ON ST. ALPHÆUS, FATHER OF SS. MATTHEW AND JAMES THE APOSTLES.
AT CAPHARNAUM IN GALILEE.
His lineage, condition, native land, & cultus among the Greeks.
Alphæus, father of SS. Matthew & James the Apostles, at Capharnaum in Galilee (St.)
BY THE AUTHOR D. P.
[1] On the first day of this month our Master Henschenius distinguished three James the Apostles, both by many other appended circumstances, and also by diverse surnames; of whom one, called the Brother of the Lord, These two Apostles called brothers, had Cleophas for father; another, the Brother of John, was the son of Zebedee; and the third, finally, is surnamed Of Alphæus, from his begetter Alphæus, by whom also was begotten the Apostle & Evangelist Matthew, since Mark says, he saw Levi the son of Alphæus, sitting at the toll-booth: which Theodoret Bishop of Cyprus & John Chrysostom follow, cited there at no. 2 by Henschenius, and the Synaxaria of the Greeks at the IX of October, on which they celebrate James; & the XVI of November, on which they celebrate Matthew. With these agrees the little book on the Apostles & Disciples of the Lord, copied for us from the Vatican without the author's name, by many here and there, but falsely, attributed to Hippolytus the Martyr, writing thus indeed of Matthew, as the elder, Ματθαῖος ὁ καὶ Λευὶς, καὶ αδελφὸς Ἰακώβου τοῦ Ἀλφαίου, Matthew, who is also Levi, brother of James the son of Alphæus: then of James, as the younger, Ἰάκωβος Ἀλφαίου ὁ καὶ ἀδελφὸς Ματθαίου· ἀμφότεροι γὰρ τὸν Ἀλφαῖον ἔσχον πατέρα. James of Alphæus, his father Alphæus a publican at Capharnaum: who is also the brother of Matthew: for both had Alphæus for father. Hence Theodoret makes both Capharnaites, Chrysostom makes both Publicans; which both of these probably also pertains to their father Alphæus.
[2] Now I find this man enrolled among the Saints (and indeed with the title of Apostle, common among the Greeks to all the disciples of Christ, nay even of the Apostles) first in the Claromontane & Chiffletian Synaxaria, then in the printed Menæa. And these indeed at the XXVI of May have only this, Τῇ ἀυτῇ ἡμέρᾳ τού ἁγίου Ἀποστόλου Ἀλφάιου. His cultus in the Greek Synaxaria, On the same day of the holy Apostle Alphæus, the Claromontane adds, ἀδελφοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου καὶ τῶν ὑιῶν ἀυτοῦ. But I think certain words have fallen out, and that the passage is to be read entire thus: τοῦ ἁγίου Ἀπωστόλου Ἀλφαίου, πατρὸς τῶν Ἀποστόλων Ματθαίου τοῦ Εὐαγγελιστοῦ καὶ Ἰακώβου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου. Of the Apostle Alphæus father of the Apostles Matthew the Evangelist, & James the brother of the Lord. But thus his memory may have deceived the author: by confounding the two James, or taking the one for the other. The Chiffletian Synaxarium (in this more accurate than the Menæa, in that it prescribes for individual Saints, with hardly any exception, a single Distich to be chanted, often neglected in the Menæa) when it had said on the preceding day the XX of May, ὁ Ἄγιος Ἀπόστολος Ἀλφαῖος ἐν εἰρήνῃ τελειοῦται. S. the Apostle Alphæus rests in peace: subjoins these verses.
Θεοῦ Λόγου τὸ θεῖον Ἀλφαῖον στόμα Τάφος καλύπτει, πικρὸν ἐγχανὼν στόμα.
The divine mouth Alphæus of the divine Word, opening a bitter mouth, the tomb buries in the earth as a sepulchre.
