ON ST. ARISTARCHUS,
Disciple of St. Paul the Apostle.
First Century.
CommentaryAristarchus (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.
Those things concerning this Saint which can be handed down here as true and beyond doubt His true praises from the Apostle. are received from nowhere more certainly and safely than from the Acts of the Apostles themselves. And first indeed it is established that he was a Macedonian, Acts 19, verse 29, where, while the Ephesians were rioting on behalf of their Diana, the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed with one accord into the theater, having seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians, companions of Paul. His fatherland is more distinctly indicated when in chapter 20, verse 4 he is said to have been a Thessalonian; which is again repeated in chapter 27, verse 2, where Aristarchus the Macedonian of Thessalonica is recorded to have persevered constantly with his Master even amid the gravest dangers. Whether he is to be called a Jew or a Greek, let others determine. But Paul himself speaks more closely about him, and shows his constancy even to chains, writing to the Colossians, chapter 4, verse 10: Aristarchus, my fellow-prisoner, salutes you. Likewise also to Philemon he makes mention of the same dear disciple. And these plainly honorific testimonies concerning St. Aristarchus are most truly proclaimed. But whether those things which are read as added in the Roman Martyrology concerning the Thessalonian episcopate, concerning his contests and their arena in that same place — whether these, I say, rest upon a sufficiently stable foundation, whence it might safely be conjectured, we have thus far not discovered.
[2] It is not thus established whether and where he was bishop: The author of the Little Roman Martyrology, who first inscribed him in the Calendars of the Saints, announces rightly and simply: Of Aristarchus, disciple of the Apostles. In the same sense, a little more elegantly, Usuard: The birthday of blessed Aristarchus, disciple of St. Paul the Apostle. But we have shown in our Observations that it is remarkable that Usuard did not consult Ado's Festivals of the Apostles, or at least did not follow it, so that almost with reason one might suspect that he himself doubted the sincerity of the Adonian eulogy. Here is the whole announcement of the Viennese author itself: On the day before the Nones of August. The birthday of blessed Aristarchus, of whom the Apostle Paul writes to the Colossians: Aristarchus, my fellow-prisoner, salutes you: who remained an inseparable companion to the Apostle even to his confession; who, appointed bishop of the Thessalonians, after long and most blessed contests, crowned by Christ, rested. Here the Thessalonian episcopate is openly indicated, of which there is no memory in the more ancient writers, so far as I know; then the manner of his death, about which you may doubt whether he ended his life a martyr or rather a confessor: after long contests, crowned by Christ, he rested. Hence certainly those who speak of Aristarchus everywhere gather, with Tillemont, volume 1, page 571, that he was crowned not by martyrdom at the hands of men, but by Christ, and rested in peace.
[3] From the other classic Martyrologists the controversy cannot be settled, likewise whether he was truly a martyr; and in vain would I here adduce the series of Usuardine codices; from some one of them, such as the Brussels codex, one must take the present-day announcement of the Roman Martyrology, which itself is abridged from Ado: At Thessalonica, the birthday of blessed Aristarchus, disciple and inseparable companion of St. Paul the Apostle, of whom he himself writes to the Colossians: Aristarchus, my fellow-prisoner, salutes you. He, ordained bishop of the Thessalonians by the same Apostle, after long contests, crowned by Christ under Nero, rested. Baronius brought no light to these matters, nor anyone else, so far as I know: the Greeks poured out mere darkness, as will soon appear more openly. The difficulty already touched upon concerning St. Aristarchus's final contest would altogether have to be resolved: whether it was violent unto death, as Equilinus with the Greeks hands down in his very brief eulogy, or whether he rested in peace. A second question, about which there is no certainty, is asked: whence did the Viennese author learn that he was bishop of Thessalonica rather than, as the Greeks will have it, of Apamea. Finally a third: whence it can be certainly established that he rendered up his last breath to God at Thessalonica rather than at Rome or elsewhere. We hand down true things as true; leaving ambiguous things in their own rank, since we have found by experience, in investigating them in vain, that no considerations are available from elsewhere for resolving them.
[4] The Greeks involving everything the more. Now, to come to the Greeks, St. Aristarchus obtained among them not one festival, as is plain even from the Menology alone, being there reckoned among the seventy disciples and joined first with Pudas or Pudens and Trophimus on the XIV of April, where, from the supposititious Dorotheus, praised there by many, it is thus read: Of the holy fathers Aristarchus, Pudens and Trophimus, who, being of the seventy, after the death of Paul the Apostle, were themselves also beheaded under the emperor Nero. But again on the XXVII of September there is made a Commemoration of the holy apostles Mark, Aristarchus and Zeno (for Zenas); and concerning our Saint these things are separately recorded there: Aristarchus also is found to have been of the seventy, of whom the Apostle Paul makes mention. He was bishop of Apamea in Syria; a man of outstanding sanctity, another John, nourished on locusts and wild honey, clothed with a leathern girdle. How much all these Greek eulogies, like the foregoing ones, are to be valued is easily understood from the fount whence they flow: for what is to be thought of that Dorotheus, our Predecessors have already more than once and abundantly declared, as you have in the note at the day XV of the Synaxary after the first volume of April; likewise volume 1 of June, page 436, and elsewhere. It is wearisome to cook up the same cabbage here again; nor is it of use to fetch other equally uncertain matters from Peter de Natalibus or elsewhere.