ON ST. IGNATIUS THEOPHORUS, BISHOP OF ANTIOCH, MARTYR, AT ROME,
In the year of Christ 108.
Preliminary Commentary.
Ignatius Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr at Rome (St.)
By the author G. H.
§ I. The written Life of St. Ignatius. The name Theophorus.
[1] The illustrious disciples and hearers of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist are celebrated in the Chronicle of Eusebius, rendered into Latin by St. Jerome, Ignatius was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. at the second year of the Emperor Trajan: Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, and Polycarp of Smyrna, and Ignatius of Antioch. Of these, the Church honors two in February with sacred worship — St. Ignatius on these Kalends, and St. Papias on the twenty-second; and St. Polycarp in January, on the twenty-sixth day. The history of the latter's martyrdom (which we thought should be briefly repeated here) is contained in the encyclical Letter sent by the Church of Smyrna, shortly after his death, to many churches, especially those nearest in Asia; whether his Life was composed from encyclical letters; from which Eusebius quotes extensively in book 4 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 14, as was noted there in §2, number 10. That Letter existed in ancient manuscript codices, both in an early Latin translation and in the original Greek, from which we also rendered it into Latin, joined it to the other account, and published it together with the rest of the Life afterwards written by Pionius, at the said twenty-sixth of January. We believe that this pious custom of the churches — of describing the glorious combats of the martyrs — flourished among the earliest Christians: and that the Antiochenes also, by a Letter sent to various churches, announced with similar solemnity the interrogation which Ignatius had undergone in their midst before the Emperor Trajan: and that other companions of his journey from Syria to Rome did not fail either to report in person, when they returned to the East, the pious and holy deeds they had observed on that journey, and especially his life consummated by glorious martyrdom at Rome, or to announce them sooner by letters sent ahead. Galesinius cites similar letters on the passion of St. Ignatius in his Notes for the eighteenth of January. St. Polycarp requests these from the Philippians in his Letter to them, since he himself at Smyrna eagerly desired to learn what kind of martyrdom had been inflicted on St. Ignatius. "Concerning Ignatius himself," he says, "and those who are with him, whatever you have learned more certainly, make it known." We shall treat of this letter of Polycarp again below.
[2] other Acts from the Greek of Metaphrastes, From these and similar observations we believe the Acts were subsequently composed. We present them here in two versions: one published in Greek by Simeon Metaphrastes and translated into Latin by Gentianus Hervetus; collated with a manuscript; which Lipomanus first published in volume 5 of his works at the twentieth of December, and then Surius at the Kalends of February. Having obtained the same in Greek from a manuscript codex of the Medici collection belonging to the Most Christian King, we collated it with the earlier translation of Hervetus: from which we removed what was added at the end from Evagrius that was lacking in this codex, intending to give it more conveniently with the rest of the history of the Translation of the relics. another Greek epitome in the Menaea: We are of the opinion that other, much fuller Acts once existed in Greek, from which the compilers of the sacred Menaea excerpted various torments endured by St. Ignatius at Antioch, not mentioned by Metaphrastes, an encomium from the Martyrologies: to be given in the second place. Another encomium is appended from the Martyrologies of Bede and Ado, pointing the way more securely to the fuller Latin Acts.
[3] The Latin Acts themselves are then presented, taken from several, and those most ancient, manuscript codices, Latin Acts from several manuscripts, communicated both formerly to Rosweydus and to us: the principal ones are from Lobbes, Saint-Omer, Utrecht, and another Burgundian codex transmitted by our friend Chifflet. These Acts, in the judgment also of Petrus Scriverius, who communicated them from a most faithful codex, are believed to have been translated from the Greek. In these Acts, the torments which Ignatius endured at Antioch are said to have been suffered at Rome before Trajan — an enormous error which was also copied by Bede, Ado, Usuardus, and other Latin Martyrologists to be cited in the following section; perhaps with the order of events confused. Vincentius of Beauvais, book 10 of the Speculum Historiale, chapter 56, and many others. Did the Latin translator have a torn or defective copy with its leaves transposed? Or did he suppose that the encyclical Letter sent by the Antiochenes, its heading having been removed, had been composed by the Romans? We published on the fifteenth of January the Life of St. Alexander, Founder of the Acoemetae, from a Greek manuscript codex of the Most Christian King — a most distinguished text but defective in certain places: in which, with some leaves transposed, the order of events had been altered by an unskilled copyist, and was restored to its proper place without a single word added or omitted. The author or translator of the Latin Life may have encountered a similar error in a Greek codex, and not having noticed it, adapted the rest of the Acts accordingly. Here the distinct chapters are marked with a double number, so that those judged to have been transposed may be more easily distinguished and more conveniently compared with Metaphrastes and the Greek Menaea.
[4] From these Acts and the Epistles of St. Ignatius to be reviewed by us below, Acts abridged by others, a more condensed Life was written by Vincentius of Beauvais cited above, Antoninus and Boninus Mombritius to be cited shortly, Jacobus a Voragine, Claudius a Rota, Petrus de Natalibus, Zacharias Lippelous, and Franciscus Haraeus; in Spanish by Joannes Basilius Sanctorius, Alphonsus Villegas, Petrus Ribadineira, and published in foreign languages: Franciscus Ortiz Lucius; in Italian by Gabriel Flamma; in French by Clemens Marchantius, Jacobus Doubletius, and Guilielmus Gazaeus; in German by Henricus Fabricius; in Flemish by Henricus Adriani, Dionysius Lamberti, and innumerable others, and all who have compiled Ecclesiastical Annals or Chronicles, chief among whom Cardinal Baronius recounts very many things about him in volumes 1 and 2 of the Annals. Among the more ancient Fathers, encomia of the same are given by St. Polycarp, his fellow disciple, mention among the older writers, and the latter's disciple St. Irenaeus, St. Dionysius in On the Divine Names, St. Anacletus the Pope, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, St. Felix III Pope, Theodoret Bishop of Cyrrhus, and above all St. John Chrysostom in a most learned Homily delivered to the people of Antioch on his annual solemnity. From this homily many passages will be cited when we treat of the Translation of the relics; from the learning of the others, various doubts and controversies among learned men will be resolved.
[5] Here is presented the heavenly vision in which Ignatius beheld and heard the Angels in heaven celebrating the most holy Trinity with alternating songs, as related by Socrates in book 6 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 8. Ignatius, he says, Vision of the angelic song, the third Bishop of Antioch in Syria after the Apostle Peter, who also had much intercourse with the Apostles, saw a vision of Angels praising the Holy Trinity with hymns sung in alternating choirs. And the form of singing expressed in that vision he handed down to the Church of Antioch. Whence this same tradition was received by all the churches. So writes Socrates. The same is reported by George of Alexandria in the Life of St. Chrysostom, and in the latter's encomium by the Emperor Leo the Wise, Nicephorus Callistus in book 13 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 8, and several Martyrologists to be cited below. St. Gildas the Wise, whose Life we illustrated on the twenty-ninth of January, proposes an outstanding stimulus for the pursuit of virtue. The reading of this Life is useful for virtue: He addresses the clergy of Britain thus: Which of you, like the Martyr Ignatius, Bishop of the city of Antioch, who after admirable deeds in Christ was crushed by the masses of lions for his testimony — whose words, when he was being led to his passion, if you were to hear them, and if your faces were ever suffused with a blush, you would not only not consider yourselves Priests in comparison with him, but not even middling Christians. Let these things, therefore, kindle in us a sincere love of God and of mankind, by the fire of which burning more vehemently in his heart, Ignatius reckoned all torments to be utterly light, and death itself as nothing: for whom, of all the things most grievous he could suffer in life, the first was not to suffer death for Christ: and the second was not to suffer it as quickly as possible, but to have it delayed and deferred: as Petrus Halloix excellently observes in his Preface to the Life of St. Ignatius, in volume 1 of the Eastern Church's Writers, drawn out at the greatest length, with the man's inexhaustible ardor of piety toward this St. Ignatius and the writers contemporary with him.
[6] The surname Theophorus, by which the holy Martyr everywhere calls himself in all his Epistles, receives its most evident proof from this or a similar salutation: Ἰγνάτιος ὁ καὶ Θεοφόρος. Ignatius, he is surnamed Theophorus. who is also called Theophorus. This Latin translation was preserved by all the older interpreters, and was transmitted without any alteration to the Epistles rendered in other languages. The Greek Acts below observe how aptly that surname befitted him in these words: Τῆς Ἀντιοχέων ἐκκλησίας Ἐπίσκοπος ὁ καὶ κλήσει καὶ πράγματι θεοφόρος Ιγνάτιος ἦν. "The Bishop of the Church of the Antiochenes, both in name and in fact a God-bearer, was Ignatius": which we wonder that Gentianus Hervetus translates as Deiferum. We prefer to retain Theophorus in the form in which we call Saints Christophorus, Carpophorus, Onesiphorus, and the like, preserving the character of the Greek words; following, after the Latin Acts and the various Martyrologists, Eusebius, Socrates, Cedrenus, he bears Christ in his soul. Zonaras, Nicephorus, and others rendered from the Greek into Latin. Trajan himself in the Acts inquires: ὃ δὲ καὶ τί ἐστι Θεοφόρος; To which Ignatius replied: ὁ τὸν χριστὸν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ περιφέρων: "he who bears Christ about in his soul"; or according to the Latin Acts, "he who has Christ in his breast — that one is Theophorus."
[7] Hence we believe occasion was given for writing that in the heart of St. Ignatius the most sacred words whether inscribed on his heart in golden letters: JESUS CHRIST were found, written in golden letters by a divine miracle. This was written in the thirteenth century, more than eleven hundred years after the death of St. Ignatius, by Vincentius of Beauvais and Martinus Polonus. The latter, in his Chronicle at the times of Trajan, says: Martinus Polonus asserts this, "When his heart had been minutely divided, the name of Christ was found written in golden letters on each tiny piece." Somewhat more carefully Vincentius, book 10 of the Speculum Historiale, chapter 57: Vincentius of Beauvais, "When his heart had been minutely divided, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ was found inscribed in golden letters, as one reads, on each portion." For he had said that he had Christ in his heart: or as the Acts have it, in his breast, or in his soul. St. Antoninus, Mombritius, The same is related at greater length by St. Antoninus in volume 1 of his Chronicle, title 7, chapter 1, §11, and by Boninus Mombritius in his Life, both in the same words: "It is read," they say, "that Blessed Ignatius, amid so many kinds of torments, never ceased from invoking the name of Jesus Christ, and when his torturers asked him why he repeated that name so often, he said: 'I have this name inscribed upon my heart, and therefore I cannot cease from invoking it.' After his death, therefore, those who had heard this, wishing to test it more curiously, tore out his heart from his body, and cutting it through the middle found the whole heart inscribed with this name, JESUS CHRIST, in golden letters. Whence very many believed this also." Ubertinus de Casali, in book 2 of his Tree of the Life of the Crucified Jesus, chapter 2: Ubertinus de Casali, "With the Apostle, let us show that we know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, after the example of Blessed Ignatius, carving Jesus on both the center and the circumference of our heart — who poured forth that same Jesus from his full heart both living and dying, and dead left him written within himself in golden letters upon his bodily heart." Joannes Baptista Mantuanus in book 2 of his Sacred Days, Mantuanus: Matthias Casimirus Sarbievius, and other poets have adorned that miracle in verse — to whom, as to painters, equal freedom is granted to add whatever they please. the older writers are silent. It suffices for us to have pointed out the sources from which these streams have flowed. The Greeks are silent, because they hold that all the flesh was consumed by the lions and only the more solid bones were left: which seems to us the more probable, especially since, if this illustrious miracle had occurred, it would above all have redounded to the glory of God and the good fame of so great a Martyr; and yet it is wrapped in the deepest silence of the ancient writers, both Latin and Greek.
§ II. The feast day of St. Ignatius. His sacred veneration.
[8] On account of the great variety in observing the feast of St. Ignatius among different churches, no small difficulty arises in determining the certain day on which his martyrdom was accomplished. That the Antiochenes formerly dedicated a day sacred to him on the day after the solemnity of St. Pelagia, Virgin and Martyr of Antioch, The Antiochenes venerate St. Ignatius on the day after St. Pelagia the Virgin, is attested by St. John Chrysostom in homily 42 on St. Ignatius: "Yesterday," he says, "a girl, quite young and a virgin, the blessed Martyr Pelagia, with great joy set a banquet before us: today this blessed and noble Martyr Ignatius has in turn taken up the celebration. Different persons indeed, but one table: varied combats, but the same crown: unequal contests, but the same prize." St. Pelagia is venerated in the Roman Martyrology, the Greek Menaea, noted on June 9 and 10, and other sacred calendars on the ninth of June: on the following day in the Menologion of the Greeks published by Canisius. There exists homily 41 of St. Chrysostom about her, to which Fronto Ducaeus notes that he found that homily in Greek in two manuscript codices of the Most Christian King Henry IV, in one of which the date October 8 had been written in the margin, thus: μηνὶ Οκτοβρίῳ. On which day, and October 8. as Baronius observes at June 9, the Greeks commemorate in their Menologion another Pelagia of Antioch, who, before she could be seized by her persecutors, praying that she might not suffer the loss of her virginity, rested in peace. In the Menologion of Canisius, on the same October 8, are added Pelagia of Tarsus, who suffered under Diocletian, and a third Pelagia who was penitent after a life of harlotry. What is pertinent here is that neither in June nor in October is any solemnity of St. Ignatius found to have been observed in the Martyrologies, with the exception of certain manuscript annotations of the Carthusians of Brussels, in which the translation of Blessed Ignatius the Martyr is recorded on the seventeenth of October.
[9] Some assign the 24th of November. Some assign his sacred day to the twenty-fourth of November. So Hermannus Greven in the Supplement to Usuardus: "Of Ignatius the Martyr." The manuscript Ado of the monastery of St. Lawrence near Liège: "On the same day, of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr." Bede in the printed edition has more, calling it his birthday: "On the eighth of the Kalends of December," he says, "the Birthday of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr," etc. Ado also has a full encomium, to be quoted below. In December several authors record him: first, for the fourteenth day, the manuscript Martyrology of St. Martin at Trier: or December 14. "Of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr." The manuscript of St. Mary at Utrecht: "On the same day, of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr."
[10] But on the seventeenth of December his birthday is celebrated by the manuscript Martyrologies of St. Martin at Tournai and of Liessies, Most place his birthday on December 17. both ancient, under the name of Eusebius, Jerome, and Bede, in these words: "The Birthday of St. Ignatius, who, third Bishop of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, was sent in the eleventh year of Trajan to Rome in chains to face the beasts. His relics nevertheless lie at Antioch" (it is added in the Liessies text) "outside the Daphnitic gate in the cemetery of the church." The manuscript of Rabanus Maurus has the same as the Liessies text in his Martyrology, except that the opening words about the Birthday are omitted by him. In the ancient manuscript Martyrology of St. Maximin near Trier, the following is read: "At Antioch, the birthday of St. Ignatius the Bishop, who, the third to govern the Church of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, was condemned to the beasts in the persecution of Trajan and sent in chains to Rome, given over to the custody of twelve soldiers, whom he himself in his letter calls leopards on account of their cruelty: and when, brought out before the beasts, he heard the lions roaring, he said, burning with desire to suffer: 'I am the wheat of Christ; let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found to be pure bread.'" He suffered in the eleventh year of Trajan. Some authorities, according to Fronto Ducaeus cited above, think that Chrysostom's Homily on St. Ignatius was delivered on that same seventeenth of December.
[11] According to these authorities it can be said, not improbably, that St. Ignatius obtained the crown of martyrdom on that day, and that three days later his most sacred bones were deposited outside the city of Rome and committed to the earth. The day of deposition, commonly confused with the birthday or day of death, the day of deposition or burial, December 20. is often recorded in the sacred calendars of churches. The same Fronto Ducaeus notes on the said Greek homily concerning St. Ignatius that the twentieth day of December was written in the margin of the Royal manuscript codex: μηνὶ Δεκεμβρίῳ κ. The Greeks venerate him with great solemnity on that day: in the Menologion of Maximus of Cythera and the Horologion: τοῦ ἁγίου ἱερομάρτυρος Ιγνατίου τοῦ Θεοφόρου. The Calendar of the Greeks in Genebrardus: "Ignatius the Martyr, Theophorus." The Menologion of Canisius: "The Birthday of the most sacred Martyr Ignatius." The Greek Menaea: Μνήμη, or "the commemoration," of the holy Martyr Ignatius Theophorus, etc. Petrus Halloix, in his Notes on chapter 14 of the Life of St. Ignatius, asserts that the twentieth of December is the true birthday, which the Greeks keep as solemn, and on which they hold assemblies in his honor. Meanwhile, below in Metaphrastes it is said that the faithful who were at Rome, after the martyrdom was accomplished and the amphitheater dispersed, gathered his bones, and having reverently wrapped them, deposited them outside the City in a distinguished place on the twentieth day of the month of December. In Greek: Κατέθεντο εἱκάδα τότε τοῦ Δεκεμβρίου ἄγοντος. On the same day the most ancient manuscript Martyrology of St. Jerome has: "At Rome, the deposition of Zephyrinus the Bishop, and Ignatius the Martyr, and Athanasius the Bishop." Again in the Calendar appended to the same Martyrology: "Of Ignatius the Martyr and Athanasius the Bishop." St. Zephyrinus the Pope is venerated on that day in several Martyrologies; we shall treat of him with the Roman and other Martyrologies on the twenty-sixth of August. St. Athanasius, in a certain manuscript Calendar of St. Maximin, also called Athanasius, a Bishop in the East, is venerated on the same twentieth of December.
[12] Nevertheless, the principal solemnity of St. Ignatius in the Roman Church is observed on the Kalends of February, for which Notkerus has: "Of St. Ignatius the Martyr." with greater solemnity on February 1. The manuscript of Tournai: "The Passion of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr." The old Roman Martyrology published by Rosweydus: "At Antioch, of Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr." The printed edition of Bede. The manuscripts of St. Mary at Utrecht and of St. Lambert at Liège: "At Antioch, the Passion of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr." Ado has nearly the same for this day, whose encomium, given in his book on the festivals of the Apostles, we reproduce below. The manuscript of Centula at Saint-Riquier: "At Rome, the Passion of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who, a disciple of the blessed Apostle John, governed the Church of Antioch as third after Blessed Peter." Others, following the Latin Acts, hold that he suffered at Rome in the presence of Trajan. So Usuardus: "On the Kalends of February, the Birthday of Blessed Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, who governed the Church of Antioch as third after the Apostle Peter, and in the persecution of Trajan was sent in chains to Rome, where, in the presence of the same Emperor and the Senate assembled around, he was first subjected to the most savage tortures of punishment, and then cast before lions; and strangled by their teeth, he became a sacrificial offering for Christ." Bellinus and the modern Roman Martyrology have nearly the same, though where it formerly read "suffered in the presence of Trajan," it now more correctly says "at the command of Trajan." That he underwent savage tortures and unheard-of torments at Rome is also related by Galesinius, the authors of the Viola Sanctorum and of the manuscript Brussels Martyrology, and others: but Maurolycus says, "The Birthday of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, who governed the Church of Antioch as fourth from the Apostle Peter, in which he caused antiphons to be sung." Constantius Felicius leaves it uncertain whether he presided over Antioch as third or fourth Bishop: matters which will be discussed below. Concerning the chant, these details taken from Socrates are added in the ancient Cologne Martyrology after the words quoted from Usuardus: "He, having once been caught up to heaven in a vision, saw and heard how the Angels sang hymns to the Holy Trinity by alternating antiphons. Taught by this vision, he instituted the singing of antiphons in the Church of Antioch according to the manner of the vision." The same is read in the Viola Sanctorum and other Martyrologies. The Brussels manuscript adds to the rest of the encomium that his name is inscribed in the Canon of the Mass, which is also shown in the ancient Book of Sacraments of St. Gregory the Great, recently published in a more correct edition from manuscripts by Hugo Menard.
[13] Finally, because St. Brigid obtains the principal veneration on the Kalends of February in various churches, St. Ignatius is proposed for veneration on the day before the Kalends, that is, the thirty-first of January, in the Breviary of Bruges and certain other Belgian books, as also in the manuscript Martyrology of St. Martin at Trier. and January 31. That the Greeks celebrate him with a very distinguished office is attested by their responsories, antiphons, canticles, and odes, rendered into Latin by Petrus Halloix and published in both languages in his Life of St. Ignatius. Ecclesiastical Office. The same Greeks take the Gospel reading from chapter 9 of St. Mark, in which Christ, having embraced a child (whom they believe to have been St. Ignatius), placed him in the midst. Among the Latins, the current form of the ecclesiastical office is well known: what it formerly was is indicated by Gavantus in his Commentary on the Rubrics of the Breviary, section 7, chapter 4: where he reports that in the appendix to the Gregorian Book of Sacraments the feast was in December, but in the Vatican Breviary, volume 4751, on the first of February. These agree with what is related near the end of the Latin Acts.
§ III. The beginning of the Episcopate of Antioch.
[14] The birth, youth, and private life of St. Ignatius before he assumed the Episcopate are largely unknown. His training under St. John the Evangelist, and the opinion of the Greeks that he was the little child of the Gospel whom Christ placed in the midst of the disciples, we examine below. Halloix brings forward further details in chapters 1 and 2 of his Life, which we, as lovers of antiquity, omit. In seeking to establish the beginning of his Episcopate at Antioch, we first lay down, The Pontificate of St. Peter at Antioch. as all ancient and orthodox writers have affirmed beyond doubt, that St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, first established the See of his supreme Pontificate at Antioch, before he departed thence to Rome in the second year of the Emperor Claudius, as Eusebius in his Chronicle and St. Jerome in his work On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 1, relate along with the other writers. We treated of the Roman Chair of St. Peter on the eighteenth of January; we shall treat of the Antiochene on the twenty-second of February. Whether Ignatius was the immediate successor of St. Peter is the question we here investigate.
