Luke the Evangelist

ON ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST,

AFTER THE MIDDLE OF THE 1ST CENTURY.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Luke, Evangelist. (S.)

BHL Number: 4575

J. V. H.

§ I. Eulogies of the saint in various Martyrologies: his homeland, family and profession before he took up Christianity.

The Martyrologies on various days Although the Martyrologies of all the Churches with one voice proclaim the sanctity of Luke and his cult as Evangelist, yet in this they disagree in not a few respects, that they assign various days for celebrating his cult. Most of them indeed agree on the present day; indeed, so far as I can ascertain, there is no Church today which does not keep the 18th day of October sacred to St. Luke. But formerly the Churches varied in assigning the day of the festival. Thus the most ancient African Calendar, edited by Mabillon Vetera Analecta, p. 163. Paris edition of 1723., which Stefano Morcelli Africa Christiana, year 526, no. 2, volume III, p. 262. judges to have been composed about the year 526 under Boniface, bishop of Carthage, keeps the 3rd day before the Ides (the 13th) of October as the feast of St. Luke, Evangelist and Martyr Vetera Analecta, p. 166.. So also, as Domenico Giorgi rightly notes on the Martyrology of Ado at the 18th day of October, various Hieronymian Martyrologies indicate various days, namely the 21st and the 26th of September and the 27th of November. There is also another matter in which the said Fasti do not agree; namely, what is properly commemorated on this day, whether the passion or rather the translation of St. Luke. Certainly the present Roman Martyrology calls the celebration of this day his Natalis, when it says: The Natalis of Blessed Luke the Evangelist, who, having suffered much for the name of Christ, died full of the Holy Spirit in Bithynia; whose bones were translated to Constantinople, and carried thence to Padua.

[2] connect the festival of St. Luke, But Fiorentini assigns this day not to the Natalis but to the Translation of St. Luke; namely because the principal Hieronymian copies taught him so. The Greeks, who everywhere, whenever martyrdom is not in question, use the ambiguous word μνήμη, commemoration, proceed safely among these divergences or rocks, but also contribute nothing to clearing up the question. For the rest, if indeed some translation was celebrated on the 18th day of October, that it was not the translation to Constantinople is clear from this, that the latter is said by Theodore the Lector, a writer of the sixth century, cited by Morcelli Kalendarium Constantinopolitanum, volume I, p. 196., to have been made πρὸ πέντε νοννῶν μαρτίου, on the 3rd day of March: wherefore the translation to be attached to the 18th day of October, since the most ancient Hieronymian Martyrologies commemorate it, must be referred to some earlier one unknown to us, namely when the body of St. Luke was carried from its first sepulchre to another. The Roman Martyrology celebrates the Constantinopolitan translation of St. Luke under the 9th day of May, together with the translation of SS. Andrew the Apostle and Timothy, the disciple of St. Paul; these solemnities, however, of which I find no memorial in Morcelli's Calendar of Constantinople, were not celebrated on the same day, since Theodore the Lector reports that St. Timothy was translated on the 8th day before the Kalends of July, and Andrew and Luke on the 5th day before the Nones of March Bibliotheca Patrum, volume XXVI, p. 87.. From all of which it is clear that neither the words Natalis or Translation, nor the very days on which they are announced, should be pressed too hard; since they may indicate the memory of the event, perhaps accomplished on another day, rather than the day itself.

[3] whose brief eulogy, from Ado It will be useful here to add the principal eulogies with which the Martyrologists have adorned St. Luke, inasmuch as they present the main outlines of his life. First of all Wandelbert presents this metrical encomium D'Achery, Spicilegium, volume II, p. 54. Paris edition of 1723.:

The thrice-fifth day (before the Kalends of November), dedicated by feast and office, shows forth Luke, who, O Paul, told of Christ in your discourse.

Ado of Vienne, however, who is accustomed to praise at greater length the saints whom he announces, has on this day only briefly: The Natalis of Saint Luke the Evangelist; evidently because in his little book on the Festivals of the Holy Apostles he had treated of our saint more fully in these words Martyrology of Ado, edition of Domenico Giorgi, p. XLIII.:

On the 15th day before the Kalends of November. The Natalis of Saint Luke the Evangelist, who was by nation a Syrian of Antioch, by profession a physician, a disciple of the Apostles; he followed Paul until his confession, serving the Lord without reproach: never having either wife or children. He died at seventy-three years of age in Bithynia, full of the Holy Spirit. He is now buried at Constantinople, to which city his bones were translated in the twentieth year of Constantius, together with the relics of Andrew the Apostle. He wrote a Gospel, which he learned not only from the Apostle Paul, who had not been with the Lord in the flesh, but also from the other Apostles. This he himself also declares at the beginning of his volume, saying: "Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word." He also published another excellent volume, which is headed with the title of the Apostolic ΠΡΑΞΕΩΝ Acts. Its history reaches as far as the two years of Paul's sojourn at Rome, that is, up to the fourth year of Nero. From which we understand that the book was composed in that same city.