[3] That these things may be understood of no other Alphæus than the father of the aforesaid Apostles, the usage of the Greeks first makes for it, who dignify with the name of Apostle in its ampler signification those alone, with the title of Apostle, that he may seem to have survived Christ, whom they find named in the Gospels of Christ or the Epistles of the Apostles: but no other Alphæus is there named. The same is urged by the memory of the sons added in the Claromontane, although their names be suppressed or ill expressed. But because he is said to have rested in peace, it becomes probable that he was surviving not many years after Christ's death and the division of the Apostles, nor reached the times of the persecution inflicted by the Gentiles. But that Alphæus survived Christ, and preached His faith (namely in Capharnaum and the neighboring places by the sea of Galilee or the lake of Genezareth), none indeed of the older writers said; yet this the Greeks must have had from some tradition of the Orientals. For they call him of the Apostles, & venerate him as a Saint, but not so Zebedee, but not so Zebedee the father of John & James, the father of John & James. But since no one has doubted that this man believed in Christ, considering how easily at the one voice of Christ he suffered his sons to depart from him; I know not what other cause of that diversity can be feigned, than that Zebedee had died before Christ, and therefore could not labor together for the Gospel, and merit the name of Apostle.
[4] This furthermore seems able to be further proved from his wife, who followed Christ and her sons, as is plain from Matthew XXVII, where at verse LVI, among the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, is named the Mother of the sons of Zebedee: whose mother followed Christ as a Widow. for neither, her husband living, could she fittingly have followed Christ; just as neither is any one of the Apostles read to have been called to His following while his wife lived; Christ not wishing in this to give the Jews a cause of obloquy, as if He less observed the law about not dissolving marriage promulgated by Himself; although elsewhere He had indicated that it would come to pass, that some for the kingdom of heaven would dismiss not only father & mother, brothers & sisters, but even wives: which last the Church so understood from the doctrine of the Apostles, that it could not be done, unless either the wife consented or was found an adulteress, or would not cohabit, without injury to the Creator, with the husband converted to the faith. But you will say, Joanna, the Wife of Chuza the Procurator of Herod, of whom on the XXIV of May, certainly married, proves that women of this kind were not universally excluded from Christ's following & ministry. I answer, that her condition was different from the rest, on the part of her Husband: who by reason of his Office either following the court, or for the most part absent from home on his King's affairs, can be presumed to have left to his wife a freer power of going forth whither she would (especially if she lacked children) after so great a benefit received, as was deliverance from a demon or infirmity; which cause of following Christ Luke assigns in Chapter VIII. And then indeed Christ was preaching within Galilee: but at Chapter XXIV, where she is again commemorated, there could have been also another reason of following Christ even unto Jerusalem, namely that her husband was there with the King. Add that this was a noble Matron, who through the manifold household which she had, could amply satisfy any obligation of hers concerning domestic cares: not so the wife of a poor fisherman, having an old husband at home, nor another who might render the services due to his necessities.
[5] Furthermore Capharnaum, where we think Alphæus either always or chiefly lived, His native land Capharnaum once renowned, is believed in the age of Christ to have been the Metropolis of all Galilee & an emporium of illustrious name, Christ saying of it in Matthew XI, Shalt thou be exalted even unto heaven? But there was gradually fulfilled in it what follows, Thou shalt descend even unto hell. Inasmuch as up to the age of Jerome, as he writes in the book on Hebrew places, it was a town; whereas when S. Arculphus saw it, in Adamnan on the holy places book 2 chapter 22, it no longer had a wall. But in the age of Brocardus, a writer of the order of Preachers, it was nothing but a humble little hamlet, having scarce seven fishermen's huts. Whether these very ones afterward of the same Order Boniface, in the book on the perennial worship of the Holy Land, asserting that you will be able to find it with difficulty, now utterly desolate. because the ruins of it are covered with sand. Wherefore for a sign by which it may be found, he sets down two palms: which Quaresmius writes book 7, chapter 8, pilgrimage 5, are found there alone, and a wretched lodging, into which travelers betake themselves, and many ruins. And this so great desolation, probably begun at once with the destruction of Judea, was the cause why in the Eastern Church & the monasteries of Palestine, from whose use the Menæa are had, so slender traces survive of the cultus once paid to S. Alphæus. In the Divion Synaxarium at this day, S. Abercius the Martyr is called son of S. Alphæus the Apostle, and accordingly also his sister S. Helena would have to be called daughter of Alphæus: but we think some error underlies this, and we shall say so more fully below.
