Martyrs Elias — Acta Sanctorum

ON THE HOLY MARTYRS ELIAS, JEREMIAS, ESAIAS, SAMUEL, AND DANIEL, EGYPTIANS; LIKEWISE PORPHYRIUS, SERVANT OF ST. PAMPHILUS, AND SELEUCUS OF CAPPADOCIA, AT CAESAREA IN PALESTINE.

YEAR OF CHRIST 308.

Preliminary Commentary.

Elias, Egyptian Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.) Jeremias, Egyptian Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.) Esaias, Egyptian Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.) Samuel, Egyptian Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.) Daniel, Egyptian Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.) Porphyrius, servant of St. Pamphilus, Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.) Seleucus of Cappadocia, Martyr at Caesarea in Palestine (St.)

G. H.

[1] The records of the Roman Martyrology for the Kalends of June have the following: "At Caesarea in Palestine, of the blessed Pamphilus, Priest and Martyr, a man of admirable holiness and learning and munificent toward the poor, who, for the faith of Christ in the persecution of Galerius Maximianus, was first tortured under the Governor Urbanus and thrust into prison, then recalled again to punishments under Firmilianus, and consummated his martyrdom together with others. There also suffered at that time Valens the Deacon and Paulus, and nine others whose memory is celebrated on other days." So reads the entry for the Kalends of June. The memory of seven who suffered there is celebrated on the sixteenth of February, concerning whom the following is read in the same records of the Roman Martyrology: "At Caesarea in Palestine, of the holy Egyptian Martyrs Elias, Jeremias, Esaias, Samuel, and Daniel, who, when they had voluntarily ministered to the Confessors condemned to the mines in Cilicia, were arrested on their return, and most cruelly tortured by the Governor Firmilianus under the Emperor Galerius Maximianus, and finally struck down by the sword. After them, St. Porphyrius, servant of Pamphilus the Martyr, and St. Seleucus of Cappadocia, who had often conquered through repeated contests, were again tortured, and the one by fire, the other by the sword, received the crown of martyrdom." The remaining two are venerated on the seventeenth of February with this eulogy in the same Roman records: "At Caesarea in Palestine, of St. Theodulus, an elderly man from the household of the Governor Firmilianus, who, stirred by the example of the Martyrs, when he steadfastly confessed Christ, was affixed to a cross and merited the palm of martyrdom through a noble triumph. In the same place, of St. Julian of Cappadocia, who, kissing the bodies of the slain Martyrs, was denounced as a Christian and brought before the Governor, and was ordered to be burned by slow fire."

[2] The passion of all of them is narrated by Eusebius in book 8 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 21, and from him by Baronius at the year 308. These accounts were somewhat embellished by Metaphrastes, rendered into Latin by Gentianus Hervetus, and published by Lipomanus for the sixteenth of February and by Surius for the Kalends of June. We have the same in Greek from the Medicean manuscript of the King of France, with this title: "The Passion of the holy and glorious Martyrs of Christ: Pamphilus, Valens, Paulus, Seleucus, Porphyrius, Theodulus, Julian, and the Egyptians, composed by Eusebius Pamphili." We shall give this in full at the Kalends of June; in this place we shall excerpt from Eusebius's history what pertains to the seven Martyrs whose solemnity is celebrated on the sixteenth of February.

[3] The Greeks in the Great Menaea and the Anthologion, and Cytheraeus in the Lives of the Saints, venerate all these Martyrs with one and the same observance on the sixteenth of February, with this eulogy from the Acts: "Memory of the holy Martyrs Pamphilus, Valens, Paulus, Seleucus, Porphyrius, Julian, Theodulus, Elias, Jeremias, Esaias, Samuel, and Daniel. These illustrious Martyrs, in the sixth year of the persecution raised by Diocletian, were led to martyrdom; they were born in different cities, and from different pursuits of life and offices of rank they were united in the one faith of Christ. They were captured in this manner: when they were passing through the gate of the city of Caesarea, they were asked by the guards who they were and whence they came; they called themselves Christians and said their homeland was the heavenly Jerusalem. Wherefore they were arrested and brought before the Governor Firmilianus; and Elias indeed, together with his four companions, after enduring many tortures, received the sentence of the sword, and with them Pamphilus and others were beheaded. Porphyrius, however, while seeking the body of Pamphilus his master, was captured and consumed by flames. Similarly, Julian, while kissing the bodies of the Saints, was cast into fire. Theodulus was suspended from a cross and consummated his martyrdom. Their celebration is performed in the most holy great church."

[4] Galesinius, imitating the Greeks, joined all these same persons on this day and condensed the eulogy from the Menaea in his own phrasing. In the ancient manuscript Roman Martyrology attributed to St. Jerome, their memory is confused with these words: "Of Sissianus Pamphilus, Valens the Deacon, Seleucus, Perfidius, Theophilus." Where Theophilus is the one whom Eusebius and others call Theodulus, and in place of Porphyrius, Perfidius is placed. But what the word "Sissianus" or "Fissianus" (for the handwriting leaves the matter doubtful) signifies there, we do not know. Should the name of Julian be substituted? Or just as at Jerusalem the place appointed for the punishment of the condemned was called Golgotha, was a similar place at Caesarea called by that name? In the German Martyrology, only Julian, Theodulus, and Porphyrius are recorded, of whom the first two, as we have said, pertain to the following day.