[4] and from the Basilian Menologion Whoever compares this eulogy with that which St. Jerome composed concerning St. Luke in his book on Ecclesiastical Writers Jerome, Works, volume IV, part II, column 104. will easily perceive that Ado borrowed much from it. Nor would it be idle to observe that the Martyrology touches with not one word on the widespread opinion about the art of painting practised by St. Luke. But what Ado, a writer of the ninth century, passed over in silence, the Menologion of Basil the Younger, who reigned from the year 976 to 1025, recounts soon after in the following century, which gives the following eulogy of St. Luke under this day: Λουκᾶς ὁ Εὐαγγελιστὴς ὑπῆρχεν ἀπὸ Ἀντιοχείας τῆς μεγάλης· ἰατρὸς τὴν τέχνην καὶ ζωγράφος. Ἀπελθὼν δὲ εἰς Θήβας τῆς Μακεδονίας ἐπὶ Τιβερίου τοῦ βασιλέως, διὰ τὸν διωγμὸν, ἐνέτυχε τῷ ἁγίῳ Ἀποστόλῳ Παύλῳ· καὶ ὡς ὑπάρχων εἷς τῶν ἑβδομήκοντα Ἀποστόλων, ἠκολούθησεν αὐτῷ, καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ ἐκήρυσσε τὸν Χριστόν. Καὶ συνήργει εἰς τὴν τοῦ κηρύγματος καὶ τοῦ Εὐαγγελίου διακονίαν προθύμῳ γνώμῃ. Συνεγράψατο δὲ πρότερον τὸ κατ᾽ αὐτὸν Εὐαγγελιον, πρὸς Θεόφιλον τινὰ ἡγεμόνα, πιστεύσαντα εἰς τὸν Χριστὸν, ὑπαγορεύσαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ ἁγίου Πέτρου τοῦ Ἀποστόλου. Ἔπειτα ἐξέθηκε τὰς πράξεις τῶν Ἀποστόλων, πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν Θεόφιλον. Καὶ ταῦτα πράξας, ἐν εἰρήνῃ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπέδωκε τῷ Θεῷ. Τὸ δὲ ἱερὸν καὶ τίμιον αὐτοῦ λείψανον ἐτάφη μὲν πρότερον ἐν Θήβαις· ὕστερον δὲ ἀνακομισθέν ἀπὸ Θηβῶν ἐν Κωνσταντινούπολει, κατετέθη ἐν τῷ ναῷ τῶν ἁγίων Ἀποστόλων.

[5] a eulogy is composed: Which in Latin sound thus: Luke the Evangelist, born at Antioch the Great, a physician and a painter by profession, having come to Thebes in Macedonia in the time of the emperor Tiberius on account of the persecution, met and conversed with the holy Apostle Paul, and, as one who was of the number of the Seventy, joined himself as companion to that same Apostle, and together with him preached Christ, and with a ready mind co-operated in the preaching and the ministry of the Gospel. He wrote first the holy Gospel which bears his name, to a certain Theophilus, a governor, who had believed in Christ, Peter the Apostle dictating it to him: then the Acts of the Apostles to the same Theophilus. After these things he gave back his soul to God in peace. His sacred and precious relics, first buried at Thebes, were afterwards translated thence to Constantinople and laid in the church of the Holy Apostles. In this encomium two things chiefly occur which depart from the received opinions: first, namely, that St. Luke was one of the seventy disciples of Christ, or, as the Greek text has it, of the seventy Apostles; for this, although asserted by certain of the ancients, seems unable to stand, as we shall show below, with what the holy Evangelist professes of himself. The other is what is related of the persecution under Tiberius; for Tiberius indeed survived the resurrection of Christ by four full years, namely until the 17th day before the Kalends of April of the year 37 of the common era, but it is nowhere read that he decreed anything hostile against the Christians, who were then still almost unknown and lying hidden in Judaea. If therefore there is any truth in the Tiberian persecution, we must interpret the whole of it of the expulsion of the Jews from Italy about the year of Christ 50, by order of the emperor Claudius, who bore the praenomen Tiberius.