[15] First, Letter 3 of St. Anacletus the Pope states that he was given to the Antiochenes as Bishop by St. Peter, at whatever time this occurred. In this Letter the order of the three primary Episcopal Sees is indicated in these words: "The First See is, by a heavenly benefit, that of the Roman Church, which the most blessed Peter and Paul consecrated. Thus Rome, which was formerly by the devil's craft the mother and nurse of all errors, St. Ignatius is said to have been appointed Bishop by him having cast off the shadows and rejected the vain rites of superstitions, was made, when the sun of justice arose, a copious propagator of the children of God. The Second See was consecrated at Alexandria in the name of Blessed Peter by Mark, his disciple and Evangelist, because he himself, directed by Peter, first preached the word of truth in Egypt and received a glorious martyrdom: in the Letter of Anacletus, to whom the venerable Abilius succeeded. The Third See is held in honor at Antioch in the name of the same Blessed Peter, the Apostle: because he dwelt there before he came to Rome, and appointed Ignatius as Bishop, and there the name of Christians for the newly arisen people first appeared." So far the Letter of Pope Anacletus, to which all authority would be owed, if it were genuine, or not interpolated by later hands. is it genuine? In fact, some things are read in it that are less consonant with ecclesiastical traditions. For it is said that the venerable Abilius succeeded St. Mark in the Alexandrian See, with the omission of St. Anianus, whom Eusebius in his Chronicle and book 2 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 23, St. Jerome in On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 8, and all the rest, whose consensus is confirmed in the Roman Martyrology for the twenty-fifth of April, on which day both St. Mark and St. Anianus his successor in the Episcopate are venerated, record as having succeeded St. Mark when the latter died in the eighth year of Nero. Hence in Joverius's Ecclesiastical Sanctions, and then in the Councils published at Venice, Cologne, and Paris, this correction is noted in the margin: "To St. Mark the venerable Anianus succeeded, and after him Abilius": a succession which we shall prove at the latter's birthday on the twenty-second of February.
[16] explained by others, In the same manner, a correction is added in the said books regarding the Antiochene See, but one less well established: "Because St. Peter dwelt there before he came to Rome, and appointed Zacchaeus, afterwards Euodius, and after him Ignatius as Bishop." Concerning the Episcopate of Zacchaeus at Antioch we read nothing elsewhere. The Apostolic Constitutions under the name of Clement of Rome, book 7, chapter 46 (or 47 in other editions), record that Zacchaeus the publican, who had received Christ in his house, was the first Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine. But concerning the various Bishops listed out of their proper order in that chapter, we shall treat below. Another Zacchaeus, the fourth Bishop of Jerusalem, is venerated on the twenty-third of August: so that a similar Zacchaeus seems to have been inserted here from another source. Rather, this or a similar reading should have been substituted concerning Euodius: "Because Peter dwelt there and appointed Euodius as Bishop, whom Ignatius afterwards succeeded." But these names — both the succession of Abilius in the Alexandrian See and the appointment of Ignatius as Bishop among the Antiochenes — formerly interpolated. we consider to have been added by later hands. For the same words, without any mention of Abilius and Ignatius, are repeated in the Council of seventy Bishops held at Rome under Pope Gelasius, where they read thus: "The Second See was consecrated at Alexandria in the name of Blessed Peter by Mark, his disciple and Evangelist: and he himself, directed by the Apostle Peter to Egypt, preached the word of truth and accomplished a glorious martyrdom. The Third See is held in honor at Antioch in the name of the same most blessed Apostle Peter: because he dwelt there before he had come to Rome, and there the name of Christians for the newly arisen people first appeared." Behold, both the succession of Abilius and the inauguration of Ignatius by St. Peter are absent. The same is confirmed in the Roman Council under Pope Damasus, from whose Canon, according to the collection of Cresconius, these words are cited in Baronius at the year of Christ 39, number 23: "The Third See is held in honor at Antioch in the name of the most blessed Apostle Peter, because he first dwelt there before he came to Rome: and there the name of Christians for the newly arisen people first appeared." These words agree entirely with the Letter of Anacletus, if only the intervening mention of Ignatius's appointment as Bishop is removed.
[17] Ordained by St. Peter Second, that Ignatius was ordained by the right hand of St. Peter and received the grace of the Pontificate is written by Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus in Syria, and by St. Felix III, Pope, both of whom lived in the fifth century. according to Theodoret, Theodoret, in the Dialogue called "The Immutable," which is the first in volume 4 of his works, relates thus: Ἀκήκοας δὲ πάντως Ιγνάτιον ἐκεῖνον, ὃς διὰ τῆς τοῦ μεγάλου Πέτρου δεξιᾶς τῆς ἀρχιερωσύνης τὴν χάριν ἐδέξατο, καὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν Αντιοχέων ἱθύνας, τὸν τοῦ μαρτυρίου στέφανον ἀνεδήσατο. "You have surely heard of that Ignatius, who received from the right hand of the great Peter the grace of the Pontificate, and after governing the Church of the Antiochenes, obtained the crown of martyrdom." St. Felix the Pope, in Letter 5 to the Emperor Zeno, accuses Peter the Fuller, an excommunicated person, and by Felix III, Pope. of having thrust himself, most unworthily, into the holy Church of Antioch, and of having polluted the holy See of the Pontificate of Ignatius the Martyr, who was ordained Bishop by the right hand of Peter.
[18] Third, St. John Chrysostom, in the aforementioned Homily, in which he extols the city of Antioch with outstanding praise, successor of St. Peter commends St. Ignatius as the successor of the Apostle Peter: "God," he says, "had a special care for this city, as he plainly showed by the event itself. according to Chrysostom, For Peter, whom he placed over the whole world, to whom he gave the keys of heaven, to whose judgment and power he committed all things — him he commanded to dwell there for a long time. Wherefore, on the one hand, our city corresponds to the entire world. But since I have made mention of Peter, I perceive a fifth crown woven from him: because Ignatius succeeded him in the dignity of the Episcopate of Antioch. For just as one who tears a great stone from the foundations would necessarily endeavor to place another equally great in its place, lest the whole building totter and collapse; so when Peter was about to depart from Antioch, the grace of the Spirit substituted another teacher equal to Peter, lest the structure already begun should be weakened by contempt for his successor." Chrysostom seems to have exalted these things with oratorical amplification, as though no Bishop Euodius had existed at Antioch, since he wishes Ignatius to have been the one whom, "when Peter was about to depart thence, the grace of the Spirit introduced as another teacher equal to Peter, to succeed him in the leadership." or from Peter's death? Did Chrysostom overlook Euodius, who governed the Church of Antioch while Peter was still alive — as one directed by that supreme Shepherd in the exercise of his office — and instead substituted St. Ignatius alone as the one who governed that Church after the death of both? For, he says in the same Homily, "if it is difficult to rule a hundred men or even fifty, of how great virtue must he be reckoned to possess, who administered so famous a city and governed a people numbering two hundred thousand?" He adds the difficulty of the times on account of the persecutions of the Gentiles: "if at this time," he says, "the governance of the Church brings many labors and hardships to those in charge, how much more numerous and greater were the labors then, when dangers, battles, snares, and constant terrors pressed upon them?" To that time, then, Peter may have destined St. Ignatius, by whom he foresaw that after his own and Euodius's death, Antioch would be preserved in the faith of Christ and greatly increased.
[19] This opinion is confirmed by Nicephorus Callistus, book 2, chapter 35, where he records that St. Peter, as he traveled through the world establishing churches everywhere, according to Nicephorus, appointed by St. Peter after Euodius. chose many to succeed in the episcopal dignity when others should fail: Ἐν δ᾽ Ἀντιοχείᾳ πρῶτον μὲν Ἐυώδιον, μὲν δὲ τοῦτον τὸν ὄντως τὸν θεόληπτον, τὸν Θεοφόρον ἐτιθει Ιγνάτιον. "At Antioch," he says, "first Euodius, and after him, the one truly inspired by God, the Theophorus, he established Ignatius." That is, in the same manner in which he had previously said that he committed Rome to his successors — namely to Linus, Anacletus, and third the sacred Clement — so that there is the same difficulty for each Church, and the same method of resolving it. And first, some have recourse to the Apostolic Constitutions commonly attributed to Clement, the Roman Pontiff, in which, book 7, chapter 46 (or 47 in other editions), in the Apostolic Constitutions of Clement under the name of St. Peter and the other Apostles, the following is read, in the translation of Franciscus Turrianus: "Concerning the Bishops who were ordained by us during our lifetime, we make you certain. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, brother of the Lord, and after his death Simeon, son of Cleophas, succeeded as second, and after him in turn Judas, son of James, as third... Euodius, Bishop of Antioch, was ordained by me, Peter, and he was succeeded by Ignatius, ordained by Paul:... ordained by Paul Linus, son of Claudia, was ordained first Bishop of the Church of the Romans by Paul; and after the death of Linus, Clement, whom I, Peter, ordained as second... Ariston was the first Bishop of Smyrna, and after his death his successor was Strateas, son of Lois, whom the third Bishop, another Ariston, succeeded," etc. We omit recording more. Absent from the list of Smyrna are St. Bucolus, the first Bishop, and his successor St. Polycarp, the fellow disciple of St. Ignatius; of whom we treated in connection with his Life on the twenty-sixth of January, and of St. Bucolus we shall treat again on the sixth of February. Second, the tradition that St. Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, was crucified in the tenth year of Trajan, and that he was then succeeded not by Judas son of James, but by Justus, chosen from among the Jews, is given by Jerome in the Chronicle of Eusebius, and by the same Eusebius in book 3 of his History, chapter 29. But whether he be called Judas or Justus, he could not have been appointed by the Apostles after the death of St. Simeon before the tenth year of Trajan, since St. Clement of Rome, to whom these books are attributed, had already departed this life. We shall treat of St. Simeon on the eighteenth of February.
[20] These and other considerations prove that complete credibility should not be ascribed to these books, Whether there were several Bishops simultaneously at Antioch, and that it is not safe to conclude from them that two Bishops were then established at Antioch, one of whom should have been placed over those who came to Christ from among the Gentiles, and the other over those who had believed from the circumcision, as one reads in the Notes to the Roman Martyrology; and it is added that an error crept into the cited passage of Clement, where Euodius is said to have been substituted by Peter and Ignatius by Paul as Bishops, whereas Peter rather ordained Ignatius. The same matter is touched upon again in the Ecclesiastical Annals at the year 45, number 14: where Baronius, because he is dealing in conjecture, does not dare to affirm anything certain: matters which Petrus Halloix attempts to prove in chapter 2 of his Life and the appended Notes. But by the same reasoning, two or even more Pontiffs would be said to have sat simultaneously at Rome, and at Rome Linus ordained by Paul, and Clement ordained by Peter according to the Apostolic Constitutions, with Cletus or Anacletus — omitted in the same Constitutions — to be interposed between them. We shall establish the order of succession of the Bishops of Antioch by the same arguments by which the series of the Roman Pontiffs is established.
[21] Baronius, at the year of Christ 69, number 38, confirms the succession of these bishops on the authority of St. Ignatius. The succession of both Sees is proven by the authority of St. Ignatius. "As far as the ancient writers of ecclesiastical affairs are concerned," he says, "since St. Ignatius, who lived in the same century with the Apostles, says that Clement succeeded Cletus (for so he reads instead of Anacletus), he plainly declares that Clement himself presided over the Roman Church in the third place, namely after Linus and Cletus." This is the Letter of St. Ignatius to Mary of Cassobola, which in most copies reads Anacletus, in the ancient version brought to light by Ussher reads Cletus, and in the Florentine manuscript reads Alvov in Greek. If Baronius grants so much to Ignatius alone in the succession of the Roman Pontiffs, why should we not believe him in the case of his own Episcopate, writing thus to his own Antiochenes from his Roman journey? Πάυλου καὶ Πέτρου γεγόνατε μαθητάι. μὴ ἀπολέσητε τὴν Παραθήκην. μνημονεύσατε Ἐυωδίου τοῦ ἀξιομακαρίστου ποιμένος ὑμῶν, ὅς πρῶτος ἐνεχειρίσθη παρὰ τῶν Ἀποστόλων τὴν ὑμετέραν προστασίαν. μὴ καταισχύνωμεν τὸν πατέρα, γενώμεθα γνήσιοι παῖδες, αλλὰ μὴ νόθοι. All the Greek copies agree. Which reads in Latin in the version of Martialis Maestraeus: "You have been disciples of Paul and Peter. Do not lose the deposit entrusted to you. Remember Euodius, your most blessed Pastor, who was the first to be ordained by the Apostles as your Bishop. Let us not put the Father to shame; let us be true children, and not bastards." Behold Euodius joined with Saints Peter and Paul, the first Bishop ordained by the Apostles for the Antiochenes, and the Antiochenes and Ignatius himself his children.
[22] Baronius again, at number 42, confirms the aforesaid succession by the Roman Martyrology, from the Martyrologies, a rich witness of ecclesiastical tradition. According to it, after St. Peter the Church was governed first by Linus, second by Cletus, third by Clement: recorded on their respective feast days, the twenty-fifth of September, the twenty-sixth of April, and the twenty-third of November. In the same Martyrology, for the sixth of May, the following is read: "At Antioch, of St. Euodius, who, as Blessed Ignatius writes to the Antiochenes, was the first Bishop ordained there by the Apostle St. Peter, and ended his life by a glorious martyrdom." The Roman Martyrology printed in the year 1586 thus records St. Ignatius for the Kalends of February: "The Birthday of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, who governed the Church of Antioch after St. Peter and Euodius." In the modern Martyrology, with the name of Euodius omitted, he is recorded as having governed that Church as third: which amounts to exactly the same thing; and the ancient Martyrologies cited above agree.
[23] Baronius finally establishes the same succession of the Roman Pontiffs by the authority of Eusebius and St. Jerome, by whom this dispute can best be settled for us. Eusebius, book 3 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 16, asserts that Euodius was the first Bishop of Antioch, from the testimony of Eusebius, and Ignatius the second, much celebrated in the speech of men. Again in chapter 35 he records that Ignatius, still most celebrated among very many, obtained the Episcopate at Antioch as the second successor of Peter. In Greek: Πέτρου διαδοχῆς δεύτερον. of Nicephorus, But in the Chronologer Nicephorus, the Bishops of Antioch are listed in this order: I Peter the Apostle, II Euodius, III Ignatius Theophorus, who was made a Martyr in the time of Trajan. of Jerome: In this sense, according to St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 16, Ignatius is the third Bishop of the Church of Antioch after the Apostle Peter.
[24] The time allotted to each in the See, as given in the Chronicle of Eusebius, at last removes all controversy. In that Chronicle of Eusebius, as given by St. Jerome, it is recorded for the second year of the Emperor Claudius, from the chronology of the succession, the year of Christ 42: "The Apostle Peter, having first founded the Church of Antioch, is sent to Rome, where, preaching the Gospel, he continues as Bishop of that same city for twenty-five years." And for the third year of Claudius, the year of Christ 43: "Euodius is ordained the first Bishop at Antioch," who was afterwards made a Martyr in the persecution of Nero, as will be told on the sixth of May; in which persecution the same Chronicle teaches that Peter and Paul gloriously met their death at Rome, and it connects the successors — Linus in the Roman See, Ignatius in the Antiochene. Thus the Greek text reads: τῆς Ῥωμαίων Ἐκκλησίας μετὰ Πέτρον πρῶτος κληροῦται τῆν ἐπισκοπήν Λίνος. τῆς Ἀντίοχέων Ἐκκλησίας δεύτερος Ἐπίσκοπος καθίσταται Ἰγνάτιος. "Of the Church of the Romans, after Peter, Linus is the first to receive the Episcopate. Of the Church of the Antiochenes, Ignatius is established as the second Bishop." This appears after the account of the deaths of the Caesars Galba, Vitellius, and Otho. In the Latin Chronicle as arranged by St. Jerome, after the account of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul and the rebellion of the Jews, it is said: "Linus held the Roman Church first, for eleven years." Then, with the death of Nero and the reign and murder of the Caesars Galba and Otho interposed, it is added: "At Antioch, Ignatius is ordained the second Bishop." "He is ordained," says St. Jerome — and from the age of St. Ignatius. therefore not by St. Peter the Apostle, who had recently died. Lastly, the age of Ignatius himself, born around the year of Christ 24 as will shortly be stated, proves that when St. Peter migrated from Antioch to Rome, the Episcopate of Antioch was not conferred upon him while he was still very young.
[25] St. Gregory the Great, book 2 of his Register, Indiction 13, chapter 71, or Letter 37 to Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch, calls St. Ignatius a disciple of St. Peter in these words: "Amen, Grace" — which words, taken from your writings, I therefore place in my letters, so that your Blessedness may recognize concerning St. Ignatius that he is not only yours but also ours. For just as we have in common the Master of his, the Prince of the Apostles, so too no one of us possesses the disciple of that same Prince as his private property. In the Homily of St. Chrysostom it is said that St. Ignatius had intercourse with the Apostles and drank from their spiritual fountains; Whether he was ordained by other Apostles, that he obtained the episcopal dignity from those holy men: and that his sacred head was touched by the hands of the blessed Apostles. The name "Apostles," attributed to the first disciples of Christ and others contemporary with them, we have noted many times. Among these we have celebrated Titus the Apostle, Parmenas the Apostle, Timothy the Apostle, and Ananias the Apostle, on the fourth, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth of January. There still survived St. John the Evangelist, or by St. John the Evangelist: among whose disciples we have numbered these Bishops: Papias of Hierapolis, Polycarp of Smyrna, and in third place Ignatius of Antioch. Of these, Petrus de Natalibus writes, book 3, chapter 141, that Papias was ordained Bishop by St. John. Petrus Halloix, in his Life, does not hesitate to accept as true as were Saints Papias and Polycarp: that the care of the Episcopate was entrusted to him by St. John the Apostle, as it was also to Polycarp. However, the ancient author of the Life of Polycarp, chapter 5, records that St. Polycarp was elected by the laity with the approval of the entire ecclesiastical assembly, and that the regular consecration was performed by the Bishops through the imposition of hands. Was such a regular election and consecration also carried out among the Antiochenes? In both sets of Acts of St. Ignatius there is deep silence on this matter. The order of succession is excellently indicated in the former set, translated from the Greek: "The great Peter was succeeded by Euodius, and Euodius by Ignatius," who in the Latin Acts also "took up the governance of the Church of Antioch after Euodius." Others again disagree concerning the ordination of Polycarp. For according to Irenaeus, book 3 of Against Heresies, chapter 32: ὑπὸ Αποστόλων κατασταθείς Ἐπίσκοπος, "he was appointed Bishop by the Apostles." But according to Eusebius, book 3 of his History, chapter 30: πρὸς τῶν ἀυτοπτῶν καὶ ὑπηρετῶν τοῦ Κυρίου τῆν ἐπισκοπὴν ἐγκεχειρισμένος, "he was ordained Bishop by those who had seen the Lord and been his ministers." According to Tertullian, On Prescriptions Against Heretics, chapter 32, "Polycarp is recorded as having been placed by John, just as Clement was ordained by Peter." Jerome observes and corrects, On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 15, that this Clement is placed by most of the Latins as the second after the Apostle Peter: and in chapter 17 Polycarp is also said to have been ordained by St. John, so that John either consecrated him himself along with other Bishops, or at least approved by his own vote one elected by others. Whether the same can be said of St. Ignatius we leave to the judgment of the learned. Joannes Baptista de Lezana, at the year of Christ 102 in the Annals of the Carmelites, number 4, he was not a disciple of St. John the Baptist. Marcus Antonius Alegreus in status 2 of the Paradise of Carmelite Glory, chapter 24, and others ascribe St. Ignatius to the Carmelite order, as one of those Religious who, together with the disciples of the Baptist, attached themselves to Christ Jesus, numbered among the seventy-two, whom they designate as the second light and Archimandrite of the whole Elian religious life after John the Baptist. These claims collapse of themselves from what has been said and what will shortly be adduced, and need no further refutation, being established by no authority of the ancients.
§ IV. The age of St. Ignatius compared with the years of the Emperors. The year of his death.
[26] To continue the historical and chronological method which we have employed thus far in confirming the Acts of January, we adapt the commonly received calculation of the years of Christ — though entangled with many difficulties — which we call the common or vulgar era, The common era of the Christians, and some designate as the Dionysian, because it began to be introduced by Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman Abbot, around the year 525 — a name from which we abstain, because the era that is commonly accepted by men distinguished for their more exact learning in these sciences does not accurately correspond to his carefully computed reckoning. This era takes its starting point from the Kalends of January in the consulship of C. Caesar and L. Aemilius Paulus, under which Consuls it began: in the Julian year 46 and the year 754 from the founding of Rome according to the Varronian computation; in the preceding year of which Christ is commonly believed to have been both incarnate in March and born in December. Baronius in his Annals anticipates this era by a full two years, and begins it with the consulship of Augustus Caesar XIII and M. Plautius Silvanus, later according to Baronius's reckoning, with C. Caninius Gallus as suffect consul, in the Julian year 44 and the year 752 from the founding of Rome. Nevertheless, lest he constantly diverge from the common era in the course of his Annals, he contracted the six years of the reign of Probus to four, and disregarded two pairs of Consuls generally accepted — these being Fulvius Aemilianus and Pomponius Bassus II, as well as Cornelius Secularis and Junius Donatus, or in their place Gallienus and Valerianus repeated — to be assigned to the years of the common era 259 and the following year. So much for the beginning of the era of the Christians, in whatever year Christ was born — whether the one that immediately preceded this, or whether two years must be added with Baronius, and the actual nativity of Christ: or rather four, as Dionysius Petavius, Aubertus Miraeus, Aegidius Bucherius, and others teach after Joannes Deckerius. Some add a fifth year with Johannes Kepler.