[5] The same Galesinius, at the Kalends of June, having treated separately of St. Pamphilus and then interposing other entries, writes the following: "On this same day, of the holy Martyrs Valens, Paulus, Seleucus, Porphyrius, Theodulus, Julian, and five other companions, whose contest bravely undertaken for the glory of Christ under the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian was notable on many counts, as the entire matter is narrated piously and at length by the Greek authors, and by us in another place."

[6] Certain relics of St. Daniel the Martyr are preserved at Bologna in the church of St. Cecilia, and others in the church of St. Gabriel, as Masinus relates in his survey of Bologna for this day, as if those relics were of the St. Daniel who suffered with the others at Caesarea on this day.

ACTS OF THE MARTYRDOM

By Eusebius, book 8, chapter 21.

FROM EUSEBIUS.

[1] Meanwhile, an addition was made of Egyptian brethren who underwent martyrdom together with them. These Egyptians, as soon as they had accompanied those Confessors from Cilicia who had been condemned to the mines that were there,

they accompanied them and returned home. These men were similarly questioned at the very entrance of the gates of Caesarea by the guards (who were barbarians and rough in their manners) as to who they were and whence they had come. Since they could not conceal the truth, they were seized as malefactors caught in the very act of their crime. They were five in number, and being brought before the tyrant and freely confessing their faith before him, they were immediately thrust into prison. On the following day — this was the sixteenth day of the month of Peritius, that is, according to the Roman reckoning, the fourteenth day before the Kalends of March — these men, together with Pamphilus and the rest of his companions whom we mentioned above, were brought before the judge by his command. The judge first put to the test the unconquerable constancy and firmness of soul of the Egyptians with various forms of every kind of torment and with novel inventions of foreign and manifold devices.

[2] And as soon as he had exercised in these contests the one who held the primacy among them all, he first inquired who he was. Then, when instead of his own name he had received from him the name of a certain Prophet (for this was their custom: since in place of the names of idols which had perhaps been given them by their parents, they had adopted new names by a change, calling themselves by the names of Elias, Jeremias, Esaias, Samuel, and Daniel; and you could have heard them demonstrating the genuine and true Israel of God, which was hidden among the Jews, not only by the things themselves but by their names, properly and expressively declared) — when, I say, Firmilianus had received such a name from the Martyr, not at all directing his mind to the force and meaning of the word, he asked him in the second place what his homeland was. The Martyr, giving a response fitting to the first, declared that Jerusalem was his homeland — meaning, to be sure, that of which it is said by Paul: "The Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all" (Galatians 4:26); and likewise in another place: "You have come to Mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" (Hebrews 12:22). He plainly meant this one.

[3] But Firmilianus, his thoughts cast down to earthly things, inquired carefully and curiously what that city might be and where in the world it was situated. Hence he subjected the Martyr to torture, so that he might confess the truth. Though his hands were bound and twisted behind his back, and his feet were wrenched apart by foreign and unusual devices, he steadfastly maintained that he had spoken the truth. When the judge again asked repeatedly who he was and where the city he spoke of was located, the Martyr affirmed that it was the homeland of the pious alone, and that no others besides these would be partakers of it; and that it was situated toward the East, where the sun first begins to pour forth its rays in the morning. And in repeating these declarations, he was so divinely philosophizing within his own mind that he took absolutely no account of those who were tormenting him on every side, but, as if devoid of flesh and body, appeared not to perceive the slightest sensation of pain. The judge, his mind wavering, began to be disturbed within himself and supposed that the Christians would make that city of which the Martyr had spoken completely hostile and enemy to the Romans. He therefore searched greatly into the matter and diligently sought where that region which was said to be toward the East might exist.

[4] After he observed that the young man, repeatedly torn by lashes and racked by torments of every kind, adhered with firm and unchangeable constancy of mind to what he had said before, he at last pronounced the sentence of death against him — that he should be struck by the axe. And so he completed, as it were, the drama of his life. The rest of his companions, harassed by the judge with equal contests, departed from life by an equal manner of death.

[5] After this, Firmilianus, although he was nearly exhausted and saw that he was tormenting those men in vain, yet with his desire sated by their death, turned to Pamphilus and his companions. And since he had already sufficiently experienced what inflexible constancy in maintaining the faith they had shown even previously under torments, he again asked whether they would henceforth comply with his wishes. And when he had received from each of them a definitive and final response concerning the confession of faith, which is proper to martyrdom, he inflicted on them the same penalty and punishment as on the former group. When these had been led to their end, a certain young man from among the servants of Pamphilus — one so well trained and instructed that he seemed justly worthy of the liberal education and discipline of so great a man — as soon as he understood the judge's sentence pronounced against his master, cried out from the midst of the crowd of people and requested that the bodies of his master and the other companions might be committed to the earth when they departed this life.