[6] The Acts to be edited. So much for the Martyrologies. There also exist several Acts of St. Luke, Latin and Greek: but those which are commonly presented in the Legendaries are rather homilies, setting forth all the best things for the edification of the faith, but treating most sparingly of the deeds of our saint. Mombritius hands down somewhat more developed ones, although he too, as the rather frequent repetitions show, seems to have plucked the main points of his from homilies of this sort. The first, so far as I know, to publish a compendium of the Life of St. Luke was St. Jerome in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, which in the edition of Jean Martianay, a Benedictine monk of Saint-Maur, lies hidden rather inconveniently in the midst of the letters of the holy Doctor St. Jerome, Works, volume IV, part II, column 104.. It would be worth the trouble to bring that Hieronymian fragment forward, were it not that, as we have said above, we find its principal outlines in the passage of Ado cited by us at no. 3: for the things omitted by the martyrologist contribute nothing whatever to the knowledge of the deeds of our saint. Wherefore, since we have not been able to obtain anything more ancient, we shall edit the Acts of St. Luke patched together by Symeon Metaphrastes, which Laurentius Surius rendered into Latin in his collection: which for the rest

contain almost nothing that does not borrow some authority from more ancient tradition, as can easily be judged from the course of this Commentary.

[7] St. Luke was born at Antioch, And first of all, all among the ancients who have written of the saint's homeland [Cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book III, chapter IV. Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter VII.] testify that Antioch the Great, the metropolis of Syria and indeed of all Asia, foremost in the throng of its people and in the size and magnificence of the city, was the birthplace of St. Luke. But among the neo-critics Winer is cited In Ludewig, Die Apostel Jesu Christi, p. 113., who thinks that this assertion of his homeland was derived from a misunderstood passage of Acts XIII, 1, in which, among the companions of Paul staying at Antioch, Lucius of Cyrene is also counted, Λούκιος ὁ Κυρῆναῖος. But if the ancients had borrowed St. Luke's homeland from this text, they would surely have called him a Cyrenian rather than an Antiochene, since all the codices have that De la Haye, Biblia Maxima, volume XVII, p. 140.: what the ancients wrote, therefore, flowed from a more remote tradition Ludewig, Die Apostel, p. 113.. This indeed we admit, that there have been interpreters who were of opinion that the name of St. Luke, twisted into the Latin language, sounds Lucius; but granted this hypothesis, it in no way follows that whenever a certain Lucius occurs in the canonical Scriptures, the discourse there concerns St. Luke. For those who consider that Lucius is to be interpreted as Luke chiefly direct their attention to the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans XVI, 21, where he says: Timothy my fellow-worker saluteth you, and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. Ἀσπάζονται ὑμᾶς Τιμόθεος, ὁ συνεργός μοῦ, καὶ Λούκιος, καὶ Ἰασων καὶ Σωσίπατρος, οἱ συγγενεῖς μοῦ. For the rest, by that word συγγενεῖς the Apostle indicates his fellow-countrymen in the same epistle, IX, 3, when he says that he wishes to be anathema for his brethren, who are his KINSMEN according to the flesh, τῶν συγγενῶν μοῦ κατὰ σάρκα.

[8] who is wrongly confused with Lucius, And they maintain that this interpretation is to be adopted, both because St. Luke was then the companion of St. Paul, and it seemed strange that among such manifold salutations the name of Luke, his inseparable companion, should not occur, and because, writing to the Romans, it may have seemed fitting to the holy Apostle to give the Greek name of Luke a Latin form by saying, Lucius, my kinsman, … saluteth you. Estius, supported by the authority of Origen, judged that he should follow this opinion. But against admitting such an interpretation some reply that Paul, a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, could not have had a Gentile kinsman, such as many consider St. Luke to have been. But an objection of this kind is feeble enough, since marriages were sometimes contracted between Jews and Gentiles: an example of which the Acts of the Apostles supply us, XVI, 1, where Timothy is said to be the son of a believing Jewish woman, but of a Gentile father, Τιμόθεος, ὑιὸς γυναικὸς Ἰουδαίας πιστῆς, πατρὸς δὲ Ἕλληνος. From such marriages, therefore, the kinship of some Jew with Gentiles could easily be propagated. For the rest, the Martyrologies of both Churches distinguish the Lucius of whom St. Paul treats, Romans XVI, 21, from the holy Evangelist, and make him bishop of Laodicea, as may be seen in the Notes of Cardinal Baronius on the Roman Martyrology under the 22nd day of April at the words: At Smyrna, of the Saints Apelles and Lucius, from among the first disciples of Christ: and at the same day among our predecessors [Acta Sanctorum, volume III of April, p. 4. Cf. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, volume II, p. 790.]. And this also is to be observed, that this Lucius is Luke to the Greeks, as is clear from the Menologion of Cardinal Sirleto, cited by our predecessors.