[27] Christ suffered in the year 31 of this era. The year which in the common era already established by us was 31, the Julian year 76, with the Lunar Cycle 13, the Solar Cycle 12, the Dominical Letter G, in the consulship of CL. Tiberius Caesar Augustus V and Aelius Seianus, is believed to have been distinguished by the redemption of the human race: inasmuch as, having celebrated the lawful Passover the day before, Christ the Lord is believed to have died on the Cross on March 23, a Friday, on the fifteenth day of the Moon, and to have risen on March 25, the first day of the week. Now since in the last year of his preaching, when Christ taught humility to the Apostles as they contended over primacy by showing them a small child — whom the later Greeks teach was St. Ignatius, who was also then carried in his arms — Ignatius was carried in his arms, the child being perhaps in his sixth or seventh year of age and born around the year 24 of the common Christian era; after Tiberius Augustus had completed ten years of his reign, and upon his death on March 16 of the year of Christ 37, Gaius Caligula succeeded him; and when Caligula was killed in the fourth year of his reign, on the ninth of the Kalends of February, in the year of Christ 41, his uncle Claudius took his place; in whose second year St. Peter, having left Antioch, set out for Rome, and had as his successor St. Euodius, a disciple of St. John the Evangelist, ordained Bishop of the Antiochenes in the third year of Claudius: at which time St. Ignatius, in his twentieth year of age, was being trained by St. John the Evangelist, destined one day to succeed Euodius in the See of Antioch. St. Polycarp, commended by St. John to St. Bucolus, Bishop of Smyrna, was ordained Deacon and instructed various classes of people: then, consecrated Priest, he was rendered fit by his holy manner of life to be one day elected as Bucolus's successor in the episcopal dignity. Why should not Ignatius in the same manner, perhaps commended by John to the same St. Euodius, having been promoted through the ecclesiastical orders under St. Euodius, have at last succeeded him? So too Heron, the Deacon of St. Ignatius, succeeded him in the episcopal see, to whom the letter of St. Ignatius is believed to have been sent — that witness of a pious father's extraordinary solicitude and love for his spiritual son, of which we shall presently speak.
[28] Meanwhile Nero, who had succeeded Claudius in the year 54, set in motion the first persecution against the Christians, he succeeds him in the year 69 in which, after the Apostles Peter and Paul and various other Bishops, Euodius of Antioch also obtained the palm of martyrdom. After Nero, Galba reigned for about seven months, and Otho for three; and after the death of these, Ignatius was ordained the second Bishop at Antioch according to Eusebius in his Chronicle: namely, in the year of Christ 69, when St. Ignatius was about forty-five years old. Then Vespasian succeeded the Emperor Vitellius after his rule of eight months; in Vespasian's second consulship with his son Titus, in the year 70, the city of Jerusalem was captured and the temple of the Jews was set on fire. While Tacitus records these last Consuls in his history, he splendidly confirms the order of the preceding Consuls, to the very great stability of our chronology. Vespasian was succeeded by his two sons: first Titus in the year 79, then after the lapse of two years Domitian; in about the thirteenth year of whose reign, the year of Christ 93, the second persecution against the Christians being stirred up, many believe that St. Ignatius suffered greatly, having suffered much, on account of these words of his in his letter to the woman of Cassobola: "I, having been made subject not so much to my own authority as to that of others, am harassed by the caprice of many adversaries, partly by exiles, partly by imprisonments, partly by chains. But I take no account of any of these things; under Domitian? indeed I am rather instructed by their injuries, that I may attain Christ Jesus." And because in the letter Clement is indicated as the Roman Pontiff then succeeding Anacletus, or Cletus, it is believed to have been written during the reign of Domitian: a matter to be more fully examined in connection with their Acts. However, these seem to be the harassments of persecution which the Latin Acts report that Ignatius repelled from the Church by his prayers.
[29] The years of the said Emperors, under whom St. Ignatius lived, besides the constant testimony of the ancient writers, The years of the said Caesars demonstrated. are confirmed by astronomical observation. For first, the fifth year of Claudius and the consulship of M. Vinicius and Statilius Corvinus in the year of Christ 45 are confirmed by a solar eclipse observed on the Kalends of August, the birthday of the Emperor Claudius, as recorded in Dio, book 60. Second, the consulship of Vipsanius and Fonteius in the sixth year of Nero is fixed in the year of Christ 59 by a solar eclipse on the day before the Kalends of May, seen in Campania between the seventh and eighth hour of the day, as recorded in Pliny, book 2, chapter 70. Third, the death of the Emperor Domitian on the fourteenth of the Kalends of October occurred, according to Suetonius, with the Moon in Aquarius, in the year of Christ 96. Add the Capitoline Games, instituted by the same Domitian, as recorded in Censorinus, chapter 18, in his twelfth consulship with Sergius Cornelius Dolabella, in the year of Christ 86, the fifth of his reign; from which to the year of Christ 238, in the consulship of M. Ulpius Crinitus and Proculus Pontianus, when Censorinus was composing his book, one hundred and fifty-two years had elapsed, and the Games, which were quadrennial in the manner of the Olympic contests, had been celebrated for the thirty-ninth time. These matters are developed at greater length by Joannes Deckerius, book 1 of his Dissertations on the Year of the Birth and Death of the Lord, part 1, hypothesis 6, section 5, and elsewhere; by Petavius, book 11 of On the Doctrine of Times, chapters 9, 19, and 20; and by others. It was necessary to touch upon these points here, so that the reader might follow our chronological scheme.
[30] After Domitian was killed on September 18 of the year 96, Cocceius Nerva reigned, according to Dio, for one year, four months, Under Trajan, Ignatius is condemned to the beasts, and nine days; and around the twenty-seventh of January of the year 98, Trajan was appointed his successor and assumed the imperial power. Under him, in the third persecution afflicting the Christians, St. Ignatius was condemned to the beasts and obtained the palm of martyrdom: but in what year is debated. In the Latin Acts the consulship of Atticus and Marcellus is assigned: since that pair of Consuls is not found together, Galesinius in his Notes for the first of February has recourse to Suranus and Marcellus, Consuls in the seventh year of Trajan, the year of Christ 104, delayed by himself and Baronius to the year of Christ 106: in which year he adds that ancient annals report Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, was thrown to the beasts at Rome: not in the year 104 which Joannes Cuspinianus also observed in connection with the Consuls of Aurelius Cassiodorus. Neither, however, explains whose annals these are. In the Alexandrian Chronicle, in the consulship of Syrianus II and Marcellus, in the seventh year of Trajan, Christians again began to be harassed, of whom many nobly and gloriously perished for their profession of Christ. The martyrdom of St. Ignatius is then assigned to the following year. or the next This opinion is supported by the completion of the double Dacian war: after the first, an ancient inscription in Panvinius, book 2 of the Fasti, shows that Trajan, in his fourth consulship, in the year of Christ 101, celebrated a triumph over the defeated King Decebalus of the Dacians. Then that the same Decebalus, having rebelled again, was defeated by Trajan after a bridge was built over the Danube, and Dacia was made a province when Trajan was fifth Consul in the year of Christ 103, is shown by an ancient coin in Baronius at the year 105, and confirmed by Eusebius in his Chronicle and Dio in his account of Trajan: according to whom, in the following year, the seventh of his reign, in the presence of Trajan; the year of Christ 104, in the consulship of Suranus and Marcellus, Trajan having returned to the City, very many embassies of barbarous nations and of the Indians arrived: at which time he set up in the Forum the very great column, celebrated in the writings of later authors. This presence at Rome after the Dacian war is what the Latin Acts and the very many Martyrologies cited above require. In the following year, however, the year of Christ 105, about to undertake an expedition against the Armenians and Parthians, he set out for Greece and thence to the East, and never returned to Rome.
[31] Although this interpretation of that opinion may seem not entirely improbable, nevertheless both sets of Acts, and other historians, require that St. Ignatius survived longer, until the eleventh year of Trajan. First, the Latin Acts record that the persecution set in motion by Trajan against the Christians began in the ninth year of his reign, but in the persecution begun in the year 106, the year of Christ 106, in which, by newly enacted edicts, he compelled Christians to sacrifice to the gods. Hence in the following year, the tenth of Trajan, the year of Christ 107, the Chronicle of Eusebius reads thus: "When Trajan was stirring up persecution against the Christians, Simeon, son of Cleophas, who held the Episcopate in Jerusalem, was crucified, and was succeeded by Justus." captured in 107, "Ignatius also, Bishop of the Church of Antioch, was brought to Rome and thrown to the beasts: after whom Hero was appointed as third." We shall treat of St. Simeon on the eighteenth of February. Second, both the Latin and the Greek Acts require that St. Ignatius was condemned to the beasts at Antioch by Trajan: and Dio records that around that time Trajan was staying at Antioch, saying, "While he was at Antioch, Augarus of Osroene sent him gifts and embassies." Let it be, then, that Ignatius was sent from Antioch to Rome in the tenth year of Trajan: it does not immediately follow that he was thrown to the beasts in the same year. Jerome, from whom we have this Chronicle of Eusebius in Latin, often enlarged; in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 16, records that he suffered in the eleventh year of Trajan, he suffered in 108 that is, the year of Christ 108, in which the Consuls were Ap. Annius Trebonius Gallus and M. Atilius Metilius Bradua: whose consulship, expressed only by the cognomina Gallus and Bradua, is found in Victorius, defective, in a leap year, Period 77, Indiction 2, Lunar Cycle 1, whose Kalends of January fall on the second day of the week and the nineteenth day of the Moon, and the date of Easter on the second of the Kalends of April and likewise the nineteenth day of the Moon. All of which agree with the seventh year of Trajan, the year of Christ 104, when the above-named Suranus and Marcellus held the consulship. It was, moreover, very easily possible for Appius, or Annius, or Atilius to be changed into Atticus, and Metilius into Marcellus, since those praenomina were absent from Victorius and Cassiodorus, as well as from the Alexandrian Chronicle and the Sicilian Fasti, though they are given in full by the Capitoline Fasti. Another explanation is suggested by Eusebius from Hegesippus, book 3 of his History, chapter 26, according to whom St. Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, was accused before Atticus, a man of consular rank, καὶ οὕτως μαρτυρεῖ επὶ Τραἳανοῦ Καίσαρος, καὶ ὑπατικοῦ Αττικοῦ — "and thus," he says, "under the Caesar Trajan and the consular Atticus, he professed the faith of Christ." The same facts are reported in the Alexandrian Chronicle, the Roman Breviary, and elsewhere, as we shall note on the eighteenth of February: so that Ignatius may have been entrusted to the care and custody of this Atticus, who was then returning from Syria to Rome. Whether the same can be said of Marcellus, we do not wish, in the silence of the ancients, to speculate. in the absence of Trajan, Finally, that he suffered at the command of Trajan but not in his presence at Rome has been stated above. From the calculation of these years, he reached the eighty-fourth year of his age in the 84th year of his age, the 39th or 40th of his Episcopate. and the thirty-ninth of his Episcopate. Others, reckoning from the death of St. Euodius with no interval of vacancy in the See during the persecution, count forty years from the fourteenth year of Nero to the eleventh of Trajan, which we suspect were expressed in the Catalogue of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, so that the Greek read ἔτη μ᾽, not ἔτη δ᾽ — that is, "years 40," not "years 4," which is read there through a typographical error.
[32] Joseph Scaliger, in his observations on the Chronicle of Eusebius, is troubled by this scruple concerning Ignatius's being brought to Rome and thrown to the beasts. "One must ask," he says, "why a man destined to be cast to the beasts is brought from Syria to Rome. By what right was he sent to Rome to be cast to the beasts? For not only over Christians, but also over Gentiles, jurisdiction belonged to the governor of the province, and he inflicted punishment upon them in the province itself according to his jurisdiction. Only Roman citizens appealed to Caesar, as Paul did in the Acts of the Apostles. In this manner, if Ignatius was indeed a Roman citizen, he could be brought to Rome. But the laws did not allow a Roman citizen to be thrown to the beasts. Therefore we leave this doubt for others to resolve. I frankly confess my own ignorance: otherwise even children either know, or can learn from the Martyrologies, that Christians were customarily thrown to the beasts. Yet the question about Ignatius being brought from Syria to Rome is one worthy of investigation, and for that reason we raise it." So writes Scaliger, who does not sufficiently distinguish the circumstances of Paul and Ignatius: at that time no law had been enacted against Christians; now the persecution was renewed for the third time, in which whatever torments were administered by tyrannical fury, the Emperors made lawful for themselves by their own authority. Trajan was present at Antioch, whose nod was preferred to any law, and Christians themselves, because they were deemed blasphemers against the gods, were judged worthy of whatever torment, as if guilty of offending both divine and royal majesty. Various reasons, however, are brought forward by various authors for sending Martyrs to Rome: and these appear below in the Acts — that the length of the journey should make the punishment more severe, that he should appear to the Romans as a criminal, and that no memory of him should remain among the Antiochenes. Chrysostom exaggerates nearly the same reasons in his Homily on St. Ignatius. Others are adduced by Baronius at the year of Christ 109, number 9, and by Halloix at chapter 8 of the Life of St. Ignatius, letter 1. Claudius Salmasius, had he turned his attention to this persecution of Trajan and specifically to the date of St. Ignatius's martyrdom, would not have immediately rejected the Letters written by St. Ignatius in the last year of his life as mere fabrications, when in his book On Bishops and Priests under the name of Walo Messalinus, chapter 4, he babbles that those Letters seem to have been produced and forged around the beginning or middle of the second century, at which time the singular episcopate above the presbyterate was first introduced. So he writes. Those Letters were born at the beginning of the second century, in which their parent St. Ignatius was alive. We shall treat of the Letters below. Petavius excellently refutes this treatise of Salmasius in book 2 of On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter 8, volume 3 of his Theological Dogmas, and among the Heterodox, Ussher in his Dissertation on the Ignatian Letters, chapter 18.
§ V. The persecution of Trajan diminished through the letter of Pliny the Younger.
[33] Both sets of Acts mention the mitigation of this persecution: that this was accomplished through the intercession of Pliny the Younger and the rescript of Trajan is evident from his letter 97 of book 10, In the persecution which we give here collated with manuscripts.
C. Pliny to Trajan.
It is my custom, Lord, to refer to you all matters about which I have doubts. Pliny consults Trajan, For who can better guide my hesitation or instruct my ignorance? I have never been present at trials of Christians: therefore I do not know what or to what extent punishment or inquiry is customary. Nor have I hesitated little over whether any distinction of age should be made; whether those however young should differ in no way from the more robust; whether pardon should be granted to repentance; or whether it profits nothing for one who has been entirely Christian to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even if free from disgraceful deeds, should be punished, or the disgraceful deeds attached to the name. Meanwhile, in the case of those who were brought before me as Christians, he describes the constancy of the Christians, I followed this procedure: I interrogated them whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and third time, threatening punishment; those who persisted I ordered to be led away. For I had no doubt that, whatever it was they confessed, their stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved to be punished. There were others of a similar madness, whom, because they were Roman citizens, I noted down to be sent to Rome. Soon, in the very course of proceedings, as usually happens, the accusation spread and more varieties of cases arose. An anonymous pamphlet was published, their denunciation by wicked men, containing the names of many who denied that they were or ever had been Christians: when, at my dictation, they invoked the gods and offered supplication with incense and wine to your image, which for this purpose I had ordered to be brought along with the statues of the divinities; and moreover cursed Christ — none of which things, it is said, those who are truly Christians can be compelled to do. Therefore I thought they should be dismissed. Others, named by an informer, said they were Christians and soon denied it: they had indeed been, but had ceased — some three years before, some more years, and one even twenty-five years ago: all of them both venerated your image and the statues of the gods, their pious exercises, and cursed Christ. They affirmed, however, that the sum of their guilt or error had been this: that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and to sing a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath — not for any criminal purpose, but not to commit theft, robbery, or adultery, not to break faith, not to deny a deposit when called upon. After these rites they had been accustomed to depart and to meet again to take food, but ordinary and innocent food: and that they had ceased doing even this after my edict, in which, according to your instructions, I had forbidden associations. For this reason I thought it all the more necessary to find out what truth there was in this by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else than a depraved and excessive superstition, and therefore I postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me worthy of consultation, and the multitude of believers. especially on account of the number of those in danger. For many of every age, every rank, and both sexes are already being summoned to danger and will continue to be summoned. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only through cities but also through villages and farms: yet it seems possible to stop and correct it. Certainly it is well established that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented again, and the sacred rites, long interrupted, are being resumed, and victims are now being sold everywhere, for which until recently a buyer could scarcely be found. From this it is easy to judge what a multitude of people could be reformed, if there were room for repentance. So writes Pliny: from whose letter we learn both the multitude of Christians of every kind, rank, and age in the cities, villages, and countryside of Bithynia and the entire Pontic region, as well as their pious, holy exercises, entirely free from all impurity; and his own and the Gentiles' blindness. and also the blindness and cruelty of the Gentiles and of Pliny himself — a man most wise in worldly knowledge — who compelled Christians to supplicate mute statues and the image of Trajan, who was still living, to curse Christ, and to subject maidservants, or rather Virgins consecrated to God, to examination under torture.
[34] The Emperor Trajan responded to him thus, in letter 98 in Pliny.
Trajan to Pliny.
You have followed the procedure you ought to have, Rescript of Trajan: my dear Secundus, in examining the cases of those who were brought before you as Christians. For no universal rule, as it were having a certain fixed form, can be established. They are not to be sought out: Christians who are accused are to be punished, but not sought out. if they are accused and convicted, they are to be punished — but with this proviso: that whoever has denied being a Christian and has made this evident by the act itself, that is, by supplicating our gods, shall obtain pardon through repentance, however suspect he may have been in the past. Pamphlets published anonymously should have no place in any accusation: for that is both of the worst example and unworthy of our age. So writes Trajan, on account of whose sentence Tertullian, at the beginning of his Apologeticus against the Gentiles, justly complains and exclaims in these words: "O sentence confused by its own inherent contradiction! He says they are not to be sought out, as being innocent; Tertullian refutes his sentence: and he commands them to be punished, as being guilty: he spares and rages: he overlooks and takes notice. Why do you entangle yourself in your own censure? If you condemn them, why do you not seek them out? If you do not seek them out, why do you not also acquit them? To track down robbers, a military garrison is allotted throughout all the provinces: against those guilty of treason and public enemies, every man is a soldier: the investigation is extended even to their associates and accomplices. Only a Christian may not be sought out — but he may be presented: as if an investigation would produce any result other than a presentation. You therefore condemn one who is presented, whom no one wished to be sought out, who, I think, has not merited punishment because he is guilty, but because — not to be sought out — he has been found. And so neither in that respect do you act toward us according to the standard for judging criminals, which you apply to others who deny: you apply torture to make them confess, but to Christians alone to make them deny: whereas, if it were an evil thing, we would indeed deny it, and you would compel us to confess by torture... A man cries out, 'I am a Christian': he says what he is; you wish to hear what he is not. Magistrates who labor to extract truth, from us alone you labor to hear a lie," etc.
[35] These and many similar things Tertullian writes, who asserts that Pliny, after condemning some Christians and expelling others from their rank, but troubled by the very multitude, consulted Trajan about what he should do in the future when he was governing the province. After the martyrdom of St. Ignatius, Pliny wrote, Eusebius reports the same in his Chronicle on the cited authority of Tertullian, after having previously stated that Ignatius was brought to Rome and thrown to the beasts: and thus in the Acts of St. Ignatius these events are narrated after his glorious death. The words of Pliny require that they be assigned to that time, when after the persecution stirred up by Trajan, Christians had ceased holding their assemblies on account of his edict, by which, according to the instructions of Trajan, he had forbidden associations. not in the year 5 of Trajan. Baronius dates these letters as written in the fifth year of the reign of Trajan, the year of Christ 104 — though more correctly 102 according to others, to which year Petavius also assigns them in his Chronicle appended to the Doctrine of Times, since Pliny in the preceding year, the fourth of Trajan, had held the consulship as suffect for two months with Cornutus Tertullus; from which dignity he was soon sent as Proconsul to his province. But Rosinus observes to the contrary, in book 7 of his Roman Antiquities, chapter 42, that from the consulship held in Rome some departed to their provinces the following year, others in the fifth or sixth year or at another time. But grant that in the first year after his consulship Pliny went to Bithynia substituted by his vicar; whence is it proven that this man, by nature inclined to mildness and benevolence, proposed his edict to the Christians before the persecution had been proclaimed by the Emperor's command?
[36] Bithynia was a Praetorian province. Finally, that Bithynia was not a Proconsular but a Praetorian province is taught by Alexander ab Alexandro, book 2 of his Genial Days, chapter 27, and by Paulus Manutius in On the Roman Laws: the former cites Appuleius from book 4 of Appian's work on the Civil War, where under Brutus in Bithynia a Praetor is mentioned, and Praetors of the same Bithynia from epigram 10 of Catullus, on Varro. Manutius adduces a senatus consultum sent by Caelius to Cicero, in which Bithynia, to which Pontus was joined, is listed among eight Praetorian provinces. Sigonius also, in his work On the Ancient Law of the Provinces, chapter 13, calls Pliny the Praetor of Bithynia. Lastly, an old inscription, published with his letters throughout, and cited from Appian and Panvinius among the ancient inscriptions by Janus Gruterus, page 454, calls him Propraetor of the Province of Pontus. Whether Pliny was converted to the faith of Christ is discussed by Petrus Halloix.
§ VI. The Letters of St. Ignatius.