[6] But the judge, following the nature not of a human being but of a wild beast, or if there be anything more savage than a beast, did not grant the young man any clemency even on account of his age. Rather, as soon as he had asked him whether he was a Christian and the youth had answered that he was, the judge, swelling with a surge of anger as though wounded by a weapon, ordered the torturers to exert all their strength and fury against him. When he saw that the youth, having been ordered to sacrifice, refused, he commanded him to be scraped and lacerated fiercely and without any respite — not as a man clothed in flesh, but as a statue made of stones or wood or some other material — down to the very bones and the innermost recesses of the viscera. When this form of torture had been sustained for a long time, the judge, seeing that the youth neither uttered a cry nor showed any sensation of pain, and that his body was nearly lifeless and almost destroyed and spent by the torments, perceived that he was tormenting him in vain. Yet persisting with a hard and iron heart, devoid of all humanity, he immediately decreed that he should be burned by a fire slowly kindled and held back.

[7] This young man, therefore, the last to enter the contest before the death of Pamphilus, who was his master according to the flesh, was freed from the bonds of the body before him, because those who were occupied in slaughtering the others seemed to be delayed. And so it was possible to see Porphyrius (for that was the boy's name), already exercised in every kind of contest, inflamed with incredible zeal and ardor like a man contending for an august and sacred victory; his body begrimed with dust, yet remarkable in the noble expression of his countenance; advancing to death after such great tortures with an uplifted and noble exaltation of soul; truly filled with the divine Spirit; clothed in the philosophical habit he was accustomed to wear — that is, a garment covering only the shoulders after the manner of a mantle — calmly and serenely directing his household members as to what he wished them to do on his behalf, signifying his wishes by a nod; and when he had already been bound to the stake, preserving a bright and cheerful countenance. Indeed, when the pyre blazed at a great distance from him as though in a circle, he drew the flame to himself with his mouth from this side and that; and after these words which he poured forth in a clear voice as the fire of the flames first touched his body — namely that Jesus the Son of God would be his helper — he endured all tortures in silence with the utmost constancy to his final breath. Such is known to have been the contest of Porphyrius in his martyrdom.

[8] Seleucus, a certain Confessor from the number of the soldiers, announced the end of his life to Pamphilus. And as was fitting, the bearer of such a message was very soon deemed worthy of the same lot as those Martyrs. For as soon as he had announced the death of Porphyrius and had greeted one of the Martyrs with a holy kiss, certain soldiers seized him and brought him to the Governor. The Governor, as if hastening his departure so that he might be joined as a companion to Porphyrius on the journey to heaven, immediately ordered him to be punished with the penalty of beheading. This man, born in Cappadocia, had obtained no small honor above the select body of young men who served in the Roman army, and above those who among the Romans were placed in high ranks of dignity. For in the flower of his age, he far surpassed all soldiers in the strength, stature, and firmness of his body, so that his appearance was celebrated and praised by all in their conversation, his whole bodily form and figure being admirable both for its greatness and for its beauty and the well-proportioned composition of his limbs.

[9] At the very beginning of the persecution, he shone greatly through the endurance of blows in the contests undertaken for the confession of faith. And when he had been stripped of the military office which he held, he made himself a rival and imitator of those who are called ascetics — that is, cultivators of piety or monks — who exercise themselves day and night in divine meditations. He benevolently watched over and aided orphans who had been abandoned, widows destitute of all resources, and persons afflicted by poverty and bodily infirmity, like some indulgent father and guardian. Hence justly, since God takes more delight in such offices of piety than in victims overflowing with smoke and sprinkled with blood, he was summoned by His grace to the distinguished and excellent glory of martyrdom. This was the tenth athlete among those we have described above, who met death on one and the same day; on which, as it appears, a very great gate of heaven, as it were, adorned by the martyrdom of Pamphilus, was opened and gave a most easy entrance into the kingdom of heaven both to him and to the others who were with him...

[10] Such was the company of those who, by the grace of God, were admitted into the fellowship of martyrdom with the blessed Pamphilus. Their sacred and truly holy bodies, by the command of the impious Governor, were kept in the open for four days and as many nights, so that they might be devoured by wild beasts and carrion birds. But when, as by a certain miracle, no beast, no bird, and no dog approached them, they were again removed whole and uninjured through the dispensation of divine providence, and having received the due rites of funeral, they were honorably committed to burial...

[11] Moreover, it is worthwhile to record in this place in what manner at last — and not a long time afterward — heavenly and divine providence avenged those impious magistrates together with the tyrants themselves. For Firmilianus, who had raged so wantonly and insultingly against the Martyrs of Christ, together with other accomplices in the same crime, undergoing the ultimate punishments, ended his life by the sword.