[9] a Gentile by religion, Further, of what religion St. Luke was before his accession to Christianity, namely whether a Jew or a Gentile, the learned dispute. Certainly those who make him one of the seventy disciples of Christ will without circumlocution say that Luke was of the Hebrew race. But that opinion can in no way stand with what he himself testifies of himself in the proem of his Gospel, where he professes that he there narrates the deeds even as, he says, they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word; Καθὼς παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν οἱ ἀπ᾽ ἄρχῆς αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπερέται γενόμενοι τοῦ λόγου. But if St. Luke himself had been a disciple of Christ, he would have written his Gospel not only from the tradition of those who had seen from the beginning, αὐτοπτῶν, but would have professed himself an eyewitness, αὐτόπτην, to win credit for what he said. Wherefore St. Jerome in his catalogue Jerome, Works, volume IV, part II, column 104., with whom Eusebius agrees Ecclesiastical History, book III, chapter IV., rightly says: He wrote the Gospel as he had heard it: but he composed the Acts of the Apostles as he had seen them. For a similar reason Tertullian, book IV against Marcion, chapter 2 Works, p. 835. Plantin edition of 1584., calls St. Luke an apostolic man, because he was a disciple of the Apostles: St. Augustine says the same most plainly in On the Agreement of the Evangelists, book I, chapter 1 [Volume III of his Works, part II, p. 3. Paris edition of 1680. Cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book III, chapter XX, p. 267. Paris edition of 1675. Theodoret, Religious History or Lives of the Fathers, preface, Works volume III, part II, p. 1107.]: And lest it should be thought, as regards the receiving and preaching of the Gospel, that it makes some difference whether those announce it who followed that same Lord, appearing here in the flesh, in the service of discipleship, or those who believed faithfully from them, it was arranged by divine providence through the Holy Spirit that to certain even of those who followed the first Apostles there should be given the authority not only of announcing but also of writing the Gospel: these are Mark and Luke.

[10] the discipleship of Christ being denied him Nevertheless, to say nothing of others, St. Gregory the Great, book I of the Morals, chapter I Volume I of his Works, column 8. Paris edition of 1705., argues that St. Luke was one of the two disciples going to Emmaus from this, that, having studiously passed over the name of the other, he named Cleophas, as though he had indicated himself by his own silence. But besides the fact that here St. Gregory treats of our saint as it were in passing, he cautiously adds, as some say, whereby he gives us to understand that he does not hold this himself, or at least remains in doubt. But the more recent Greeks openly affirm this of St. Luke, as we saw above at no. 4 in the eulogy of the Basilian Menologion, and as is clear from the Menaea at the 18th of October, in which is sung Μὴν Οχτόβριος, p. 107. Venice edition of 1843.: Ὁν μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν, εἰς Ἐμμαοὺς ἐβλεψας, καὶ καιομένῃ καρδίᾳ, μετὰ Κλεόπα συνέφαγες. Whom after the resurrection you saw at Emmaus, and with whom, with burning heart, you ate together with Cleophas. But these things are too recent to be able to weaken the authority of the ancients, and especially the plain text of the holy Evangelist himself.

[11] he seems to have been; The argument taken from the discipleship of St. Luke having been discussed, it nevertheless remains to see in which religion the saint was brought up: for that there were Jews at Antioch in apostolic times is clear from Acts XI, 19, where those who had been dispersed after the slaying of St. Stephen are said to have announced the Gospel to no one but to the Jews alone. On this head, therefore, it could have been Col. 284C that our Luke was a Jew. Nevertheless the opinion of those seems to us very probable who hold that St. Luke was a Gentile, and support their view with the text of Colossians IV, where in fact, having first set down in verse 11 the salutations of those who were of the circumcision, ἐκ περιτομῆς, that is, of the Jews, he adds in verse 14: Luke the most dear physician saluteth you, ἀσπάζεται ὑμας Λουκᾶς, ὁ ἰατρος ὁ ἀγαπητὸς: by which words it is plainly enough indicated that Luke was not of the circumcision. Against this opinion it is indeed objected [Butler, Vies des Saints, 18th of October, volume XVI, p. 52. Louvain edition of 1832.] that St. Luke in his writings sets forth so much learning concerning Jewish matters, obscure to most people, that he must have drawn it from his earliest instruction. And this objection would seem to me of the greatest weight if the holy Evangelist had written his history by his own wit alone, with no external instruments employed. But matters do not stand so; for he had before him the writings of many, as he himself says at the beginning of his Gospel, who had undertaken to set in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us; then he followed the tradition of those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word; finally, when he had attained all these things, so that he could write in order, he had as the companion of his labour Paul his master, who confesses, Acts XXII, 3, that he was brought up at Jerusalem, at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the truth of the law of the fathers. All of which abundantly suffices to explain to ourselves the accurate manner of writing which St. Luke employed in unfolding the rites and customs of the Jews, without our being driven to ascribe Judaism to our saint.