[37] The outstanding holiness of Ignatius shines forth most clearly in the various Letters written by him. For they contain faith, patience, and all edification pertaining to our Lord: as St. Polycarp says, The Letters of St. Ignatius are commended by St. Polycarp, asserting in his letter to the Philippians that they could be greatly helped by reading them; and he adds that he had in his possession all the Letters of St. Ignatius that had been sent to him and to others. The words of Polycarp were transcribed into his Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius, a sincere approver of genuine antiquity: in whom the Greek words, which are still missed as mutilated in the latter part of the Letter, accurately correspond to the most ancient Latin translation. We transfer these from book 3, chapter 30: Περιέχουσι γάρ, he says, πιστὶν, καὶ ὑπομονὴν καὶ πᾶσαν οͅκοδομὴν, τὴν εͅς τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν ἀνήκουσαν. As we noted above, St. Polycarp wrote that Letter when he had not yet learned of the martyrdom of St. Ignatius, asking the Philippians to make known whatever they had learned more certainly concerning Ignatius himself and those who were with him. These words are omitted by Petrus Halloix in chapter 17 of the Life of St. Polycarp in the Letter cited there, though they are consistently found everywhere else in the same Letter: whose editions are the same as those of the Letters of St. Ignatius, to be reviewed presently — much older than the Basel press of Henricus Petrus (by which Halloix judges they were first rendered into Latin and printed in the year 1550).
[38] The Letters of St. Ignatius are numbered fifteen in all, of which three, of entirely doubtful authenticity and not yet, so far as we know, found in Greek codices: fifteen in number two inscribed to the holy John the elder, Apostle and Evangelist, and the third to Mary the Christ-bearer; to be divided into three classes: to which the response of the latter to Ignatius is usually appended. Nor is there one and the same authority for the other Letters, which are more securely divided into two classes. Some are certainly known to have been written by St. Ignatius; others, if not by conclusive, then certainly by probable arguments, claim the same author. Of the first kind there are seven: to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and Polycarp. To the latter class belong the five following: to the Tarsians, the Philippians, the Antiochenes, Heron, and Mary of Cassobola: whose letter to St. Ignatius has also recently been published. But of all, the noblest may be considered the one he wrote to the Romans, the chief one to the Romans, inserted below in the Acts collected by Metaphrastes: in which Ignatius pours forth most aptly and copiously his love for Christ and his immense desire to enjoy him, in words and sentiments drawn, as it were, from the very furnace of all love. praised by St. Irenaeus, This zeal was admired by St. Irenaeus, a disciple of St. Polycarp and Bishop of Lyon in Gaul, who in book 5 against Heresies, chapter 28, transcribed this saying of Ignatius, condemned to the beasts, from his Letter to the Romans: σιτός εἰμι θεοῦ, καὶ δι᾽ ὀδόντων θηρίων ἀλήθομαι ἵνα καθαρὸς ἄρτος εὐρεθῶ — which in the most ancient Latin translation of Irenaeus reads thus: "I am the wheat of Christ, and I am ground by the teeth of beasts that I may be found to be pure bread of God." That Irenaeus did not name Ignatius in this passage, but that he is the one understood, is taught by Eusebius, book 3 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 30. The same is openly cited by Dionysius, the outstanding Master of mystical Theology, by Dionysius, whose works are attributed to the one Areopagite. In his book On the Divine Names, chapter 4, §12, he confirms the excellence of divine love from the said Letter of St. Ignatius to the Romans thus: "It has seemed to some of our commentators on sacred Scripture that the name 'love' (amor) is more divine than the name 'charity' (dilectio). For the divine Ignatius writes: 'My love is crucified.' ὁ ἐμὸς ἔρως ἐσταύρωται." Petrus Halloix wishes all this to be expunged, in question 2 of the Life of St. Dionysius the Areopagite that he composed; but without any support from a codex either handwritten or printed. These passages are preserved by Photius in his Library, number 1, by the Greeks St. Maximus and Pachymeres, and by those men of the highest integrity and erudition who translated Dionysius into Latin or illustrated him with their commentaries — Hugh of St. Victor, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Robert of Lincoln, Dionysius the Carthusian, Ambrosius Camaldulensis, Marsilius Ficinus, and others, by whose astute industry the works of Dionysius are expounded, published in the years of Christ 1502, 1536, and following: of which a fuller discussion is required at another place. by Eusebius, by Jerome. From this Letter of St. Ignatius to the Romans, Eusebius and Jerome insert a portion, the former in his Ecclesiastical History, book 3, chapter 30, the latter in his treatise On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 16: which portion, having been transferred thence to the Roman Breviary, is recited annually in the ecclesiastical office.
[39] These two have left us an illustrious testimony concerning the remaining Letters of the first class: Eusebius records the seven Letters The words of Eusebius are these: "When Ignatius came to Smyrna, where Polycarp was, he wrote one letter to the Church of the Ephesians, in which he makes mention of Onesimus, who was their Pastor. Another to the Church at Magnesia near the river Maeander, in which he again brings to memory Damas the Bishop. Another likewise to the Church of Tralles, in which he mentions Polybius, who was then their leader. Furthermore he wrote to the Church of Rome," etc. And after he had quoted a portion of this Letter, as we noted, he adds: "When he had traveled some distance from Smyrna, writing from Troas, he conversed familiarly by letter not only with those of Philadelphia, but also with the Church of Smyrna, and separately with Polycarp, who presided over that Church." So writes Eusebius, whom St. Jerome imitated and briefly presents those letters thus: "And when, sailing, he had come to Smyrna, and St. Jerome, where Polycarp, a hearer of John, was Bishop, he wrote one letter to the Ephesians, a second to the Magnesians, a third to the Trallians, a fourth to the Romans, and departing thence to the Philadelphians and the Smyrnaeans, and specifically to Polycarp, commending to him the Church of Antioch." Eusebius describes this commendation at greater length and adds: ὀ δὲ ἀυτὸς Ζμυρναίοις γραφὼν οὐκ οἶδ᾽ ὁπόθεν ῥητοἶς συνκέχρηται, τοιαῦτά τινα περὶ τοῦ χριστοῦ διεξίων. Ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἐν σαρκὶ αἀτὸν οἶδα, etc. "The same writer, when writing to the Smyrnaeans, uses certain testimonies about Christ — whence drawn I frankly do not know. 'I know him,' he says, 'even after the resurrection in the flesh,'" etc. While Jerome for the sake of brevity passes over these earlier words along with the aforesaid commendation, he connected the following with the Letter to Polycarp, saying: "in which he also sets forth testimony concerning the person of Christ from the Gospel which was recently translated by me, saying: 'I indeed have seen him after the resurrection in the flesh,'" etc. These are more accurately distinguished in Eusebius.
[40] among them the Letter to Polycarp, Honorius, Priest of Autun, in his little book On the Luminaries of the Church, chapter 17, omitting the Letter to Polycarp, enumerates only six Letters of St. Ignatius in these words: "Ignatius, third Bishop of the Church of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, wrote a letter to the Church of the Ephesians, a second to the Magnesians, a third to the Trallians, a fourth to the Romans, then to the Philadelphians and the Smyrnaeans. He suffered under Trajan." So writes Honorius, following, as he states in his preface, St. Jerome. As if, Ussher infers in his Dissertation on the Ignatian Letters, chapter 2, Honorius had judged the Letter to Polycarp to be entirely omitted from the count of the writings of Ignatius — understanding Jerome's words, that is, as if no particular Letter had been sent to Polycarp, but the one to the Smyrnaeans had been inscribed jointly to them and especially to him as their Bishop: and Ussher has absolutely no doubt that this was Jerome's meaning — wrongly rejected by modern scholars, not having accurately compared the words of Eusebius and Jerome with each other, since both intend that besides the Letter inscribed to the Smyrnaeans, another was sent separately, or specifically (ἰδίως), to Polycarp. Polycarp himself also, in his letter to the Philippians, mentions the letter sent to him by St. Ignatius: "Both you and Ignatius," he says, "wrote to me, that if anyone goes to Syria, he should also carry your letters." But Ussher contends that these were private letters and were not made public by Polycarp. And again in chapter 3 he admits that Polycarp appended to his Letter to the Philippians all the letters of Ignatius that he had in his possession — not private ones, written to himself or others on matters of no concern to the community, but public ones, addressed to the most noble Churches, containing matters pertaining to πίστιν καὶ ὑπομονὴν καὶ πᾶσαν οͅκοδομὴν — "faith and patience and all edification." So Ussher from his own opinion, entirely unaware that St. John Chrysostom, in that Letter of Ignatius, cited by St. Chrysostom, demonstrated that πᾶσαν οͅκοδομὴν lay hidden, in his Homily on the One Legislator, which is the first in volume 6 of his works in the edition of Fronto Ducaeus: where the following is read: Διὰ τοῦτο γενναῖός τις τῶν ἀρχαίων (Ιγνάτιος δὲ ἦν ὄνομα ἀντῷ) οὗτος ἱερωσύνῃ καὶ μαρτυρίῳ διαπρέψας, ἐπιστέλλων τινὶ ἱερεῖ, ἔλεγε. Μηδὲν ἀνευ᾽ γνώμης σου γινέσθω, μηδἐ σὺ ἀνεὺ γνώμης Θεοῦ τι πράττε. "For this reason a certain noble man among the ancients (Ignatius was his name), who was distinguished by both the priesthood and martyrdom, writing to a certain priest, said: 'Let nothing be done without your judgment, nor should you yourself do anything without the judgment of God.'" These words are found in the Letter to Polycarp, whom Chrysostom cites as a "priest," not some Church. and Antiochus the monk, The same Letter is cited in Homily 124 by Antiochus the monk, who flourished in the Laura of St. Sabas at the beginning of the seventh century: whose works have been published in the Library of the Fathers. Hence it is clear that it is vainly assumed by Ussher that this Letter was private and not made public by Polycarp. Outstanding testimonies of the ancient Fathers concerning the other Letters of the first class will be given below.
[41] Baronius, in volume 1 of his Ecclesiastical Annals, at the year of Christ 48, number 25, admits only those Letters of St. Ignatius which Jerome and other older writers who reviewed the Letters of the same St. Ignatius were acquainted with. Although he himself restricts this censure to the three doubtful ones inscribed to the Virgin Mother of God and St. John, he does not sufficiently exclude the other class assigned by us, which Eusebius, Jerome, and others in earlier centuries did not indicate. Petrus Halloix, in his Apology for the Ignatian Letters, chapter 5, claims that the Letter to the Philippians was known to Origen and St. Jerome, on account of the virginal birth being unknown to the demons, [That the virginal birth was hidden from the demons, from the Letter to the Ephesians.] as asserted from the testimony of St. Ignatius. But these statements agree most closely with this passage in the Letter to the Ephesians: Ἔλαθεν τὸν ἄρχοντα τοῦ ἀιῶνος τούτου ἡ παρθενία Μαρίας καὶ ὁ τοκετὸς ἀυτῆς. "The virginity of Mary and her childbearing were hidden from the prince of this world." Origen expresses this passage in Homily 6 on Luke: "I found," he says, "an elegant statement written in the Letter of a certain Martyr Origen teaches this, (I mean Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, second after Peter, who in the persecution at Rome fought against the beasts): 'The virginity of Mary was hidden from the prince of this world.'" He then explains how it was hidden from him: "It was hidden," he says, "because of Joseph; it was hidden because of the marriage; it was hidden because she was thought to have a husband," etc. St. Jerome explains the same passage of St. Ignatius to the Ephesians in book 1 of his Commentary on chapter 1 of Matthew, and St. Jerome. where he speaks thus about the betrothal of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph: "The Martyr Ignatius added a fourth reason why Christ was conceived by a woman who was betrothed: 'So that his birth,' he says, 'might be concealed from the devil, while the devil supposed he was born not of a virgin, but of a wife.'"
[42] Nor do the five letters of the second class lack their own probability, Ignatius also wrote five other Letters. by which they deserve to be attributed to Ignatius as their author: both because they are found mixed in with the others in ancient Greek and Latin codices, and because the subject matter read in them concerns events of that time and persons then living in the East, and the spirit hardly differs from the other letters of the first class. Polycarp, regarding certain letters sent to Syria, speaks thus in his letter to the Philippians: "Both you and Ignatius wrote to me, that if anyone goes to Syria, he should also carry your letters. This I shall do, if I find a suitable opportunity, either in person or through one whom I shall send to serve as ambassador also on your behalf." The same is repeated by Eusebius: were three of them commended by the Philippians to Polycarp? to which similar things Ignatius had requested in his letter to Polycarp, sent earlier from Troas: namely, that a most sacred council should be assembled and someone chosen — a θεόδρομος, a beloved and diligent person — to be sent to Syria to the Church of Antioch, which, by the prayer of Polycarp, he had learned had obtained peace. Therefore the three letters written from Philippi — to the Antiochenes, to Heron his successor, and to the neighboring Tarsians — commended to Polycarp by the Philippians on behalf of Ignatius, together with their own letters, may have been sent to St. Polycarp to be forwarded to Syria; and as we noted, he wrote back that either he himself would do this or another would fulfil the mission. Eusebius, from whom St. Jerome copied, just as he does not follow the Ignatian journey beyond Smyrna and Troas, so also he could not conveniently mention the letters written afterwards. All of which, although they do not bring evident certainty regarding these Letters, have nevertheless induced Eastern and Western writers alike, by congruent arguments, to accept them as written by St. Ignatius.
[43] St. John Damascene, in book 1 of his Parallels, chapter 1, published this saying of St. Ignatius: "Obey Caesar in those matters in which obedience is without danger." St. John Damascene cites them, Which in the Letter to the Antiochenes reads in Greek: Τῷ Καίσαρι ὑποτάγετε, ἐν οἷς ἀκίνδινος ἡ ὑποταγή. The old translator in Ussher renders this: "Be subject to Caesar in those matters in which subjection is not dangerous." The rest that is added to this saying in the cited place is either a scholium of Damascene himself, or an addition of another author from whom he transcribed: unless we prefer to say he used another copy, either more complete or rather interpolated. Another line of argument can be seen in Petrus Halloix, in his Apology for these Letters, chapter 4, from a fragment of a certain Anastasius the Priest, Anastasius the Priest, communicated by our Sirmond: in this, he reports, the Letter πρὸς τοὺς ἐν Τάρσῳ is cited, but the passage is found in the Letter to the Philippians. Another argument is contributed by Usuardus, Ado, Usuardus, Ado, and others in the most ancient manuscript codices for the sixth of May, in these words: "At Antioch, of St. Euodius, who, as Blessed Ignatius writes, was the first Bishop ordained there by the Apostles." The passage is found in the Letter to the Antiochenes, to whom he writes thus: Μνημονεύσατε Εὐοδίου τοῦ ἀξιομακαρίστου ποιμένος ὑμῶν, ὁς πρῶτος ἐνεχειρίσθη παρὰ τῶν Ἁποστόλων τὴν ὑμετέραν προστασίαν. "Remember Euodius, your most worthily blessed Pastor, who was the first to be ordained by the Apostles over your flock." These are found in the most ancient editions; and when the various editions have been discussed, the remaining matters concerning the authenticity of the Letters of Ignatius will become more clearly known.
[44] The order of the Letters as they appear in Latin in the manuscripts. The order of the Letters is generally found as follows: to Mary of Cassobola, the Trallians, the Magnesians, the Tarsians, the Philippians, the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, Polycarp, the Antiochenes, Heron, the Ephesians, and the Romans — twelve in number, which we have collated with an ancient manuscript of the Monastery of Lobbes, and which we believe are the ones indicated by Vincentius of Beauvais, book 10 of the Speculum Historiale, chapter 57, where he notes that St. Ignatius wrote twelve Letters. Of these eleven, and printed written on his journey to Rome, we have them printed at Strasbourg in the year of Christ 1502: in the year 1502 of which the first is to the Trallians, the last to the Romans, the rest interposed in the aforesaid order, with the prefatory argument of Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, which Possevinus mentions in his Apparatus Sacer and which also lists only eleven. The one written to Mary of Cassobola was missing. Symphorianus Champerius of Lyon, at the press of Ascensius in the year 1516, published fifteen Letters of Ignatius, [1516] in this order: the first and second to John the Apostle and Evangelist; the third to the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lord; the fourth to Mary of Cassobola; the fifth to the Trallians, etc.; the fifteenth to the Romans, with an apology for the three earlier Letters: after relating which he inserts this title: "There follow the twelve Letters of Blessed Ignatius, of which the first is to Mary of Cassobola," and he then follows the customary order with the number everywhere indicated, as if he had not accepted the three earlier ones. Soon thereafter, and often reprinted, the fifteen letters from the same ancient Latin translation were published: at Cologne together with the commentaries of Dionysius the Carthusian on the works of the ancient Dionysius attributed to the Areopagite, 1536 and following in the years 1536 and 1556; at Antwerp at the press of Steelsius in the year 1540, with the Letters of Martialis, Dionysius, and Antonius; then again at Cologne in the year 1565 with the works of St. Clement of Rome. Other editions, which we have not seen, are cited by Ussher in chapter 19 of his Dissertation: Parisian editions of the years 1495 and 1498; by Maestraeus the Augsburg edition of 1529; and by Simlerus the Parisian and Basel editions of 1520 and 1551.
[45] The Letters that had until now been seen only in one and the same Latin translation were published in Greek published in Greek by Paceus in the year 1557, from a most ancient codex of the Emperor Ferdinand Augustus, or of the Augsburg library (so Vairlenius, to be cited presently, calls it), brought to light by Valentinus Paceus, and printed at Dillingen on the Danube, a city of the Swabians, in the year 1557. Many then translated them into Latin. Among these Guilielmus Morelius stood out, to whom a royal privilege was granted in the year 1555, appended to the Greco-Latin Letters published in the year 1561. He states in his preface that he collated the Greek book of Paceus with Latin copies and restored it in many places, with very many corrections added. These were thence transferred and published in the first volume of the Theological Library, issued in the year 1569. Already before this, in the year 1560, Joannes Brunnerius of Zurich had published a paraphrase of these Letters, using the manuscript codex of Gaspar von Nydbrugk. translated into Latin by various scholars: The conversion of this Brunnerius from the camp of the heretics to the standard of the Catholics is recorded by Possevinus in his Apparatus Sacer and Halloix in question 2 of the Life of St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Hieronymus Vairlenius prepared a new translation and published the Letters with notes at the Plantin press in the years 1566 and 1572, reprinted in the Library of the Fathers, the first and second Parisian and Cologne editions of the years 1575, 1589 of the past century, and 1618 of this century. The same Letters were translated anew by Martialis Maestraeus, Doctor of the Sorbonne, and published with notes at Paris in the year 1608 in both languages, and also inserted with the Notes of Vairlenius into the Parisian Library of the Fathers of the year 1624.
[46] Up to now only the single Greek copy of Paceus had appeared, reprinted by all: concerning which Bellarmine, On Ecclesiastical Writers and book 4, On the Eucharist, chapter 26, warned that little trust should be placed in it. other Greek copies in the Florentine manuscript, That recourse should be had to the Greek manuscript codex at Florence was indicated by Franciscus Turrianus, book 2, For the Apostolic Canons and Decretal Letters of the Pontiffs, chapter 10, calling it a most ancient and most emended copy; more correct, by Thomas Massuet, book 1 of his Life of St. Paul, chapter 9; by Maestraeus in his Notes on the Letter written to Mary of Cassobola, number 1; and by many others. Hence a desire was kindled among learned men to transcribe the Letters from the Florentine codex: which was accomplished by Isaac Vossius, a man of singular humanity and erudition, who, admitted to the Medici Library during his Italian journey by the favor of the Most Serene Prince Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Etruria, transcribed these Ignatian Letters published in 1646 and, having returned to his homeland in Holland, published them in the year 1646, with the ancient translation of the same Letters appended, published from two manuscript codices at Oxford in England in the year 1642, together with an ancient Latin translation found in England. through the industry of James Ussher, the Protestant Primate of Armagh among the Irish. This Latin translation is generally rough and sometimes diverges from the Greek codex on account of variant readings: yet it is useful for eliciting the true sense of the Greek words, as we said above was done by Morelius with the earlier Greek copy of Paceus.
[47] The Florentine codex presents the Letters in this order: To the Smyrnaeans, Polycarp, Ephesians, Magnesians, Philadelphians, Trallians, Order of the Florentine codex, all of which, reported by Eusebius and St. Jerome, belong to the first class. From the second class there are only the letter of Mary of Cassobola to St. Ignatius, and his to the same Mary and to the Tarsians. In both English manuscripts, according to Ussher in chapter 19 of his Dissertation, the following order was found: and of the two English ones, To the Smyrnaeans, Polycarp, Ephesians, Magnesians, Philadelphians, Trallians, from Mary the Proselyte of the Chassabolites to Ignatius, from Ignatius to Mary the Proselyte, to the Tarsians, Antiochenes, Heron, Romans. The Florentine codex lacks the last three, which Vossius supposes were once contained in it but perished through the damage of time. Both English codices, like the Florentine, lacked the Letter to the Philippians, which, as the most heavily interpolated, Petrus Halloix endeavors to support with many props in chapter 5 of his Apology. Ussher inverted the order found in both manuscript codices in the Oxford edition as follows: To the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, changed by Ussher: Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans, Mary the Proselyte of the Chassabolites, Polycarp, Tarsians, Antiochenes, Heron — in which he mixes the Letter to Polycarp with the rest of the second class, all of which he dismisses from St. Ignatius as if they were fabrications: which has been amply refuted above.
[48] The Greek Florentine codex and the Latin translation corresponding to it are commended by several, and those not obscure, arguments. In the Florentine are found the passages cited by Theodoret, First, because they contain passages excerpted from these Letters by ancient writers and inserted in their works, which are omitted elsewhere. Thus in the third Dialogue of Theodoret, in volume 4 of his works, the Letter of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr of Antioch, to the Smyrnaeans is cited, and this testimony is adduced in his own words: Εὐχαριστίας καὶ προσφοράς οὐκ ἀποδέχονται, διὰ τὸ μὴ ἀπολογεῖν τὴν ἐυχαριστίαν σάρκα εἶναι τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ιησοῦ χριστοῦ τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν παθοῦσαν, ἣν χρηστότητι ὁ πατὴρ ἤγειρεν. Which in the Florentine Codex reads thus: Εὐχαριστίας καὶ προσευχῆς ἀπέχονται, δια τὸ μὴ ὁμολογεῖν, etc. — agreeing in sense but differing in variant readings. The former passage in Theodoret is translated into Latin as follows: "They do not accept the Eucharist and the offerings, because they do not confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, which the Father in his goodness raised up." The Latin translation in Ussher agrees with the Florentine Codex: "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, which the Father in his goodness raised up." So it reads there: but these words are absent from the Greek copy of Paceus and from other Latin codices. Petrus Halloix in chapter 7 of his Apology hints at another letter written to the Smyrnaeans, from which Theodoret drew this doctrine. His conjecture collapses of itself.
