ON THE SEVENTY-TWO DISCIPLES OF CHRIST
FIRST CENTURY.
HISTORICO-CRITICAL COMMENTARY.
On their cult, number, and names.
The Seventy-Two Disciples of Christ (SS.)
BY THE AUTHOR G. C.
Bollandus, the founder of our work, among the things Passed Over or deferred to another day on the IV of January, put off the present feast with these words: The Greeks keep on this day the commemoration of the holy LXXII Disciples of Christ. Of the individuals, at least those whom the Church acknowledges, Why we treat on this day of the feast of the LXXII Disciples, it will be treated on various days; of all together, on the XV of July. Wherefore, to fulfill the promise of my Master, I shall discourse generally of these Saints, and shall briefly endeavor to illustrate their feast on this day, on which also it seems to have been once celebrated among some: for Peter de Natalibus, Bishop of Equilio, after the Division of the Apostles, and among the other Saints who are venerated on the Ides of July, thus makes mention of the holy LXXII Disciples, in book 6, chapter 100: The Seventy-two Disciples of Christ, chosen by him after the likeness of the LXXII tongues, after the Ascension of the Lord, for preaching the word of God, they too were divided through each several province and city of the world, and held the episcopate of many cities. Some more recent Hagiologists also treat of the same on the XV of July.
[2] which the Greeks place on the IV of January, The Greeks, however, in their Menologies, Synaxaria, and other ecclesiastical monuments, constantly place that feast on the fourth day of January. Lest I be compelled too often to repeat the same, I shall excerpt a few things from them. First, a Menologion written in an ancient character, perhaps for the use of the church of Constantinople, has it thus: Ἡ σύναξις τῶν ἁγίων ο΄ ἀποστόλων. The festivity of the holy LXX Apostles. In nearly the same words this festivity of the Disciples is announced by the Typicon of St. Sabas, the Slavo-Russian Martyrology, and other manuscript books of the Greeks, which we preserve in our Museum. The same things occur also in printed books, as is clear from the Epitome of the Menologion, and the Horologion, in which latter, after the announcement of the feast, these things are read: Χριστοῦ μαθητῶν χορὸν τῶν ἑβδομήκοντα, ἐνθέως πιστοὶ, ἐν ὕμνοις ἐυφημήσωμεν. Δι᾽ αὐτῶν γὰρ πάντες ἐμάθομεν Τριάδα σέβειν ἀμέριστον, καὶ μένουσι λύχνοι θείας πίστεως. That is: Let us, believing divinely, celebrate the choir of the seventy Disciples of Christ: for through them we all have learned to adore the undivided Trinity, and they remain lamps of the divine faith. The printed Menaia, and Maximus, Bishop of Cythera, transcribing them after his manner, follow the announcement of the feast set down above, except that the Menaia express the names of many disciples in the Office. But what is to be thought of these names we shall say a little later.
[3] Certain Latin Martyrologists, in assigning the day of this festivity, imitated the Greeks. and certain Latins followed them. Thus in Molanus, in the Usuardine Additions of the second edition, to which he added the Greek Horologion, on the day before the Nones of January we read: The congregation of the holy seventy Apostles. Galesinius, in his Martyrology, on the fourth of January thus writes: In Greece, the commemoration of the holy seventy-two disciples of the Lord. Ferrarius, on the same day in the General Catalogue of the Saints, has it thus: Among the Greeks, the commemoration of the holy seventy disciples. Saussay, in many words, as is his wont, thus records this feast on the IV day of January: The commemoration of the holy seventy-two Disciples of the Lord, most of whom, irradiating the Gauls with the heavenly light of evangelical truth, there laid the still solid foundations of many distinguished churches. These things concerning the foundations of the Gallican churches are asserted confidently enough and magnificently; would that they were proved as truly and solidly. But these have been partly discussed elsewhere, partly will be discussed in their place. Now let us resolve a certain doubt concerning their number.
