of their own timidity; whereas it had both its persons, and its times, and its causes. Another source of the above eulogy, besides this one, Baronius does not assign in his Notes on it; nor do we find any other.
[2] There was one to whom this place long stirred up a troublesome scruple; drawn from the writings of Tertullian the Montanist, that he could not sufficiently wonder, if Tertullian had wished to adorn a true Martyr, and indeed a Roman Catholic, with the epithet of "most holy," in a work which, cut off from the Catholic Church, and long and obstinately entangled in the errors of Montanus, he elaborated; and so he feared lest those who labored to restore and augment the Roman Martyrology had less cautiously seized a pseudo-martyr and Montanist for a genuine and orthodox one out of that heretical author and work. The fear was increased, that that Martyr, so singular and holy to Tertullian, had nowhere any place in the surviving sacred Fasti or Calendars of the Catholic Church (even the Carthaginian, published by Ruinart in the Sincere Acts of the Martyrs) before the restoration of the Roman Martyrology, nay not even any herald, save one Tertullian, and him then hostile to the orthodox: for what is read fabricated concerning him in Tamayo at this day, that he not undeservedly spurned. To us these arguments by no means suffice, that on account of them the most grave censors of the Roman Martyrology should be called into suspicion of so gross an error. We think therefore that this Rutilius died truly Catholic, truly a martyr.
[3] For since among the Montanists it was held for certain and revealed does not render the faith and martyrdom of St. Rutilius suspect: that in the time of persecution it was lawful for a Christian neither to flee, nor to redeem the danger with a price; and since Tertullian so prided himself on this their doctrine, that he did not hesitate to call the Catholic pastors, because they disapproved it, "in peace lions, in battle deer"; can it seem probable that Rutilius would have been of his own accord brought forward into the midst by him, if he had so often contaminated that (though in truth vain and lying) glory of the Montanists, nor at last washed away so many stains by any other martyrdom than that, that he could neither flee nor redeem himself? Would Tertullian, I say, have brought this man forward in the same book in which he dared to affirm concerning the Paraclete of the Montanists, chapter 14: Whom those who have received (as all the disciples of Montanus,) know neither to flee persecution, nor to redeem it? Then if Rutilius had been a follower of Montanus, would he have found Catholics defenders of his flight and redemption? And yet they are the words of Catholics patronizing him, which Tertullian above so objects to himself: Nay, he says, because he fulfilled the precept, fleeing from city to city. Could a sectary of Montanus truly be said to have fulfilled the precept by fleeing and redeeming the danger; who believed that this was most severely forbidden him by his Paraclete on every occasion? This defense therefore could not fall upon Rutilius, unless he was not a Montanist, and followed the Catholic sense of the Gospel against the fanatical dictates of Montanus. But indeed, if he was not a Montanist, for what reason is he called by Tertullian "most holy Martyr"? I believe, because when he himself suffered, the principles of Montanus had not yet, in Tertullian's judgment, become openly enough known, so that those following the contrary should be held for heretics; and so that, if they had contracted any such fault, martyrdom, not altogether according to the same Tertullian's opinion, would abolish it. Add that Tertullian the Montanist calls Fabius himself, even then, when he directed this book to him, a thoroughly Catholic man, "brother."
[4] although he may perhaps be unknown to the ancient surviving Martyrologies. But that before the restoration of the Roman Martyrology he appears enrolled in no Fasti of the Church, this indeed we are compelled to confess, if the discourse be of the present day: for neither is he noted in any of our Martyrologies, or older Calendars; nor does Baronius himself assign any source in his Notes which he followed; nor add any reason why he was inserted into the Roman Martyrology on this rather than another month and day: but neither does he add a word by which to show this Rutilius to be different from Rutilus the African martyr, who is venerated with others on the 18th day of February; whereas Pamelius had written that he was not different, in his Notes on the cited text of Tertullian. And indeed Rutilius, Rutilus, Rutulus, Rotulus are not names so different but that they could be written for the same in the ancient exemplars of the Martyrologies, where names are everywhere found even much more harshly dislocated. However it be, whether he be the same or different; whether enrolled before in the old surviving Fasti of the Saints, or not, it does not much concern us: for it does not follow from the fact that he is nowhere found noted, that he was not a true Martyr; as Ruinart demonstrates at length in the Preface to the Sincere Acts of the Martyrs §2. Moreover of the place and time of his martyrdom nothing is established; yet he is believed to have suffered in Africa, and indeed under Severus; since Tertullian the African made mention of him among the Africans, as of one most known to all.