[49] the genuine sense is presented, The Florentine codex confers a second benefit, in that it presents the Ignatian Letters in that phrasing of words in which Athanasius, Theodoret, Eusebius, and other writers of outstanding antiquity cited them — from which the other editions differ greatly, having been everywhere altered and interpolated. cited by Athanasius, Athanasius, in his book On the Synod, takes from Ignatius this doctrine concerning Christ: Εἶς ἱατρός ἑστι σαρκικὸς καὶ πνευματικὸς, γενητὸς καὶ ἀγένητος, ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ θεὸς, ἐν θανάτῳ ζωὴ ἀληθηνὴ, καὶ ἐν Μαρίας καὶ ἐν θεοῦ. On this passage, Dionysius Petavius, in volume 2 of his Theological Dogmas, book 5, chapter 1, section 14, adds that he does not know whether it exists in the published letters. He notes that something similar about Christ the Physician is indeed read in the eleventh letter, which is to the Ephesians, but expressed very differently. There, he says, ἀγέννητον is used of the Father, not the Son. He notes, moreover, that the letters of Ignatius are known to have been read differently in various places by the ancients than they now appear in the codices. The words in the said Letter had been read thus far: "Our Physician is the only true God, unbegotten and invisible, the Lord of all things, the Father and begetter of the Only-begotten. We have also as Physician our Lord God Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son before the ages and the Word in the beginning, but afterwards a man born of the Virgin Mary." How utterly different these are from the words of St. Athanasius! In the Florentine codex they read: Εἶς ἱατρός ἑστιν σαρκικός τε καὶ πνευματικὸς. γεννητὸς καὶ ἀγέννητος, ἐν σαρκὶ γενόμενος θεὸς, ἐν ἀθανάτῳ ζωῂ αληθινῇ, καὶ ἐν Μαρίας καὶ ἐν θεοῦ. These are the same if we read ἐν θανάτῳ ζωὴ ἀληθηνὴ, as Theodoret read in his Dialogue, by Theodoret, Gelasius, and Pope Gelasius in his work On the Two Natures in Christ against Eutyches and Nestorius, or whoever was the ancient author of that opuscule, in the Library of the Fathers, fifth century, part 3, where it reads: "From the Letter of Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr of Antioch, to the Ephesians: There is one Physician, fleshly and spiritual, made and unmade, God in man, eternal life in death, from Mary and from God." In Theodoret, again, γενητὸς ἐξ ἀγενήτου is a variant reading. We omit adducing more, for the sake of avoiding tedium. In the three Dialogues of Theodoret alone, in volume 4 of his works, nine passages are found that agree with the Florentine codex but differ greatly from all other editions save one. In the first Dialogue, it is incorrectly written "from the Letter to the Romans"; it should be corrected to "to the Smyrnaeans": which it suffices to have noted. Ussher published these passages cited by the Fathers, collated among themselves, in chapters 4 and 18. The portion of the Letter to the Romans which we said above was inserted by Eusebius into his History is also given by the Latin translation published by Ussher; it is interpolated in other codices of the letters and especially in the Acts in Metaphrastes; from the collation of which Petrus Halloix made another Latin version in chapter 10 of the Life he composed. With no less successful effort, Vossius, from the same Greek texts collated with the Latin edition of Ussher, formed the complete Greek Letter to the Romans and appended it at the end of his notes, to supply the deficiency of the Florentine codex.
[50] Third, what more learned men had long ago conjectured to have been inserted into the Ignatian Letters the theological corruptions introduced by others are absent, is absent from the said Florentine codex. The Letter to the Philadelphians alone, made more than half again as long, contains many blemishes rightly to be expunged. Thus, after virginity is commended, the following is added: "I do not disparage the rest of the Blessed who were united in marriage; for I wish to be found worthy of God at their footsteps in his Kingdom — like Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the other Prophets; like Peter and Paul and the other Apostles, who were joined in marriage, concerning the marriage of Paul and the Apostles, who had wives not for the sake of lust but for the sake of leaving posterity." All of which was inserted by the fraud of Greek clerics who wished to marry, who, when they began to retain wives together with the priesthood, took Paul and the other Apostles as companions in defense of their own incontinence, as Baronius, Massuet, and others cited above have warned. Something similar is then added in these words: "Let Presbyters and Deacons and the entire clergy, together with all the people and the soldiers and the Rulers, and even the Caesars, obey the Bishop." obedience prescribed to Caesar, At a time when Ignatius had been condemned to the beasts by Caesar out of hatred for Christ. These are better absent in the Florentine codex. From the same letter, a controversy that arose between Catholics and heretics collapses: when the latter wished the use of the sacred chalice in the Eucharist to be necessarily common to all. The whole force was believed to lie in the Greek copy, where it reads: Μία γὰρ ἐστιν ἡ σὰρξ τοῦ κυρίου Ιησοῦ, καὶ ἓν ἀυτοῦ τὸ αἷμα τὸ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐκχυθέν. εἷς καὶ ἄρτος τοῖς πᾶσιν ἐθρύφθη καὶ ἓν ποτήριον τοῖς ὅλοις διενεμήθη ἓν θυσιαστήριον πάσῃ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ καὶ εἷς Ἐπίσκοπος ἅμα τῷ πρεσβυτερίῳ καὶ τοῖς διακόνοις τοῖς συνδούλοις μου. concerning giving the chalice to all in the Eucharist, Which in the Florentine codex is given briefly: Μία γὰρ σὰρξ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ιησοῦ χριστοῦ καὶ ἓν ποτήριον εἰς ἕνωσιν τοῦ αἷματος ἀυτοῦ. ἓν θυσιαστήριον ὡς εἷς Ἐπίσκοπος ἅμα τῷ πρεσβυτερίῳ καὶ διακόνοις τοῖς συνδούλοις μου. Which the old translator in Ussher renders: "For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one chalice for the union of his blood, one altar, one Bishop with the Presbytery and Deacons, my fellow servants." Therefore those controverted words are absent: "One bread was broken for all, one cup was distributed to all." On these words, against the Magdeburg Centuriators, Scultetus, and Plessis, Bellarmine writes in book 4, On the Eucharist, chapter 4, and others who opposed Plessis.
Having thus far investigated the different texts of the letters in Paceus and the Florentine codex, we again divide them into the distinct classes already mentioned, because in the former ones, of which Eusebius and Jerome made mention, very few citations are drawn from Sacred Scripture, and these almost exclusively from the New Testament. We do not thereby immediately approve the stricter censure of Vossius, by which he considers the remaining letters to be falsely attributed to Ignatius, fictitious, spurious, and pseudepigraphical: we refer them to Ignatius, if not by conclusive and certain arguments, at least by probable ones.
[51] The three other Letters — one to the Virgin Mother of God and two to St. John the Apostle — which have not yet been found in Greek and circulate under the name of St. Ignatius, Three of doubtful authenticity. are considered doubtful and uncertain by most, and even fictitious by Bellarmine, Christophorus de Castro, and others: yet they have been attributed to St. Ignatius by St. Bernard, Aeneas Silvius, Dionysius the Carthusian, Michael of Cortona, Symphorianus Champerius, and others whom Halloix cites in a separate question after his Apology for the Letters of St. Ignatius — whose moderate judgment we do not disapprove, whereby he admits they can be held as suspect and doubtful, but should not be utterly despised and lose all credibility: and therefore the freedom to hold whatever opinion one wishes is left to each person. As for their differing in style, this is to be attributed to very different periods: for they would have been written by a young man and student sixty years before the rest. What was the διδαχή and Liturgy of Ignatius in Ussher, chapter 1 of his Dissertation on the Ignatian Letters, is wholly unknown to us. Perhaps the excerpts attributed to St. Ignatius in Damascene are drawn from this source.
[52] Another treatise is found under the name of St. Ignatius, plainly fabricated, a fabricated Rule composed for the Virgin Mother of God. with this title: "Rule written by St. Ignatius for Mary the Christ-bearing Virgin." Then in rhythmical verse it is described thus:
Mary established for herself a Rule of living, And under this order of serving God. For in the nighttime of the matins hour She was constantly devoted to this divine prayer, etc.
There are one hundred and thirty verses, composed by some pious man devoted to the Virgin Mother of God, for the sake of spiritual exercise, and adapted to the monastic way of life of nuns: to which order Alegreus, in his Paradise of the Carmelites, status 2, chapters 1 and 24, assigns both the Mother of God and St. Ignatius — whom we have exposed on other occasions more than once.
LIFE
By Simeon Metaphrastes, Collated with a Greek manuscript.
Ignatius Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr at Rome (St.)
By Metaphrastes, from a Greek manuscript.
CHAPTER I.
The Episcopate of St. Ignatius. His name brought before Trajan.
[1] Ignatius as a child was set forth by Christ as an example of humility, When Trajan had taken up the scepter of the Roman Empire, the Bishop of the Church of Antioch was Ignatius, both in name and in reality a Theophorus. For the great Peter was succeeded by Euodius, and Euodius by Ignatius: who became an emulator of Peter's character and virtue. To this divine Ignatius, while he was still a mere child, they say that Christ, while still dwelling in the world, laid his undefiled hands upon him and said to the people who were looking on: "Unless someone humbles himself like this little child, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven; and whoever receives one such little child in my name, receives me" Matt. 18:3-4 — thereby showing what kind of man Ignatius would become as he advanced in age, and clearly indicating his Apostolic doctrine.
[2] a disciple of St. John the Evangelist: This divine Ignatius, therefore, together with Polycarp, who presided over the Church of Smyrna, was a disciple of John the Evangelist: and when he had regularly visited him and had diligently practiced every form of virtue, and especially that which befits a priest, he was then chosen as priest by the common decision of all the Apostles together, and was made Bishop of Antioch. And when he had taken charge of the Church, and with much sweat and labor had sown in it the proclamation of godliness, Bishop of Antioch. and had shown zeal and doctrine in all things truly Apostolic, and had proved himself a perfect minister of the mysteries of Christ, he afterwards became also a Martyr, delivered to the beasts for Christ's sake, as the narrative will declare, taking up the story from a somewhat earlier point.
[3] For Trajan, Emperor of the Romans, elated by the victory he had won over the Scythians, and unable to contain his good fortune thus far, before the Emperor Trajan, but wishing to extend it further and to bring many other peoples under the Roman Empire, judged it best and expedient to wage war against the Christians, that is, against godliness. For in the former case he thought he was serving only the state: but in this way he thought he was also honoring his gods and inducing them to bring aid against his enemies. edicts issued against the Christians, He therefore inflicts a severe and grievous persecution against the pious faith, and publishes edicts throughout all the land that was subject to his rule: that all should either share with him in impiety, or, if they remained Christians, be subjected to various tortures and cruel deaths. It happened that Trajan was then staying at Antioch, being about to undertake an expedition against the Persians and making preparations for war there. he is impiously accused: Here, then, he is informed about Ignatius the Theophorus — that he professed the Christian religion and persuaded people to honor Christ as God, although he had been condemned to the cross and death by Pilate, as his Acts teach: and that he laid down a rule of preserving virginity, of despising riches and pleasures, and other things that are agreeable in life: and, what was the most serious charge of all, that it was not proper to consider the gods as gods, and to pay no regard to the Emperors.
NOTES
CHAPTER II.
The faith of Christ defended before Trajan. The desire for martyrdom.
[4] After Trajan heard these things, he immediately summoned the Saint, and with the Senate also present, he said: "Are you the one called Theophorus, who makes sport of our commands and overthrows all Antioch, and leads everyone after this Christ whom you preach, and does not deign to give the gods even a mere name?" And the divine Ignatius said: "I am he." And Trajan said: "And what does this word Theophorus mean?" To which the Martyr replied: "He who bears Christ about in his soul." The Emperor said: "Do you then bear Christ within yourself?" "Certainly," he replied. "For it is written: 'I will dwell in them and walk among them.' 2 Cor. 6:16 But what about us? Do we not seem to you to remember the gods constantly, and always to bear them about in our soul, and to invoke their aid against our enemies, He gives an account of his faith and of the name Theophorus, and to do all things through them according to our heart's desire?" The divine Ignatius answered: "Alas! O Emperor, you call the idols of the nations gods. For there is one true God, who is the creator of heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them. One is Christ Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, whose kingdom shall have no end. If you were to acknowledge him, O Emperor, your purple itself, and your diadem, and your royal throne would be more firm and stable."
[5] The Emperor said: "Let us leave these matters aside. But if you are willing, Ignatius, to do my power a most welcome service and henceforth to be counted among my friends, change this mind of yours and sacrifice to the gods with us: and immediately (let all know it) I shall appoint you Pontiff of great Jupiter and shall name you Father of the Senate." he rejects the offered pontificate of Jupiter: To this the Theophorus replied: "To give thanks, O Emperor, is indeed a noble thing for all men, and especially for Emperors, since they can be yet more generous in return: but only those things that are truly useful and beneficial to both parties. Those things, however, that can do harm, and especially to the soul, and kindle a more vehement fire of Gehenna for it — in such matters not only the giver, but also the one who asks, is himself most wretched. Admirable indeed, O Emperor, and munificent is your promise. But what does it profit me to be appointed by you Pontiff of great Jupiter and to be called Father of the Senate, when I am a priest of Christ, and daily offer him the sacrifice of praise, and am now hastening to immolate my whole self and to be made conformable to the likeness of his death?"
[6] The Emperor said: "To whom are you hastening to immolate yourself? To him who was put on the cross by Pontius Pilate?" "Assuredly," said the great Ignatius, "to him who crucified sin, and destroyed its inventor the devil, and through the cross abolished all his power." The Emperor said again: "You seem to me, Ignatius, to be entirely lacking in sound judgment and a sane mind. For you would not have been so openly deceived by the Scriptures of the Christians, but would have recognized plainly how great a good it is to obey the imperial edicts and to offer sacrifices to the gods with all men." To this the Saint, using again a greater freedom of speech, said: "Even if you should have me consumed by beasts, he willingly desires to undergo the most terrible form of death, even if you condemn me to the cross, even if you deliver me to the sword and fire — things that are in your power — I shall never allow myself to offer sacrifice to demons: for I neither fear death nor desire the present things which it is in your power to give for enjoyment; but I desire only the things to come, that he may be with Christ: and I apply every effort to pass over to Christ, who died for me."
[7] Whereupon the Senate, wishing to convict the Martyr of ignorance, said: "What, do you too confess that God died? How then can one who suffered death, and that an accursed one, be of benefit to others? But the gods both are immortal and are called so by us." When the divine Ignatius had taken from this the opportunity he shows that Christ lives, both to ridicule their gods and to open to them the door of the mystery of the Incarnation, and thus to lead them to the knowledge and faith of Christ, he spoke as follows: "My Lord and God Jesus Christ first became man for our sake and for our salvation, and of his own will accepted the cross and death and burial. But on the third day he rose again, having cast down and overthrown the power of the enemy, and ascended into the heavens whence he had come, raising us at the same time from the fall of sin and bringing us again into paradise, from which we had been justly expelled: and he bestowed upon us blessings greater than those we had previously possessed. But that any of those whom you consider gods ever did any such thing, no one at all would assert. For since they were wicked and destructive men, and did many things to the damage and ruin of our life and condition, and gave to men who are somewhat alienated from reason a very base and mean opinion and image of gods, without any reason at all, and that the gods of the Gentiles have perished: when afterwards the curtain of deception was drawn back and the stage set removed, they were discovered to be what they really were — as those who departed this life shamefully and were delivered over to immortal death because of the destruction of many. Jupiter certainly, who is to you the first and greatest of the gods, is buried in Crete: Aesculapius was struck by lightning. The tomb of Venus is shown at Paphos, and Hercules was consumed by fire. For since they were of such a character — or rather far worse — there befell them what they deserved."
NOTES
CHAPTER III.
The condemnation to death. The journey from Antioch to Smyrna.
[8] When these things had been said by Ignatius, the Emperor together with the Senate, fearing that if his discourse were prolonged, he is thrown into prison, the cause of the Gentiles would be undermined and either disbelieved or held up to ridicule, while the true religion would flourish and the cloud of error that casts its shadows over it would be dispelled, cast him into chains and placed him in the most secure custody. And he himself, having deliberated the entire night on how he might punish him according to his deserts and how he might remove him from this present life, determined to deliver him to wild beasts to be devoured, so that the Saint, torn apart by them, might perish. For this manner of death seemed to the Emperor by far the most grievous. When, therefore, he communicated this matter to the Senate in the morning, they too praised his decision: but they advised that this casting to the beasts should not take place at Antioch. "Lest," they said, "we make Ignatius all the more desired and glorious among his own citizens, by departing this life with a martyr's end." They said, therefore, that he ought to be led away in chains to Rome and there delivered to the beasts. For in this way he would both undergo a more severe punishment through the length of the journey, and at the same time, being unknown to the Romans, would appear to have been killed he is condemned to the beasts, to be sent to Rome: as one among common criminals, and there would not be the slightest memory of him among them.
[9] When this, therefore, had been agreed upon and sentence had been immediately pronounced against him, the Emperor brought him forth again from custody, making this his last trial of him. And first he frequently softened and coaxed the Saint with many promises of good things, scorning promises and threats, and then again terrified him yet more with threats. But when he saw that Ignatius neither yielded to promises nor feared threats, despairing entirely that he would change, he carried out what had been decreed: and having ordered heavier chains than before to be placed upon him, he delivered him to a cohort of soldiers, he is handed over to soldiers: and sent him to Rome, commanding that when the day of festival should arrive for the citizens, on which the whole people would assemble, he should be delivered to the beasts for the common entertainment of the theater, so that, in accordance with what St. Paul says, he too might become "a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." 1 Cor. 4:9
[10] When the Martyr, therefore, had received that final sentence, bound, he departs on foot to Seleucia, and had given thanks to God with a great cry, as was fitting, he placed the chains upon himself with great delight and joy. And the Emperor indeed set out against the Persians with his army: but the Theophorus, after first praying earnestly for the Church and commending his flock to God with tears, followed the soldiers in chains. Then, having come to Seleucia without delay, without weeping, without showing that he was suffering anything grievous at all, but with eager steps, he was placed by the soldiers on a ship, and with them sailed to Smyrna. he sails to Smyrna: Here he greets the divine Apostle Polycarp, whom we said above presided over the Church of Smyrna and was the fellow disciple of Ignatius. He greets him, therefore, glorying and taking great pleasure, he greets St. Polycarp and others; and rejoicing in his chains. For what could be a greater ornament to him than to be seen suffering for the Lord who had so loved him? Then, having also given fitting greetings to the other Bishops and Priests and Deacons (for many had flocked together from the churches and cities of Asia to see that spectacle and to enjoy the beautiful stream that flowed from his tongue), he himself, counseling them as was fitting, asked all to pray for him: he asks them to pray for him. that through the beasts he might quickly be released to him whom he desired, and might appear before his face.
NOTES
CHAPTER IV.
The Letter written at Smyrna to the Romans.
[11] But when he saw that they were greatly disturbed and, as it were, hanging upon his very soul, and considered the separation from him and his death an unbearable loss, he feared concerning those who were at Rome, lest they too, similarly affected, might not bear to see him delivered to the beasts, but might lay hands on those who had been charged with delivering him, and thus close the open door of martyrdom for him. He therefore resolved to send word to them, He writes to the Romans, that they too should pray for him, lest the course of his contest be impeded; but that through the beasts, as has been said, he might be quickly released to his beloved Lord. It is worthwhile also to recall that letter, which reads word for word as follows:
[12] Ignatius, who is also Theophorus, Bishop of the holy Church of God which is at Antioch, to the Church which has obtained mercy in the majesty of the Most High Father and of Jesus Christ, his only Son — beloved and enlightened in the will of him who willed all things that exist according to the love of Jesus Christ our God — which also presides in the region of the Romans: which I greet in the name of Jesus Christ, united in flesh and spirit to his every command, filled with the grace of God, to rejoice in Christ Jesus God. he asks not to be hindered from the sentence pronounced: Since by praying to God I have obtained to see your venerable countenances, being in bonds in Christ Jesus, I hope to greet you, if it be the will of God, that I may be found worthy to persevere thus to the end. For my prayer duly succeeds, if by grace I shall receive my lot without hindrance. For I fear your love, lest it do me an injury. For it is easy for you to do what you wish: but difficult for me to attain God, if you should spare me. For I do not wish you to please men, but to please God, as indeed you do please him. For I shall never have another opportunity to attain God, nor will you. If you keep silence concerning me, I shall become God's. But if you love my flesh, I shall again be merely running. Rather, grant me this: that I be sacrificed to God. For the altar is prepared; the glorious martyrdom of a Bishop of the East in the West, so that, having formed a chorus in love, you may sing to the Father in Christ Jesus; because the Lord has deigned that a Bishop of Syria should be found in the West, having summoned him from the East. It is a beautiful thing to set from the world to God, that I may rise to him. You have never envied anyone; you have taught others.
[13] But I desire that those things also be firm and steadfast which you teach and prescribe. Only pray that strength be given me by the Lord, that he may be a Christian by death, that I may not only be called a Christian but also be found one and may deserve the name: and then I shall be seen to be faithful, when I am no longer visible to the world. For nothing that appears is eternal. "For the things that are seen are temporal: but the things that are not seen are eternal." I write to the churches and I charge all that I willingly die for Christ, if you do not prevent it. I beg you, let not your goodwill toward me be untimely: let me be devoured by the beasts, through which it is possible to attain God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. and a disciple of Christ through being devoured, Rather, coax the beasts, that they may become my sepulchre and leave nothing of my body, lest when I have fallen asleep I become a burden to anyone. Then I shall truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall no longer see even my body. Pray to Christ for me, that through these instruments I may be found a pure sacrifice. I do not command you as Peter and Paul did. They were Apostles, I am a condemned man: they were free, but I am a slave even to this day: but if you will it, and free to rise again: I shall be the freedman of Jesus Christ, and shall rise in him a free man.