[4] Since already above sometimes 70, sometimes 72 disciples of Christ are reckoned, one might doubt which number is to be held. The question of the number of the Disciples is discussed, The reason for doubting might be increased by the apparent discrepancy in that number among the holy Fathers themselves and the old writers of the Church: for Eusebius, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome read only 70, which reading some Greek codices of St. Luke favor, in which the Lord is said to have appointed other seventy. But on the contrary St. Augustine, Bede, and others count 72, which reckoning the Vulgate version of St. Luke confirms, which expressly gives 72. This controversy, in my judgment, the most ancient Greek Vatican codex plainly settles, since it was written before the times of St. Jerome, which, according to the testimony of Schelstrate in the Antiquity of the Church, volume 2, Dissertation 1, chapter 3, has it thus: Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἀνέδειξεν ὁ Κύριος ἑτέρους ἑβδομήκοντα δύο. But after these things the Lord appointed other seventy-two. But I judge that the varying reading and the enumeration of the Fathers can be reconciled with one another: for when 70 is reckoned for 72, that is done by the common manner of speaking, whereby for the sake of brevity we use a round number. Thus we see that the interpreters who translated the sacred Scripture from Hebrew into the Greek idiom at the request of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, are commonly called the Seventy, although it is established that they were seventy-two. And hence I think that Origen enumerates now 70, now 72 disciples of Christ. Now let us add a few things concerning their names.
[5] The names of these 72 Saints are so written in heaven, and their names, that very few, I think, are certainly known on earth. There exist, indeed, very many catalogues in which their names are recounted one by one; but they are so corrupted and diverse, that it is not worth the while to transcribe them here. Some were so stupid that, wishing to name the 72 disciples chosen by Christ himself, they placed among them the eunuch of Queen Candace, and others converted after the Ascension of Christ; nay, as Baronius rightly notes in the Annals at the year of Christ 33, number 40, they numbered among the disciples of the Lord almost all whose names they found in the epistles of Paul. Pseudo-Dorotheus calls a certain one among the disciples of Christ Cæsar, because St. Paul in the epistle to the Philippians, chapter 4, thus writes: All the saints salute you, but especially they that are of Cæsar's household. As though, forsooth, Paul were speaking of some private man addressed by the name of Cæsar, and not of the Roman Emperor. But these things, to use the words of Baronius, are worthier of laughter than of refutation, since it is certain that in those times no one could be called Cæsar, except one who was chosen to be a future emperor.
[6] of which few are certainly known to us. But how much trust is to be given to the various catalogues of names extant in Pseudo-Dorotheus, the Author of the Paschal Chronicle, Vincent of Beauvais, the Bishop of Equilio, Georg Witzel, and other authors, appears clearly from Eusebius, who in the Ecclesiastical History, book 1, chapter 12, thus testifies: The names of the Apostles of our Savior are indeed most well known to all from the books of the Gospels; but as regards the seventy Disciples, their list is nowhere found written out. Yet it is reported that one of their number was Barnabas; of whom mention is frequently made both in the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul's epistle to the Galatians. From the same they relate that Sosthenes also was one, he who together with Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians: for thus Clement relates in the fifth book of the Hypotyposes: In which he also says that that Cephas, whom, when he had entered Antioch, Paul says he openly withstood, because he was worthy of reproof, was one of the seventy Disciples, having the same name as Peter the Apostle. Matthias also, he who was enrolled in the number of the Apostles in place of Judas the traitor; and that other, who with Matthias was honored with equal suffrage, are by report from that company of seventy Disciples. Thaddæus, moreover, they report to have been one of them. You see that in the time of Eusebius no catalogue of them existed, and that these few are recounted by him only from the tradition of the ancients. Mnason we have given on the XII of July, whom the Acts of the Apostles do not allow us to doubt was one of the ancient disciples of Christ.
[7] We have at hand a manuscript treatise, and that a good long one, once elaborated by the famous Bernard Gui, Bishop of Lodève, and copied from a codex of the Vallicellian library; which whether it was ever printed, has hitherto escaped us; certainly we do not yet think it deserving of the light. In it he for the most part pursues at length the almost arbitrary names and deeds of the Disciples, with obsolete rags scraped together from every side, today outworn, beginning from St. Martial, the first Bishop of Limoges, to whom he munificently ascribes all those things which on the XXX of June were sufficiently discussed and demolished by Papebroch. Thence he proceeds to St. Saturninus and other pretended Apostles of Gaul commissioned by St. Peter, tolerated more in his own age than in ours; not to speak of the comments of Pseudo-Dorotheus, so often trampled down. Since therefore that whole narration teems with those fabulous, or at the very least altogether controverted, matters; and since the same have already been examined in their places, or are further to be examined, the learned reader will not take it ill that they are here passed over by us untouched; since we have undertaken to treat only of the institution of festivities of this kind, and of the increments that have sometimes followed, other doubtful and contentious matters being more opportunely remitted to their own proper treatments.