[6] These things being now prepared for the press, I am admonished by the most learned man Claudius Castellanus, Canon of the metropolitan church of the Blessed Virgin at Paris, most studious of promoting our works, that some of the Learned think that all necessity of constituting three James the Apostles It cannot be said that Cleophas & Alphæus are the same name, can be removed, by asserting that of Alphæus & Cleophas there is one person, nay even the same name, according to the varied pronunciation and change of the vowel-points, the same letters remaining; just as Cludoëchus, Clodovæus, Hludovicus, Ludovicus, Lodoicus, Aloysius are one name, in today's usage to the French, Clouis & Louys. For my part I easily conceive how the name of this King was gradually bent from its original harshness, proper to the old Frankish names, and made smooth; and that, when Anastasius II wrote to him, the Pope was still Cludoëchus; one century later, when Gregory of Tours wrote, it was pronounced Clodovæus or Hludovicus, and finally lost the initial consonant
or aspiration; if nevertheless without it, as is presumed, it is in truth one name. But that at one and the same time, at which the names of Alphæus & Cleophas were written, not only by various Evangelists, but even by the same one, namely Luke, one name should have been enunciated so diversely, can hardly find belief with me. What, moreover, that not even the same consonants are found? For according to the Syriac version Alphæus is written Chalphai, by one of the gutturals, which, when connected with liquids at the beginning of any syllable, (so that some might be conceived to have pronounced Chlapai for Chalpai) neither the property of the Hebrew nor of the Syriac tongue tolerates. But Cleophas in the same Syriac version is written by a plainly most different consonant, Kleioupha. Therefore it would far more tolerably be said, if it were altogether necessary to make one man, that just as Levi is also surnamed Matthew; Saul, Paul; Nathanael, Bartholomew; using a somewhat Grecian surname more willingly among the Gentiles, than the Hebrew forename; so also Cleophas bore the similarly Grecian surname of Alphæus. But thus either the Apostle would not have to be so called, as having preached the faith with the Apostles after Christ's death; or his wife Mary would not have followed Christ as a widow: both of which I shall willingly hold, on account of the congruences before noted.
[7] Nor would anyone wish to suspect that Mary, called the mother of James & Joseph by one of the Evangelists, but elsewhere Mary of Cleophas, or that the mother of James was first married to Cleophas then to Alphæus. having already from elsewhere a son Simeon (he who was afterward the second Bishop of Jerusalem, easily fourteen years older than Christ himself) bore the Apostles Simon & Jude, but by a second marriage with Alphæus was made the mother of James & Joseph. For it is repugnant to reason that this woman in John should be named from her deceased husband Mary of Cleophas, rather than from the later living one Mary of Alphæus. Let it remain therefore, as far more probable, that Alphæus, the father of Matthew & James, a Capharnaite by birth, was neither a blood-relation nor a kinsman of Christ: as Cleophas was, born of the stock of Judah & the family of David: and accordingly that both the fathers & the sons are rightly distinguished by the Greeks. Nor does the passage of Paul to the Galatians 1 move me, saying that in those his beginnings, of which he treats, Of the other Apostles he saw none, save Peter & James the brother of the Lord, which cannot be understood except of the Greater Apostles; for I too so understand it: but as I reckon Paul himself, although not one of the twelve, among the Greater; so also James the brother of the Lord, although neither was he himself of the twelve.