[14] Now, in bonds, I learn to desire nothing worldly or vain. From Syria to Rome itself I fight with beasts, by land and sea, by night and day, bound to ten leopards — that is, a cohort of soldiers — who even when treated with kindness become worse. But by their injuries I learn all the more. Would that I may enjoy the beasts prepared for me, and I pray that they may be found ready for me: I shall even coax them, so that they may devour me immediately, and not, as has happened to some, be afraid and not touch me. he scorns all torments, And if they are unwilling even when invited, I shall compel them by force. Pardon me, I know what is to my advantage. Now I begin to be a disciple, that I may attain Jesus Christ. Let fire and cross, attacks of beasts, cuttings, divisions, amputations of limbs, crushing of the whole body, and torments of the devil come upon me — only let me attain Jesus Christ. The pleasures of the world will profit me nothing, and its delights, for the sake of Christ, nor the kingdoms of this age. It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to obtain dominion over the ends of the earth. "For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his own soul?" cf. Matt. 16:26 Him I seek, who died for us.
[15] Forgive me, brethren: be not a hindrance to me from living, nor wish me to die. Permit me to receive the pure light. For when I shall have come there, I shall be a man of God. Suffer me to be an imitator of the passion of Christ. If anyone has him within himself, let him understand what I desire: and let him be moved to compassion for me, knowing what constrains me. he implores them not to hinder him The prince of this world wishes to seize me and to corrupt my resolution toward God. Let none of those who are present, therefore, lend him aid. Be on my side rather, that is, on God's side. Do not speak of Christ Jesus while desiring the world. Let not envy dwell among you. desire for eternal life: Not even if I myself, when present, should beseech you, obey me: but obey rather those things which I write to you. For from the things which I write to you, I desire to die. My love is crucified, and there is not in me any fire loving worldly matter: but rather living water speaking within me, which says to me inwardly: Come to the Father. I take no delight in the nourishment of corruption, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ the Son of God, who was afterwards born of the seed of David and Abraham: and I desire the drink of God, his blood, which is love incorruptible, and life everlasting. I no longer wish to live as men do, and this shall come to pass if you so will it. Will it, therefore, so that God also may will it for you. In a brief letter I make my request of you: believe me. And Jesus Christ will reveal to you that I speak truly in my petition, for he is the mouth that does not lie. Not according to the flesh do I write to you, but according to the mind of God.
[16] If I shall have suffered, remember in your prayer the Church of Syria, which in my place uses God as its pastor. Jesus Christ alone shall watch over it, and your love shall care for it. My spirit greets you, and the love of the Churches which received me in the name of Jesus Christ, he commends the Church of Antioch. not as one merely passing through. For even those churches which did not lie on my route according to the flesh escorted me from city to city. I write these things to you from Smyrna through the Ephesians, who are worthy and who may rightly be called blessed. And Crocus is with me, together with many others — a name beloved among those who have accompanied me from Syria to the glory of God. I have written these things to you on the ninth day before the Kalends of September. Farewell forever, brethren, in the endurance of Jesus Christ, Amen.
NOTES
CHAPTER V.
The Journey from Smyrna to Rome. Martyrdom. Translation of the Relics from Rome to Antioch.
[17] But this indeed is the letter. He himself, however, shortly after was led out of Smyrna by the soldiers: On the journey he strengthens the Churches: and having put in at Troas and Neapolis, he passed on foot through Philippi and Macedonia, visiting the Churches that lay along his route, and teaching in them; exhorting, discoursing, strengthening the brethren who were somewhat simpler and weaker, and ensuring that all should be watchful and sober. When he had passed through Epirus and crossed the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas, he landed at Puteoli. Having been received as a guest there together with the soldiers by the faithful who were in that place, and having bidden them also farewell in the Lord, he came to Rome and was brought before the Prefect of the City. When the Prefect, therefore, had seen the Theophorus, he comes to Rome, and had received the Emperor's letters, and the appointed day had arrived — it being a festival and solemn day of the Romans — he led him into the middle of the theater, he is led into the theater: just as the wicked edict of the Emperor commanded.
[18] When therefore the entire city was seated in the theater, with ardent spirit and eyes already eager for the spectacle, inasmuch as report had everywhere announced that a Bishop of Syria was to fight with wild beasts; turning to the people with a certain noble and unbending spirit, as one who gloried and took pleasure in the ignominy which was seen to be endured for Christ; he addresses the people, "Men of Rome," he said, "and spectators of this present contest: these things befall me not that I may pay the penalty for any wickedness or criminal deed, but that I may attain God: for I am held by a desire for him and long for him insatiably. For I am his wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become his pure bread." he is devoured by lions. He said these things, and the lions, having been released, immediately tore him apart and devoured him, abstaining only from his rougher bones, his prayers having been truly fulfilled — that the beasts might be his sepulchre and that nothing of his body should remain: inasmuch as God valued more highly the prayers and love of his servant, bearing them to the end, than preventing him from being touched by the lions, so as to attribute glory to his own name.
[19] The bones are buried at Rome After these things had occurred and reached their end, the faithful who were at Rome, to whom the divine Ignatius had written while still alive, after the theater had been dismissed, gathered together, and having lifted up the bones with desiring hands, and having composed them honorably and reverently, they deposited them in a distinguished place outside the City, on the twentieth day of the month of December. These relics were afterwards carried back to the Martyr's homeland of Antioch: They are transferred to Antioch. and the cities that lay between received a double blessing — first, when the Martyr was being led in chains from Antioch to Rome, and now, when he was being brought back from there with glorious trophies — the faithful swarming about him like bees around a honeycomb.
[20] And it is said that after his martyrdom was consummated, St. Ignatius appears to the Romans: when the faithful who were at Rome were mourning his loss and receiving no consolation for their grief, and were occupied with funeral hymns and vigils, he himself appeared to them in their sleep, and embracing, as it were, those who had shown themselves worthy of his company, he made their mourning easier and lighter, and calmed the vehemence of their grief. Others in turn said that they had seen him dripping with sweat, as one who had just now drawn breath after the labors of his contest, and praying for the safety of the city and of all the faithful.
NOTES
CHAPTER VI
Testimonies of the Fathers. The Persecution Mitigated.
[21] This indeed was the end of the Theophorus: these are his contests: Testimonies of Saints Irenaeus and Polycarp concerning him: these are his conspicuous loves for Christ. And Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, a man greatly to be esteemed, bears testimony to him, for he frequently makes mention of the Theophorus. Moreover Polycarp, who presided over the Church of Smyrna, who used to visit with him at the home of John the Evangelist and Theologian; and who, when Ignatius was being led captive from Antioch to Rome, greeted him, as we have said — this Polycarp writes somewhere in his letters as follows: "I exhort you, brethren, to be obedient and to practice all endurance, which you have seen with your own eyes, not only in the Blessed Ignatius, Rufus and Zosimus, but also in many others from among you, and in Paul himself, and in those who believed together with him: that all these did not run in vain, nor labor in vain, but in faith and righteousness, which is in Christ Jesus. Wherefore they are also in the place which is owed them by the Lord, with whom they suffered. For they did not love the present world, but Christ, who died for us and rose again." Thus the divine Ignatius was situated in their holy hearts: and though he had desired that the bellies of beasts should become his sepulchre, he dwells rather in the hearts of devout men.
[22] His death reconciles Trajan to the Christians. The Emperor Trajan, when he afterwards learned about this Theophorus Ignatius, and how bravely he had endured this contest of martyrdom, and that, just as he himself had pronounced sentence, he had been devoured by beasts, and when he had also heard many things concerning the Christians who were in the region — namely, that they did nothing contrary to the laws, nor carried on any impious activity; but that rising at dawn, they worshiped Christ as the Son of God, and practiced all abstinence in the taking of food and drink, and touched nothing of those things which the Law forbids — when he, I say, had heard these things, he was led to repentance for what had been done, and is said to have published such a decree: that the race of Christians should indeed be sought out and made known to all; but that those who were found should not be put to death; neither, however, should they hold magistracies nor undertake any administration of the commonwealth. Thus not only the life of Ignatius, but now even his death, was a conciliator of many good things, a glorying of the faith which is in Christ, an increase of piety, an exhortation to those who belong to God toward labors, and a contempt of this temporal life, and a restraint from those things which are harmful, and a zeal for purity of life: by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father and to the holy and life-giving Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages, Amen.
NOTES
EPITOME OF THE LIFE,
From the Greek Menaea and Anthologion.
Ignatius Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch. Martyr at Rome (Saint)
The Commemoration of the holy Martyr Ignatius. You are cast as food, O Ignatius, to the lions: A lion you grow strong, fed on the mystical feast. On the twentieth day the jaws of lions consumed Ignatius.
He was the successor of the Apostles, and was appointed the second Patriarch of the Church of Antioch after Evodius, and was the disciple of John the Theologian, together with Polycarp, Bishop of the Church of Smyrna. He was brought before the Emperor Trajan, who was setting out against the Parthians, and having spoken much with him, and having professed to the Emperor his unshakeable faith in Christ, he was first beaten with leaden balls, and received fire with hands outstretched, his sides were burned with papyrus soaked in oil, he was placed upon burning coals, and he was torn with iron hooks. When he had emerged victorious from all these, he was sent in chains under a guard of ten soldiers to Rome, to become food for beasts. Having strengthened, therefore, the Churches of the individual cities through which he passed, he was brought to Rome and prayed to be devoured by beasts, so that, as he said, "I may become pure bread for God." Whence, having been led forth into the amphitheater, he was torn apart by lions released against him: which left behind only the thicker of his bones. These, having been collected, were carried back to Antioch. He, moreover, was that blessed one whom, while still a small child, as they say, the Lord took up, and embracing him said: "Unless one humbles himself as this little child, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven"; and, "Whoever receives one such little child in my name, receives me." Matt. 18:3-4 And for this reason he was called Theophorus. The holy Father John Chrysostom also honored him with praises. His feast is celebrated in the most holy great Church.
NOTES
Eulogy from the Martyrologies of Ado and the Vulgate Bede.
Ignatius Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch. Martyr at Rome (Saint)
The Birthday of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, who as the third after Peter the Apostle governed the Church of Antioch: who in the persecution of Trajan was condemned to the beasts and sent in chains to Rome. There, in the presence of Trajan, with the Senate sitting round about, his shoulders were first beaten with leaden balls, then his sides were torn with hooks and rubbed with rough stones: and his hands were stretched out and filled with fire; his sides were burned with papyrus soaked in oil and set ablaze. After being placed upon coals scattered on the pavement, where his holy feet stood, after a flaming bed, after his back was cut open and torn with hooks, after vinegar and salt with which his wounds were drenched, after his blessed limbs were bound with iron chains and his feet were confined in the lowest stocks of the prison, where for three days and nights he neither ate bread nor drank water; with Trajan seated on the tribunal in the amphitheater, and the whole multitude of the Romans gathered together, he was bound and cast before two lions. And when, having been thrown down, he heard the beasts roaring, in his ardor for suffering he said: "Men of Rome, who look upon this contest, I have not labored without cause, nor do I suffer these things on account of wickedness, but on account of piety: I am the wheat of Christ, let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found pure bread." When he had said these things, the lions rushed upon him, and falling upon him from either side, they only suffocated him and did not touch his flesh, so that his relics might be a protection for the Romans and the great city in which Peter was crucified, Paul beheaded, and Onesimus stoned. He suffered in the eleventh year of Trajan, in the consulship of Atticus and Marcellus, on the Kalends of February. The relics of his body were carried back to Antioch by the brethren who had accompanied him to his martyrdom, and they lie outside the Daphnitic gate in the cemetery of the Church, having been brought there on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of January.
NOTES
ANOTHER LIFE.
From the Most Ancient Latin Manuscripts.
Ignatius Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch. Martyr at Rome (Saint)
BHL Number: 4257
By an Anonymous Author, from Latin Manuscripts.
CHAPTER I.
The Episcopate of St. Ignatius. The Emperor Trajan Rebuked.
[1] When Trajan had assumed the Empire of the Romans, Ignatius, the disciple of John the Apostle and Evangelist, a man apostolic in all things, St. Ignatius Bishop, succeeds St. Evodius: having been made the second after the Apostles, who after Evodius undertook the governance of the Church of Antioch, which was formerly buffeted by storms and persecutions — as a good pastor and helmsman he repelled all attacks by his prayers: and by fasting and continual teaching and spiritual labor he averted the threatening storm by his own virtue; fearing lest he should lose any who was fainthearted or weak. He rejoiced, therefore, at the stability of the Church, whenever there was a brief respite from persecution. He considered within himself, however, that he could never attain to the full love of Christ, nor obtain the perfect order of teaching, unless through the confession of martyrdom he should draw near to the Lord. Whence, remaining but a few years in the Church as a God-given lamp, he merited by his assiduous prayers to illuminate the hearts of each through his exposition of the Scriptures.
[2] Afterwards, however, in the ninth year of Trajan's reign, when he was returning from the victory over the Scythians and Dacians, and over diverse peoples, and was thinking that he might lose his Empire the Emperor Trajan unless he turned the most pious worship of the Christians toward idolatry — when therefore he threatened persecution against all peoples, he compelled all worshipers of God either to sacrifice or certainly to die. Then, therefore, fearing for the Church of the Antiochenes, that most valiant soldier of Christ went of his own accord to Trajan as he was passing through Antioch at that time, and hastening toward Armenia and the Parthians. And when he had stood before the face of King Trajan, he rebukes him, Trajan said: "Who are you, evil spirit, that you hasten to transgress our commands, and persuade others to perish miserably?" Ignatius said: "No one calls the Theophorus an evil spirit. For demons are far removed from the servants of God. I know indeed that I am troublesome to them: and for that reason you have wickedly called me an evil spirit. For I confess that I have Christ as my heavenly King, and I overthrow their designs." Trajan said: "And who is the Theophorus?" Ignatius said: "He who has Christ in his breast." Trajan said: "And do we not seem to you to have gods in our breast, whom we have as helpers against our enemies?" Ignatius said: "Do you consider the demons of the nations to be Gods? You err. For there is one God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them, and his only-begotten Jesus Christ his Son, whose friendship I have gained." Trajan said: "Do you mean him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate?" Ignatius said: "I mean him who crucified sin and its inventor, and who does not justify the service of idols, but who condemns anyone who does not acknowledge him in his heart." Trajan said: "Do you then carry Christ within yourself?" Ignatius said: "Indeed; for it is written: 'I will dwell in them and walk among them.'"
NOTES
CHAPTER II, or rather IV.
Condemnation to Death. The Journey from Antioch to Rome.
[3] Trajan said: "I have decreed that Ignatius, who says he contains within himself the Crucified One, shall be led in chains by soldiers to the great city of Rome, to be food for beasts he is condemned to the beasts, for the entertainment of the people." Hearing this sentence, the holy Martyr Ignatius cried out with joy, saying: "I give you thanks, Lord, because you have perfectly honored me in your love, and have made me worthy to be bound in iron chains together with your Apostle Paul." Saying these things, and receiving his chains with gladness, and praying first for the Church and commending it to the Lord with tears, like a great ram, the leader of a good flock, he was led by the most fierce soldiers with most cruel hands to Rome, to be devoured by beasts. His guards were Trajan's persecutors, ten in number, savage indeed and having the manners of beasts. bound, he is led away by ten soldiers: And although every day they were enriched with kindnesses by the brethren, none of these things mitigated their anger; but with cruel eyes and hands they afflicted the Saint; just as he himself testifies in his letter, saying: "From Syria to Rome I fight with beasts, over land and sea, bound with ten leopards — that is, a military guard — who become worse when they are treated with kindness."
[4] The soldiers therefore took up the Blessed Ignatius and came to Seleucia: from whence they had to sail. From Seleucia he sails to Smyrna, And St. Ignatius, looking back after much labor toward the city of the Smyrnaeans, disembarking from the ship with great joy, hastened to see St. Polycarp, Bishop of the Smyrnaeans, his fellow-worker: for both were disciples of St. John the Apostle. Having been brought to him and sharing in spiritual communion and rejoicing together, he is visited by St. Polycarp, and exulting together in his chains, he asks him to contribute to his purpose. But more especially the whole Church together entreated him through Bishop St. Polycarp, and through the holy Priests and Deacons (for all the Churches of Asia also hastened to him) that they might share in his spiritual blessing: and above all they urged Bishop St. Polycarp to encourage him: that being perfected by the beasts and made invisible to the world, he might be presented to the sight of Christ.
[5] And departing from there, he drew near to Troas. Having been brought then to Neapolis, he passed through Macedonia on foot by way of Philippi: and through Epirus, which is near Epidamnus by the sea, and from there, boarding a ship, he sailed through the Adriatic Sea. he crosses Macedonia. And when from there he went up to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and was passing by islands and cities, it was shown to the Bishop of Puteoli that he would pass through, and going out to meet him, he hastened to follow in his footsteps, as in those of the Apostle Paul, but he was unable to follow, as the wind pressed upon the ship's prow. And blessing his brother in that place with love, he sailed on thus. Finally, in one day and that night, favored by prosperous winds, they arrived at the city of Rome.
NOTES
CHAPTER III, or rather II.
The Faith of Christ Defended. Dignities and Torments Scorned.
[6] And they reported to the Emperor of his arrival, and the Emperor ordered him to be brought before him in the presence of the Senate, and said to him: "Ignatius, for what reason have you caused the city of the Antiochenes to rebel, and all Syria to be converted from paganism to Christianity?" Ignatius said: "Would that, O King, I could have turned you also, as I did them, He scorns the offered friendship and dignity: from idolatry and brought you to God, the Christ of all, and established for you a most mighty Principate." Then the Emperor said: "If you wish to do me a favor, and to be numbered among my friends, lay aside this opinion and sacrifice to the gods, and you shall be the chief priest of the great god Jupiter, and shall reign with me." Ignatius said: "Those favors ought to be offered which do not harm the soul; not those which lead to perpetual damnation. But those promises which you offer to give, I consider worthy of nothing, nor do I sacrifice to your gods; nor do I know who Jupiter is; nor does the kingdom of this world attract me. For what does it profit me if I gain the whole world and lose my own soul?"
[7] Trajan said: "You seemed to me to be a sensible and wise man, and not a fool, and yet you nullify my promises: whence you are not only disobedient but also ungrateful, and you do not consent to the decree of the Senate to sacrifice to the gods." Ignatius said: "Do, O King, what seems good to you, he shows Christ to be alive, for I do not sacrifice to the gods. For neither fire, nor the cross, nor the wrath of beasts, nor the scattering of my limbs can persuade me to be separated from the living God. For I do not love the present world; but him who died for me, Christ, and who was raised by God." The Senate said: "We know that the gods are immortal; how then do you say that Christ died?" Ignatius said: "My Lord died for a certain dispensation, the gods of the Romans have perished: and after the third day rose again: but your gods died as mortals, and did not rise again; which is manifest, because Jupiter died in Crete: Asclepius was struck by lightning on Mount Cithaeron: Venus was buried in Paphos with a hunter: Hercules was consumed by fire at Tyre. By such punishments, therefore, your gods were deemed worthy, who were perjurers, and doers of evil, and corrupters of men. But our Christ was both crucified and died; but he showed his power by rising from the dead: and he avenges those who insult him, as he does against you: but your gods received their sentence from our God, as workers of wickedness. Our God, however, suffered at the hands of the most wicked men, who could not endure his commandments, and to whom he had bestowed all manner of benefits; and they proved ungrateful to him.
[8] he teaches of the twofold life and death, Trajan said: "I advise you to turn aside from death and run toward life." Ignatius said: "Well have you spoken, O King, that I should flee perpetual death and gain eternal life." Trajan said: "Why? How many deaths are there?" Ignatius said: "Two: one indeed temporal, the other eternal: and likewise there are also two lives; one indeed of brief duration, the other everlasting." Trajan said: "Sacrifice to the gods, so that you may avoid torments: which is fitting for your old age." Ignatius said: "To which gods shall I sacrifice? Of whom one — that is, Mars — was condemned to chains in a vessel for thirteen months on account of adultery: and another who had usurped divinity for himself was bound by a woman whom he had seized from the Titans, who made him from male into female. For he also built walls for Laomedon, and was cheated of his wages — he who imitated the works of men and women. Are you not therefore ashamed to call gods those who were evildoers and he casts back the charge of sorcery against the idolaters, corrupters of boys, and adulterers, who through sorcery transformed themselves into a serpent and a bull, not for any good purpose, but to commit adultery with the wives of others — whom you ought to cast away, not worship? Behold those to whom your women pray, that they might preserve chastity for you!" Trajan said: "I have become an accomplice in guilt with you, because you blaspheme such great gods, who have done you no harm." Ignatius said: "I told you before, that I am prepared to endure all torments and every kind of death, because I hasten toward God."
[9] Trajan said: "Unless you sacrifice at once, I shall no longer spare you." Ignatius said: "Nor do I desire that you spare me: neither shall I do what you command." Trajan said: he scorns the torments "Beat his shoulders with leaden balls." Ignatius said: "You have only kindled my desire for God all the more." Trajan said: "Tear his sides with hooks, and rub them with rough stones." Ignatius said: "More and more my mind is stretched toward God, and I take no account of what I suffer." Trajan said: "Sacrifice to the gods; for this presumption will not help you." Ignatius said: "To which gods? Do you perhaps command me to sacrifice to the gods of the Egyptians — to an ox, or a goat, an ibis, or an ape, or a venomous serpent, a wolf, a dog, he mocks the gods of the Egyptians, or a crocodile, fire, or seawater, or the earth, or Ceres, or Pluto, or Mercury the thief?" Trajan said: "I said that these many words of yours will not help you; but sacrifice to the gods, if you wish to obtain deliverance." Ignatius said: "I told you that I do not sacrifice: he preaches the true God, nor do I depart from the one sole God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them: who has power over all flesh: the God of spirits, and King of all things both sensible and intelligible." Trajan said: "And who prevented you, if he indeed exists, from worshiping that God and also honoring these whom we all confess in common?" Ignatius said: the true God is not to be worshiped together with false gods: "Nature and understanding, when they are pure, do not mix truth with falsehood, nor light with darkness, nor sweet with bitter. For who does not understand these things? Or what agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what share has a believer with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?"
[10] Trajan said: "Spread out his hands, and fill them with fire." Ignatius said: "Neither fire kindled, nor the bites of beasts, nor the scattering of limbs, for love of whom nor the breaking of bones, nor the tearing apart of the whole body, nor the assault of the devil shall be able to separate me from the love of Christ." Trajan said: "Soak papyrus in oil; and burning it, sear his sides." Ignatius said: he endures various "You seem to me, O King, to be in error, because God, who is in me, is life; who gives me strength and fortifies my soul, that I may be able to endure your torments." Trajan said: torments,
"You are made of iron, and most hard and leaden, to endure such torments: but sacrifice to the gods, lest you suffer these things." Ignatius said: "Not as though I do not feel your torments, O King, but the hope of God which is in me, of future good things, relieves my pains. Wherefore neither burning fire nor boiling water can extinguish my love for God." Trajan said: "Bring fire, and spreading coals upon the pavement, make Ignatius stand upon them, that he may at least in this way believe and consent to me and sacrifice to the gods." Ignatius said: "The burning of your fire recalls to my mind the most true fire: but this temporal fire is nothing." the charge of sorcery cast back upon the idolaters, Trajan said: "I think this is the work of sorcery, that he so scorns torments and does not yield to us, despite all that he has endured at our hands." Ignatius said: "Those who depart from demons, as from apostates of God, and who abhor idols — how can they be sorcerers? Tell me. For you are the sorcerers, you who worship idols and are subject to such curses. In our law it is established that we do not permit sorcerers to live, nor enchanters or augurs, and we are accustomed also to burn the books of all those who practice such works: and we abhor even to hear them. Wherefore I am not a sorcerer; but you who worship demons are." Trajan said: "By the gods, I swear, O Ignatius, I was working with you so that you might be set free, but now I shall afflict you with torments until you submit to our commands." Ignatius said: "Do not labor, O King, but if you wish, hand me over to the fire, or cut me down with the sword, or cast me into the sea, or deliver me to the beasts; that you may believe that none of these things is dangerous on account of the love of God."
NOTES
h. A city of Cyprus.
CHAPTER IV, or rather III.
The Holy Life and Law of the Christians: The Foul Ways of the Gentiles. The Desire for Martyrdom.
[11] He teaches that Christians suffer in hope of eternal life, Trajan said: "What is this hope which you await, O Ignatius, for which you endure such sufferings and sustain such torments? I cannot understand." Ignatius said: "Those who are ignorant of God, who is above all, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the good things prepared for the pious — they do not know, because from him alone is the origin of all things rational and irrational. We, however, who possess the knowledge of piety, know this: that when we shall have departed from this life, we shall, rising again, have eternal life in Christ, which is not lost, nor has any succession; from which pain and sorrow and groaning depart. For Moses, consequently proclaiming the divinity of the true God and the incarnate life of his only-begotten Son, showed also that our religion would be the true one. For whom among us have you known to plan war, rather than to be subject to Princes, where subjection is not dangerous, but and to obey Princes: only to render in peace to all their due in friendship — to whom tribute, tribute; to whom fear, fear; to whom tax, tax; to whom honor, honor — hastening to owe nothing to anyone except to love one another? For we have been taught by our Lord not only to love our neighbor, but also to do good to our enemy, and to love those who hate us, and to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us. For who among those in Christianity has disobeyed your command, since it came into being — tell me: or has anything new occurred concerning the Roman Empire, and was not rather the rule of many reduced to the Principate of one? For Augustus, your forefather, only ruled over us and not over the whole world, until Christ was born of the Virgin. But from the time when God first became man, that same Augustus, holding the Roman Empire, possessed the monarchy of the entire world, as none had before him: to whom all nations were subject. And first there was a mingling of peoples; and the hatred of one against another had not yet been dissolved, except by the coming of our Savior."
[12] The Senate said: "Indeed all these things are as you have said, Ignatius, but we are indignant that he has dissolved the worship of our gods." Ignatius said: By the Law of Christ "And what unfitting thing has he done, O most splendid wisdom, if he corrected the irrational practices of the nations — the Roman Empire, which our writings call 'the rod of iron'? Thus he also drove away the tyrannical spirits of wickedness from among men, proclaiming one and only God over all; and not this alone, but he also changed their bitter servitude — they who had been blood-drinkers and without mercy; who brought death upon your children in this way: not as if they defiled you in the wars of the nations; but they compelled you and your wives to be seen naked, that foul and cruel sacrifices be abolished. exhibiting you as in a triumphal procession of captivity: they stained the earth with blood and polluted the common air with abominations. Ask the Scythians, whether they did not sacrifice human beings to Diana. You altogether deny, blushing, that a Virgin was sacrificed to Saturn. The Greeks also glory in such human sacrifice, receiving this evil from the barbarians."
[13] Trajan said: "By the gods, Ignatius, I am struck with fear at your teaching, but nevertheless I do not approve your religion." Ignatius said: "And what have you found objectionable in our holy religion?" Trajan said: "Because you do not worship the Lord Sun, the Sun is not to be worshiped as a god, nor the heaven, nor the earth, nor the sacred Moon, which nourishes all things." Ignatius said: "And who could worship this visible, sensible sun, which sets and rises, and again receives from fire its lost heat, which suffers eclipse, and which cannot change its course from the decree of him who commands it to complete its circuit? How is the heaven to be worshiped, the heaven, which is covered with clouds? which the Craftsman stretched out like a skin, and fixed like a vault, and set in place like a dome? The moon, truly waxing and waning, the moon, and as something consumable and subject to changes — who will worship it? But if these things ought to be worshiped because they possess splendid light, then there is altogether no true reason for them to be worshiped, because they were given for the purpose of giving light to men, not for being worshiped; and they were appointed to ripen and warm the fruits, to make the day bright, to illuminate the night. And the stars of heaven were ordained for signs and for seasons, and for solstices; and for the consolation of sailors. the elements, Therefore none of these things is to be worshiped; nor should water be called Neptune, nor fire Vulcan, nor the air Juno, nor the earth Proserpina, nor fruits: nor the fruits Ceres. All these things were made for our use: yet they are corruptible and without life."
[14] Trajan said: "You did not speak well at the beginning, when you forbade the worship of the East and the gods." true knowledge consists in the worship of the one God, Ignatius said: "For this you are angry, O King, because we warn that what ought not to be worshiped should not be honored, but rather the living and true God, the maker of heaven and earth, and his only-begotten Son. This alone is the true and most mighty knowledge: through which we confess the holy and spiritual doctrines of his teaching, which abounds in us. But that pagan polytheism, unconvertible to good, unstable in its foundation, standing upon no firmness, an uncorrecting education, a seductress — how is it not filled with all falsehood, which now says there are twelve gods in all things and over all things, and then again admits still more?"
[15] Trajan said: "I can endure your arrogance no longer: for you provoke us most wickedly, trying to defeat us with I know not what irrational words. Sacrifice therefore: for it is enough that you have argued rhetorically against us. with increased threats of torments, But if you will not, I shall again subject you to torments; and so afterwards deliver you to the beasts." Ignatius said: "Since you threaten and do not fulfill what you promise? I am a Christian, and I do not sacrifice to most wicked demons, but I worship the true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he professes the faith of Christ, who enlightens me with the light of knowledge, who has opened my eyes to understand his wonders — him I worship and honor: for he is God and Lord and King and alone almighty." Trajan said: "I shall torture you on a flaming bed, if you do not repent." Ignatius said: "It is good, O King, to repent of evil things, and one ought to run toward better things, not worse. For nothing is better than piety." Trajan said: "Tear his back with hooks, saying to him: Consent to the Emperor and sacrifice to the gods according to the decree of the Senators." Ignatius said: "I fear the decree of God, and his commandments: who said: 'You shall have no other gods before me,' and 'whoever sacrifices to other gods shall perish.' Deut. 8:19 But the Senate and the King who counsel iniquitous things I do not heed. ibid. 16:19 'You shall not respect the person of the mighty,' says the Law; and, 'Do not be abundant in wickedness.'" Trajan said: "Pour vinegar and salt upon his wounds." Ignatius said: "All things that befall me for the confession of God, I know that my reward of good things is increased. For the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us." Trajan said: "Spare yourself now, man; and submit to those who command you: for I shall devise worse torments for you." Ignatius said: "And who shall separate us from the love of God? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or danger, or the sword? For I am confident that neither life nor death shall be able to separate from piety one who trusts in the power of Christ."
[16] Trajan said to the Senate: "He thinks that he can overcome me with this endurance. For man is an enduring animal." Ignatius said: "I do not think, but I believe that I have conquered and do conquer, that you may know how great is the difference between piety and impiety." Trajan said: he is condemned to a three-day fast: "Take him away and place iron chains upon him, and confine his feet in the stocks, and guard him in the lowest part of the prison, and let no one see him even through an opening, and for three days and nights let him neither eat bread nor drink water: and after three days, let him be delivered to the beasts, and thus lose his life." The Senate said: "We too are in agreement with this sentence: for he has insulted us all together with the Emperor, by not consenting to sacrifice to the gods, but affirming himself to be a Christian." Ignatius said: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by his great benevolence has deigned to make me a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, and a true Martyr of his Divinity, and a faithful herald."
NOTES
CHAPTER V.
Martyrdom. Burial. Testimonies of Others.
[17] On the third day, Trajan, having convoked the entire Senate and the Prefect, commanded them to assemble at the amphitheater, and the whole crowd of Romans gathered together; he is led out into the amphitheater, for they had heard that a Bishop of Syria was to fight with beasts: and sitting on the tribunal, he ordered St. Ignatius to be brought forth. And when he saw him, he said to him: "I marvel at how you live after such great torments and hunger: but at least now consent to me, so that you may be freed from the evils that beset you, and may free us, your friends, from sorrow." Ignatius said: "You seem to me to have a human form, but the manners of a fox, fawning with its tail indeed, but thinking evil things in its heart; feigning words of humanity, yet wishing nothing to be sound. Hear then with anger, that I have no regard for mortal and temporal life on account of Jesus, whom I desire: I shall go to him: he aspires to Christ, for he is the bread of immortality, and the cup of eternal life. I am entirely his, and toward him I stretch my mind; and I despise your torments and reject your glory." Trajan said: "Since he is proud and contemptuous, bind him and release two lions upon him, so that they leave not even his remains."
[18] But when the beasts had been released upon him, the Saint of God, seeing them, said to the people: "Men of Rome, you who await this contest, I have not labored without cause; he addresses the Romans: I do not suffer these things on account of wickedness, but on account of piety. For I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become pure bread." Hearing this, Trajan was filled with great anger, saying: "Great is the endurance of those who believe in Christ. What Greek or barbarian would endure to suffer so much for his God, as this man suffers for him in whom he believes?" Ignatius said: "Not by human strength have I endured such things, but solely by ready magnanimity and the faith that draws me and the help of Christ." he is suffocated by the lions: And while he was saying these things, two lions rushed upon him: and falling upon him from either side, they only suffocated him, and did not touch his flesh, so that his relics might be a protection for the Romans and the great city in which Peter was crucified, and Paul beheaded, and Onesimus stoned.
[19] Trajan indeed arose, struck with amazement, and departed. Letters had come to him from Pliny the Younger, the governor, who was disturbed by the multitude of those who had been made Martyrs for the faith and killed, Trajan's decree against the Christians is mitigated. among whom absolutely no crime was found to have been committed, nor anything done contrary to the laws, except this alone: that rising before dawn for the sake of Christ God, they sang hymns: but they abhorred adultery and other crimes of this kind, and did all things in conformity with the laws. Trajan, therefore, hearing these things and repenting of what he had inflicted upon the Blessed and Holy Ignatius (for he was the champion of the other Martyrs), published such a decree: that the race of Christians should not indeed be sought out; but if anyone should come to notice, he should be punished. He ordered, however, that the body of St. Ignatius should not be prevented from being taken up for burial by anyone who wished to do so. The body of St. Ignatius is buried. The brethren who were at Rome, who had accompanied him even to his martyrdom, and to whom he had commended himself, did not hesitate to take up his body, and they deposited it where it was permitted to gather together and to praise God and our Lord Jesus Christ his Son in the Holy Spirit. For the consummation of the holy Bishop and Martyr they made a memorial with praise.
[20] Moreover, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, knew of his martyrdom, Testimonies of Saints Irenaeus and Polycarp concerning him. and makes mention of his letters, saying: "As one of our own has said, being condemned for the sake of God to fight with beasts on account of martyrdom: 'I am the wheat of God, let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found pure bread.'" And also Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, mentions him, writing to the Philippians, and saying: "I exhort you all, therefore, to give heed to obedience, and to practice the patience which you saw with your own eyes not only in the Blessed Ignatius and Rufus, and Zosimus, but also in others who were from among you, and in Paul himself, and the rest who believed with him. Because all these did not run in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and went to the place owed them by the Lord, and to him with whom they died together. For they did not love the present age, but Christ who died for us, and was raised by God." And again: "You have the letters of Ignatius, which were sent to you by him; and others, as many as we found among us, we have sent to you, according to your request, which are appended to this letter, from which you will be greatly helped. For they contain faith and patience, which is in our Lord."
[21] He suffered in the consulship of Atticus and Marcellus, on the Kalends of February, on which day also his memory is solemnly celebrated by the faithful; but the translation of his body is recalled with no lesser observance on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of January: through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns unto the ages of ages, Amen.
NOTES
ON THE VARIOUS TRANSLATIONS OF THE RELICS OF ST. IGNATIUS.
Ignatius Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch. Martyr at Rome (Saint)
By G. H.
Section 1. The Translation of the Relics from Rome to Antioch. Part of the Homily of St. Chrysostom on That Solemnity.
[1] Translation of the relics from Rome to Antioch, The sacred bones of St. Ignatius, deposited at first in a distinguished place at Rome, as we said above, were afterwards carried back to his episcopal see at Antioch, as the Acts we have given attest: with which St. Jerome agrees, in his work On Illustrious Men, chapter 16: "The relics of his body," he says, "lie at Antioch outside the Daphnitic gate in the cemetery." The Greeks celebrate this solemnity on January 29, three days before the Kalends of February: celebrated by the Greeks on January 29: but the Latins on December 17, also three days before the twentieth of that same December on which day the Greeks celebrate his deposition. And the Greeks have it thus in the Menologion of Maximus of Cythera: "Translation of Ignatius." In the Horologion, Anthologion, and the Calendar of Genebrardus: "Translation of the relics of St. Ignatius Theophorus, Martyr." The Menaea add:
Thanks to the bloody lions, O Ignatius: That they left part of the body to the faithful. The twenty-ninth day records the return of Ignatius.
This successor of the holy Apostles was created the second Bishop of Antioch, and was a disciple of John the Evangelist and Theologian, together with Polycarp, Bishop of the Church of Smyrna. He is therefore brought before Trajan, and having endured and overcome all torments, he is sent to Rome to contend with wild beasts. When this contest was completed, certain Christian men, bearing his precious and holy relics from Rome to Antioch, gave the desired gift to the brethren. They deposited them beneath the ground with all honor and reverence. On account of which the Church celebrates a joyful feast. The eulogies and odes which followed, translated into Latin by himself and presented in Greek, are given by Petrus Halloix in his Life of St. Ignatius, chapter 29.
[2] Among the Latins, Galesinius alone celebrates this Translation in January, not however on the twenty-ninth in the manner of the Greeks, by the Latins on January 18, but on the eighteenth. "At Antioch," he says, "the Translation of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, whose body was carried there from Rome in the year following his martyrdom." He observes in his Notes that the year following his martyrdom is recorded in the written account of his Passion. What these written records of his Passion may be, besides an encyclical letter if one existed, we do not know. The Greek Acts mention this Translation, but do not add the interval of years. Other Latins assign the solemnity of this Translation to December 17, and especially December 17. on which day the Old Roman Martyrology has: "Translation of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, at Antioch." Usuardus adds, and various manuscripts also under the name of Bede: "who was carried from the city of Rome to Antioch, and lies outside the Daphnitic gate in the cemetery of the Church" — that is (as Galesinius writes, who again on this day recalls the Translation), "laid to rest with pious veneration: where, by the Lord's grace" (as the Cologne Martyrology, the Viola Sanctorum, the Lubeck edition of Usuardus, and Maurolycus add), "very many miracles are wrought through his merits." The manuscript of Ado from the monastery of Lobbes and the Church of Therouanne reads: "At Antioch, the translation and deposition of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, also called a deposition, who as the third after Blessed Peter the Apostle governed the Church of Antioch, who suffered at Rome on the Kalends of February." So reads that text, which by "deposition" means the burial of the relics, when, as we said above from the Menaea, the Antiochenes deposited them beneath the earth. In Greek: hypo ten gen auta leipsana katethento. Thus Gregory of Tours, book 2 of the History of the Franks, chapter 14, records the Translation of the body of St. Martin from the village of Condatensis to the city of Tours, and his deposition there on the same day, the third before the Ides of November; as we shall say more fully below in the Acts of St. Sigebert. The manuscript Florarium reads: "Translation of St. Ignatius the Martyr, who suffered at the city of Rome, but was afterwards buried at Antioch." More clearly, the manuscripts of Centula of St. Richarius and of Liege of St. Lambert read: "At Antioch, the translation and deposition of the body of Blessed Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, who suffered at Rome on the Kalends of February." Bede in his printed edition and the manuscript of St. Martin of Trier also record the same Translation. The Roman Martyrology combines two Translations on that day. Of the first it says: "On the same day, the Translation of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, who as the third after Blessed Peter the Apostle governed the Church of Antioch, whose body was carried from the city of Rome, where he had suffered under Trajan, to Antioch, and was placed outside the Daphnitic gate in the cemetery of the Church, on which celebration St. John Chrysostom delivered a sermon to the people," etc. This is Homily 42 in volume 3 of the works in the edition of our Fronto Ducaeus, a sermon delivered by St. Chrysostom. delivered on the day after the feast of St. Pelagia. From it we transcribe a few passages here.
[3] "When therefore he had laid down his life there at Rome, or rather had departed to heaven, he returned thenceforward crowned. For this too was part of God's kindness, who arranged that he should return again to us, and bestow the Martyr upon the cities. Ignatius after death, restored to the Antiochenes with greater glory. For Rome received his dripping blood: but you received his relics. You rejoiced in his episcopate: they were gladdened by his martyrdom. They beheld him contending, and conquering, and crowned: you possess him forever. God took him from you for a brief time, but restored him with greater grace. And just as those who borrow money return what they received with interest; so also God, having taken this precious treasure for a little while, that he might display it at Rome, brought him back to you with greater glory. You sent him forth a Bishop and received him back a Martyr. You sent him forth with prayers and received him back with crowns. Nor you alone, but all the cities that lay between. For how do you imagine they were affected when they beheld the relics being carried back? received with the applause of all cities, What fruit of delight did they gather? With what joy did they exult? With what auspicious acclamations on every side did they embrace the crowned one? Just as when a noble pugilist who has defeated all his adversaries is lifted high by the spectators rising with applause from the arena, and they do not suffer him to touch the ground, but bearing him aloft on their shoulders, adorning him with innumerable praises, carry him home; so in the same way all the cities in order, receiving the Saint as he was borne back from the City, and carrying him upon their shoulders, accompanied him all the way to Antioch, celebrating the crowned Martyr together, praising the victor, mocking the devil, because his cunning had turned out the very opposite of what he intended. For he perceived that what he had contrived against the Martyr had fallen back upon himself. And at that time he benefited all those cities, and served as a lesson, and has enriched this our homeland even to the present day. And no otherwise than a certain perpetual treasure, which is drawn upon daily and never runs out; so also the blessed Ignatius, blessing all who come to him, he bestows benefits upon those who invoke him. sends them home filled with confidence, and vigorous alacrity, and great fortitude."
[4] "Therefore not only today, but every day let us flock to him, gathering spiritual fruits from him. For whoever comes to him with faith receives great benefits. For not only the bodies of the Saints, but their very coffins and monuments, are filled with spiritual grace. 4 Kings 13:21 and Ecclus. 48:14. For if it happened in the case of Elisha, that a dead man, touching his sepulchre, broke the bonds of death and returned again to life; much more will this happen in this time, when grace flows more abundantly, when the power of the Spirit is greater — so that if anyone touches the shrine with faith, he will draw great power from it. To the relics of the Saints granted to us by God, And for this reason God has granted us the relics of the Saints, so that through the imitation of them he might lead us to himself, and that they might be for us a kind of harbor, and an effective consolation for the evils which continually afflict us. Wherefore I exhort you all, brethren, if anyone among you is weighed down by distress of mind, or bodily disease, or any other calamity, let him come here with faith, and he shall depart freed from all these things and with great joy, both the righteous and sinners come with profit, and by the mere sight of this place he will carry away a lighter and more tranquil conscience. Indeed it is expedient that not only those who are afflicted with troubles and vexations should betake themselves here, but also those who enjoy peace of mind, and glory, and power, and great confidence before God. For by coming here, they will make these good things more firm and stable: and by the memory of the virtues and righteous deeds of this holy man they will render their own minds more temperate, and will not suffer their consciences to be puffed up and swollen with their good works. For it is no small matter for those upon whom prosperous and favorable circumstances flow to bear them with moderation, and not to be lifted up by the fear of pride. This treasure, therefore, is useful to all, and a saving refuge, both to those who are assailed by harsh and rough circumstances and by sins, that they may be freed from them; and to those who live prosperously and happily, that they may long enjoy their blessings; to those who labor under diseases, that they may obtain good health; to those who enjoy good health, that they may not fall into any illness. Considering all these things, therefore, with all joy and gladness, let us frequent this sacred place, that we may become worthy to share in the fellowship and the heavenly table with the Saints, through the prayers of the Saints themselves, and through the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen." Thus speaks St. Chrysostom in that place; on which passage consult the notes of our Fronto.
[5] "You may see from these things," says Baronius, volume 2, year 110, number 7, "how greatly the Christians of this time (all of them without doubt disciples of the Apostles) valued the relics of the holy Martyrs; inasmuch as, though persecution was raging, fearing neither the envy nor the savagery of the pagans, they were greatly venerated by Christians in the primitive Church, nor wearied by the difficulties and length of the roads, they carried them with great veneration and joy from Rome all the way to Antioch and placed them in a most honorable location." And a little before: "But as to what Chrysostom says — that this translation was so solemnly accomplished with the applause, concourse, and attendance of all — since it is established that by the ancient law of the Romans, the relics of the dead were forbidden to be transferred, and Pliny writes in these times to Trajan that the college of Pontiffs was customarily approached to obtain permission for this; the license to transfer was bought at great cost. it must be said that the Christians purchased this kind of license, sparing no expense, with an immense sum of money." Pliny, book 10, letter 73 "That the pagans were accustomed to sell the remains of the Martyrs for money, we have noted in the Roman Martyrology. But just as he who recently, though bound in chains, when he was being led to the beasts, was received with great honor (as we have seen) by the cities through which he passed; so, God thus disposing, when he was being brought back to Antioch by the same men who had accompanied him to Rome for his martyrdom, it came to pass that the same places and cities, going out to meet him, which had escorted him in chains with great honor, now everywhere received with exultation the same man adorned with the crown of martyrdom. For all had been in suspense, anxiously expecting what had happened to Ignatius at Rome. But that Polycarp desired above all to know these things, he himself declares at the end of the letter which he wrote to the Philippians." Thus Baronius. That part of Polycarp's letter is found in the Acts of St. Ignatius cited above.
Section 2. The Second Translation of the Relics to the Temple of Fortune.
[6] A second Translation of the Relics of St. Ignatius is reckoned to have occurred when, under Theodosius the Younger, they were conveyed in solemn procession into the Tychaeum, Relics translated under Theodosius the Younger into the Tychaeum: a temple formerly dedicated to Fortune, then consecrated to the memory of St. Ignatius. This Translation is recorded by Evagrius Scholasticus, book 1 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 16, and by Nicephorus, book 14, chapter 44. But the latter, on account of the words of Evagrius being improperly understood, confused this with the earlier Translation: which same error was committed by Christophorsonus in his translation of Evagrius, and by Gentianus Hervetus at the end of the Life of St. Ignatius, where he had found the same passage from Evagrius appended — omitted by us in that place because it was absent from the Greek manuscript codex, and is more conveniently presented here. Thus Evagrius writes in Greek:
Greek text of Evagrius follows, which we translate: "Then also the divine Ignatius (as has been recorded by John the Rhetor and others, since he had, as he himself wished, the bellies of beasts as his sepulchre in the amphitheater at Rome, and through the thicker bones that were left behind had been carried to the city of Antioch to the place called the Cemetery) is transferred after many years, the all-good God having suggested to Theodosius that he should honor the Theophorus with greater honors, and dedicate to this victorious athlete and Martyr a temple formerly consecrated to demons (called Tychaeum by the inhabitants). And so what was formerly the temple of Fortune became a holy sanctuary and sacred precinct for Ignatius, his sacred relics having been carried in sacred procession through the city on a chariot, and deposited in that temple. Whence also a public festival and
a universal public rejoicing has been celebrated down to our times, the Bishop Gregory having rendered it much more splendid." The first part of this passage, enclosed in parenthesis for clarity, we translate as follows: "Then also the divine Ignatius (since, as John the Rhetor and others have recorded, he had, as he himself wished, the bellies of beasts as his sepulchre at Rome in the amphitheater, and through the thicker bones left behind had been carried to the city of Antioch to the place called the Cemetery) is after many years at last transferred, the most benign God having suggested to Theodosius that he should honor the Theophorus with greater veneration, and dedicate to this victorious athlete and Martyr a temple that had been consecrated to demons (called the Tychaeum by the inhabitants). Thus, what was formerly the temple of Fortune became a holy sanctuary and sacred temple for Ignatius, his sacred relics having been borne in sacred procession through the city on a chariot and deposited in that temple. Whence also a public feast day and a common rejoicing of all the people is celebrated down to our own times, when the Bishop Gregory rendered that day much more august." Thus reads the passage.
[7] not then first brought from Rome, Nicephorus believed that these relics were brought from Rome to Antioch under Theodosius the Younger. He writes thus: "At the same time the divine Ignatius also was brought from Rome to Constantinople. For since he had been buried, as he wished, in the bellies of beasts in the amphitheater at Rome, whatever firmer and more solid bones remained were interred there. Theodosius, however, by the most excellent suggestion of God almighty, zealously strove to restore them with great and illustrious honor to his flock. Wherefore, having received those relics from there, he brought them back after a long time to Antioch with magnificent display, and deposited them with great veneration in the place called the Cemetery, and he changed a great shrine formerly dedicated to demons, which was called the Tychaeum by the inhabitants (as if one were to say the temple of Fortune), into a most holy temple, and consecrated it to the divine Martyr: in which also the casket of relics was placed, having been carried through the city by an imperial chariot with sacred display and retinue, where every year a public and magnificent feast day was celebrated, God glorifying in a holy manner, even from the tomb itself, the memory of those who love him." Thus Nicephorus. nor from Constantinople: But first, were the relics of St. Ignatius brought from Rome to Constantinople? In Greek: ek Rhomes ten Konstantinou anekomizeto. Is this an error of the copyists, and should it be corrected to eis ten Antiochou? So the passage of Evagrius cited above requires. Secondly, Nicephorus combines this Translation with the return of the sacred relics of St. John Chrysostom to the city of Constantinople, as if both were accomplished at the same time. Evagrius calls this John "the Rhetor," from whose Homily he confirms that the relics of St. Ignatius were formerly translated to Antioch. Chrysostom himself, in the Homily which he delivered as a priest at Antioch under Theodosius the Great, testifies that Ignatius was absent from the city of Antioch for but a brief time, but from the cemetery before the Daphnitic gate. having been brought back after his martyrdom with great glory. St. Jerome, a contemporary of Chrysostom, designates the place of burial as the Cemetery outside the Daphnitic gate.
[8] Thirdly, Petrus Halloix attributes the Tychaeum, or temple of Fortune, to the city itself, translating the phrase that the relics were conveyed "through the city," in Greek ana ten polin, Where the Tychaeum was located: which indicates rather a triumphal circuit through the city; whether the temple was within the walls or in the suburbs. Evagrius adds that these things were done in that place because God wished the sacred memorials of his Saints to be honored and venerated there where Apollo had been accustomed to be worshiped in Daphne. We treated of Daphne, the suburb of the city of Antioch, on January 24 in the Translation of St. Babylas, whose relics Evagrius in the same chapter reports were carried from there to another temple built for him outside the gates of the city. Finally, the Bishop who rendered the feast of St. Ignatius more august The feast was made more celebrated by Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch. is said by Petrus Halloix, chapter 15 of the Life, to be Gregory the Great; but he does not explain which one he means. He was in fact the Patriarch of Antioch, substituted for St. Anastasius Sinaita when the latter was sent into exile, whose praises Evagrius pursues in books 5 and 6, asserting that he conversed with him continually, and he concludes his History with his death in the twelfth year of the Emperor Maurice, AD 594, after whose death St. Anastasius was restored to his former see and is celebrated on April 21. We treated of this same Gregory in the Lives of Saints Simeon Stylites and Domitian, Bishop of Melitene, on January 5 and 10.
Section 3. The Repeated Translation of the Relics from Antioch to Rome. Various Particles in Different Churches.
[9] This is the third Translation, the relics having been conveyed a second time from Antioch to Rome: "Concerning the third," Relics brought back to Rome, not in the year 540, says Baronius in the Notes to the Martyrology at December 17, "when the body was brought to Rome, nothing has come to my knowledge thus far. I think, however, that the relics of this most holy Martyr were then removed from there, when under the Emperor Justinian that city was laid waste with fire and sword by Chosroes, King of the Persians, in the year of the Lord 540." Petrus Halloix, chapter 15 of the Life, assigns the same dates. "The third Translation, finally," he says, "when they are said to have been brought to Rome — on the constant testimony of tradition, but with no certain author affirming it — namely at that time when Syria was ablaze with the various incursions of wars, especially under the Emperor Justinian, and Chosroes, King of the Persians, was laying waste to Antioch itself with fire and sword, around the year of the Lord 540." Procopius, book 2 of the Persian War, treats of this calamity at Antioch. But from what was said above, it is established that the relics were preserved in the temple of Fortune, then dedicated to him, in the time of Evagrius under the Emperor Maurice, when the public solemnity of the relics translated under Theodosius the Younger, begun with the common joy of the people, was still being celebrated, having been rendered much more famous by the Patriarch Gregory.
[10] Baronius in his Annals for the year 637 records this Translation of the Relics, when under the Emperor Heraclius the metropolis of the entire East, the city of Antioch, was captured by the Saracens, but rather in the seventh century, and whether by inhabitants migrating to the West, or by merchants safely dealing with those same pagans, or by other faithful Christians taking care of the matter, very many bodies of Saints, both Martyrs and Confessors, were translated to the West, and placed in various locations either at Rome, or at Venice, or elsewhere. "That the venerable relics of the Martyr Ignatius were then translated from Antioch to Rome is indicated rather by constant tradition and ancient report than by written records: which must likewise be said of many other relics of Saints, which various places of the Western world preserve, having been brought from the East." Thus Baronius. The church in which these sacred bones were deposited at Rome is designated by the Roman Martyrology at December 17 in these words: deposited in the church of St. Clement: "Afterwards his relics were again translated to Rome, and deposited in the church of St. Clement, together with the body of that most blessed Pope and Martyr, with the greatest veneration." The same is reported by the Author of Ancient and Modern Rome, published in Italian in the year 1643, and by Octavius Pancirolus in his Treasury of the City of Rome, region 2, church 23, who adds that these relics were brought back to Rome under Justinian: which we have already disproved.
[11] The same Pancirolus, in the index of Relics of the Saints of the City, adds that the churches of the same city of Rome, namely Saints Sergius and Bacchus, relics in various churches at Rome, St. Martha near the Roman College, St. Cecilia in Trastevere, St. Mary in Trastevere, and St. Mary of the People, were made partakers of the relics of St. Ignatius: and that in the last of these a part of his arm is preserved. We shall treat of his head in the following section. At Naples, Caesar Engenius Caracciolo in his Sacred Naples reports that some relics of St. Ignatius are preserved at Naples in the church commonly called St. Mary de Sapientia. Halloix, chapter 15 of the Life, is the authority for the statement that a vertebra or cervical bone of St. Ignatius is preserved near the city of Messina in Sicily in the monastery of St. Placidus of the Cassinese Congregation. in Sicily. and in various churches of Belgium, Rayssius in his Sacred Treasury of Belgium reports that Belgian churches were made partakers of the same relics. The Cistercian monks of Brielle possess some bone; while the Premonstratensians of the monastery of Parc near Louvain possess a part of his chasuble. The Augustinian Canons Regular of the monastery of Arrouaise in Artois, near the town of Bapaume, have two ribs. The Benedictine monks of Liessies in Hainault preserve some of his bones. These last relics were mentioned on January 13 in the Life of Blessed Hildemar, Founder of the Arrouaise Congregation, chapter 10, and on January 7 in the Life of Louis de Blois, Author of the Liessies reform, chapter 20. St. Bernard extols the fact that Clairvaux was enriched with relics of St. Ignatius in Sermon 7 on the Psalm "He who dwells": at Clairvaux in Burgundy "The great Ignatius," he says, "a hearer and Martyr of the disciple whom Jesus loved, with whose relics our poverty has been enriched, greets Mary as Christophora in several letters which he wrote to her." The monastery of St. Peter in the Valley, outside the city of Chartres, of the Order of St. Benedict, possesses an arm of St. Ignatius; at Chartres in France, as Saussay reports on the Kalends of February in his Gallican Martyrology. "On the same day," he says, "the birthday of St. Ignatius, Bishop and most illustrious Martyr of Antioch, the venerable father and teacher in Christ of very many saints who founded churches in Gaul: whose arm, preserved with religious veneration in the monastic church of St. Peter of the Valley at Chartres, is today brought forth for the devotion of pious suppliants."
[12] Aegidius Gelenius, in book 3 of the Greatness of Cologne, syntagma 2, section 2, asserts that in the collegiate church of St. Gereon, in a fifteenth convex crystal reliquary, in Germany enclosed in silver-gilt settings, are contained relics of St. Ignatius the Martyr; and in syntagma 7, section 4, he says that in the collegiate church of the Blessed Virgin Mary ad Gradus there are preserved in reliquary number 13, under number 12, relics of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, at Cologne, disciple of St. John the Evangelist; likewise in syntagma 45, section 6, he says that in the sacred treasury of the church of the Cruciferous Fathers, number 7, in a silver-gilt monstrance, a particle of the arm of St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr, is displayed. Another Ignatius, a Martyr, is listed among the first Bishops of Mainz: are relics of this one preserved in some churches? Our Serarius treats of the Ignatius of Mainz in book 2 of the Affairs of Mainz, chapter 9, and reports in book 1, chapter 31, that of the seven parochial churches of Mainz, the first is dedicated to St. Ignatius, a church at Mainz, which is considered notable because its twin towers consist entirely of squared stones from top to bottom. But since no commemoration of a St. Ignatius of Mainz is found in the Mainz Breviaries, was he considered a Bishop of Mainz by error, on account of the church dedicated to St. Ignatius? Only on December 17 is the name of Ignatius the Bishop inscribed in the Breviary of Mainz printed at Lyon in the year 1507: on which day we said above that some celebrate his Birthday, while the rest of the Latins celebrate the Translation of his relics. Bruschius in his Catalogue of the Bishops of Mainz omits Ignatius, the College of Boarders at Ingolstadt. and many others, whose memory elsewhere is very slight. At Ingolstadt in Bavaria, the College of Boarders of the Society of Jesus is dedicated to St. Ignatius, Bishop and Martyr of Antioch.
Section IV. The Head Brought from Prague to Rome, to the Church of the Society of Jesus.
[13] Among the more illustrious monasteries which the Cistercian Order possesses in Bohemia, at the Monastery of Osek in Bohemia, Osek stands out in the northern part of the kingdom near the town of Litomerice, on the borders of Meissen, beneath the castle of Rosenberg, which Count Slavko of Belin founded with the approval of King Premysl Ottokar III in the year of Christ 1207, the charter of whose foundation was published by Gaspar Jongelinus in book 5 of the Description of the Abbeys of the Cistercian Order. The most devout Fathers of said monastery formerly possessed the venerable head of St. Ignatius, the head of St. Ignatius, though it is not known on what occasion or through what persons' intercession it was brought there. That it had been held in the greatest veneration together with other relics from the first foundation of the monastery is indicated below in the letter of Antonius, Archbishop of Prague. in the 13th century: After the aforesaid Premysl Ottokar, various kings ruled in Bohemia. The fourth, Wenceslaus Ottokar. The fifth, another Premysl, commonly called Ottokar. The sixth, another Wenceslaus, Ottokar the Pious; each succeeding his parents. The last of these, by Elizabeth of Poland, daughter of Prince Premysl, begot another Elizabeth, heiress of the kingdom of Bohemia, given in the 14th century who, having married John of Luxembourg, son of the Emperor Henry VII, bore him Charles IV, to Queen Elizabeth, who later became Emperor and King of Bohemia. The said Queen Elizabeth obtained the most precious treasure of the monastery of Osek, the head of St. Ignatius, in the year 1320 — if this date is correctly recorded in the Author of Ancient and Modern Rome and in Pancirolus, region 14, church 10.
[14] then to Emperor Charles IV. By his mother's gift, Charles IV donated these sacred relics, together with others obtained with great entreaties from various parts of the world, most splendidly adorned with gold, silver, and gems, to the Church of Prague: by him to the Church of Prague: the first Translation of which is celebrated at Prague on January 2 as a solemn feast established by Innocent VI at the request of the said Emperor, as we stated in the Appendix to that day, number 4, from the manuscript Martyrology of the Metropolitan Church of Prague. From it these words were cited there: "The head of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch." Moreover, on these Kalends of February, after a long eulogy on the martyrdom of St. Ignatius and the ecclesiastical chant instituted by him, it is added: "Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, mother of the Most Invincible Charles IV, Roman Emperor Augustus and King of Bohemia, obtained the head in the monastery of Osek of the diocese of Prague, of the Cistercian Order, and gave it to her son Charles: who afterwards donated this head, adorned with gold and silver, to the Church of Prague, and wished that this feast should be venerated with a double office and with the ringing of bells." Thus reads that text. Charles IV reigned from the year 1355, on which April 5, Easter day, he received the crown at Rome from Innocent VI, and died in the year 1378. The head of St. Ignatius was afterwards returned to the monks of Osek; returned to the monks of Osek: perhaps when that monastery had been annexed to the table of the Archbishop of Prague; which was again restored to the Order by the favor of Emperor Ferdinand II and the patronage of Cardinal von Harrach, Archbishop. given in the 16th century to Maria Manrique, Again, in the year of Christ 1572, that sacred treasure was donated to Vratislav of Pernstein, the Supreme Chancellor of Bohemia, and to his wife Maria Manrique, as Antonius, then Archbishop of Prague, attests in his diploma: which was ratified by the testimony of the Apostolic Nuncio of Clement VIII, Philippus Spinellus, by her in the year 1599, to the Roman Society of Jesus when that sacred treasure was transferred to Rome to the church of the Professed House of the Society of Jesus, by the liberal donation of the said Maria Manrique.
The first diploma reads as follows:
[15] "We, Antonius, by the grace of God Archbishop of Prague, Legate of the holy Apostolic See, etc. We make known by the tenor of these presents to all and sundry: Diploma of the Archbishop concerning the donation made to Manrique. That we have carefully reviewed, together with the Reverend Father Dom Balthasar, Abbot of Osek, the Relics of Saints which from the first foundation of that monastery have continually been held there in the greatest veneration, and by the gift of God, lest they should perish during the time of disturbance when the tyrant John Zizka and the heresy of the Taborites were raging through Bohemia, were miraculously preserved: and that from these, at the devout request of the Most Illustrious and Magnificent Lord, Lord Vratislav of Pernstein, Chamberlain of his Sacred Imperial Majesty and Supreme Chancellor of the Kingdom of Bohemia, by which he petitioned us in the name of the Most Illustrious Lady, Lady Maria Manrique, his most beloved consort, we have given as a gift and offered the image of a head in gilded plate, in which is enclosed a fragment of the head of St. Ignatius, the third Bishop of the Church of Antioch after the blessed Apostle Peter, and Martyr, and disciple of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist; and another similarly gilded image of a head, in which is enclosed the skull of St. Juliana, Virgin and Martyr: whose feast of the aforesaid holy Bishop our Metropolitan Church is accustomed to commemorate and celebrate devoutly each year on the first day of the month of February, and that of St. Juliana on the sixteenth of the same month. On which feast days these holy relics were always displayed at the high altar in the monastery of Osek and frequented by the people with all veneration and due worship; as the aforesaid most illustrious Lord, in the name of his beloved aforesaid consort, repeatedly promised us, namely that hereafter, in whatever place such relics may be placed or preserved, they shall always be held with due honor and worship. In witness and testimony whereof we have ordered these letters, written on parchment, to be fortified by the appending of our lesser seal and the subscription of our own hand. Given at Prague, from our Metropolitan Residence, on the 14th day of the month of June, in the year from the birth of Christ 1572, Indiction 15, in the first year of our Most Holy Lord Pope Gregory XIII. ANTONIUS."
The second testimonial reads as follows:
[16] Approval of the diploma by the Apostolic Nuncio. "We, Philippus Spinellus of the Dukes of Seminara, by the grace of God and the Apostolic See Archbishop of Colossae, Bishop of Policastro, beneficial Lord of Castrum Sclutium, Torre Orsaia, and Petrucia, Presiding Clerk of the Apostolic Chamber, domestic Prelate and Assistant of our Most Holy Lord Pope Clement VIII, and Nuncio of his Holiness and the holy Apostolic See to his Sacred Imperial Majesty, with the power of a Legate de latere throughout all Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, etc., certify and attest in the word of truth that the above-written document, beginning 'We Antonius' and ending 'Antonius,' which was presented to us at the request of the Most Illustrious Lady, Lady Maria of Pernstein above named, was by our order collated and verified carefully and faithfully by our Auditor and our Chancellor with the original (which, written on parchment, is corroborated by the appending of the seal of the above-named Archbishop of Prague with silken cords of blue and black color in a tin capsule): who reported that it agrees in all things and through all things, and that accordingly the same faith should be given and accorded everywhere by all, in court and out of court, to the above-written document as to its original. In witness and testimony whereof we have subscribed this attestation with our own hand and have ordered it to be confirmed by the appending of our seal. Given at Prague, in the house of our usual habitation, on the 8th of July, 1599.
Philippus of the Dukes of Seminara, Archbishop Spinellus, Apostolic Nuncio. Augustinus de Iunctis, Canon, Chancellor. In place of the pendant seal."
[17] These documents are preserved at Rome in the archive of the Society of Jesus. Moreover, on these Kalends of February each year, the sacred head of St. Ignatius is exposed for public veneration in a silver bust, Silver statue of St. Ignatius. or statue, which displays the upper part of the body down to the chest. Pancirolus and the Author of Ancient and Modern Rome, cited above, make mention of these relics.