[12] and a physician by profession, as tradition shows Further, it is clearly enough seen that the whole force of the argument set out above depends on the right interpretation of the words of the epistle to the Colossians; for if it treated of some Luke other than the holy Evangelist, the whole reasoning would collapse. And there are among more recent writers some who consider that it does not treat there of St. Luke, but of some other of the same name, namely because the phrase most dear physician is added to the name: for they say that if St. Paul had been treating of St. Luke, his inseparable companion, there would have been no need to attach anything to a name most well known to all the Churches, as the parallel passage II Timothy IV, 11 shows, where it is said simply Only Luke is with me, Λουκᾶς ἐστι μόνος μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ: in order therefore to signify that he is speaking of another Luke, he adds for the sake of distinction physician, ὁ ἰατρός Rosenmüller, Scholia in Novum Testamentum, volume IV, p. 679.. But this in my opinion is cavilling rather than arguing; for who does not readily add to the name even of a most well-known person some quality, although this is not necessary? Then, if we wish to chase after trifles, was there not some difference between Timothy, the long-standing disciple of the Apostle and frequent companion of his journeys, and the Colossians, who, as the Apostle has it, Colossians II, 2, had not seen the face of Paul in the flesh? They could therefore be ignorant of what Timothy knew very well, namely Luke and his condition; and so the quality of physician was rightly expressed by one writing to the Colossians. Finally, in this matter the perpetual tradition of the ancients must be held of the greatest account, which with one voice hands down that St. Luke was a physician: this is stated without hesitation by Caius the presbyter, a writer of the 2nd century In Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae, volume III, column 845., St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book III,

chapter 14 Works, p. 267. Paris edition of 1675., Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book III, chapter 4, St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 7 Works, volume IV, part II, column 104., etc. But the said Jerome is worth all the rest, commenting on Isaiah VI, 10 Ibid., volume III, column 63.: The ancient writers of the Church, he says, hand down that Luke the Evangelist was most skilled in the art of medicine, and knew Greek letters better than Hebrew.

[13] and the text of the New Testament. And reason too supports the constant tradition of the ancients. For we know that St. Luke the Evangelist was the companion of St. Paul when he was in bonds at Rome: but how could it have come about that he should have made mention of so many others, but kept silent the name of Luke alone, who at one time remained alone with him, II Timothy IV, 11, and whom, writing about the same time to Philemon, verse 24, he calls his fellow-worker? All of which is confirmed also on this head, that nowhere else is there question of any other Luke. Indeed there are those who think they have detected signs of the medical art in the volumes of Luke himself. Of this kind is the fact that St. Luke alone again and again notes in general, and again and again marvels at, that divine power by which Christ and his disciples drove away diseases prodigiously (Luke V, 17: VI, 18: IX, 2). Likewise the fact that, where Matthew or Mark, relating these prodigies, use more common words, Luke employs some more proper and therefore more apt periphrasis, as when he says ἀσθενοῦντας (Luke IV, 40) of those whom Matthew (Matthew VIII, 16) and Mark (Mark I, 34) call κακῶς ἔχοντας, when he says ὐγιαίνοντας (Luke V, 31) of those whom they call ἰσχύοντας (Matthew IX, 2: Mark II, 17), when he says χρείαν ἔχοντας θεραπέιας (Luke IX, 11) of those whom Matthew calls ἀῤῥώστους (Matthew XIV, 14): so also in place of those words of Matthew: ἰάθη ὁ πᾳς (Matthew VIII, 13), Luke wrote: εὖρον τὸν ᾶσθενοῦντα δοῦλον ὑγιαίνοντα (Luke VII, 10); so in place of those words of Mark: κατέκειτο πυρρέσσουσα (Mark I, 30), Luke employed these: ἦν συνεχομένη πυρετῷ μεγάλῳ (Luke IV, 38). Besides these, Wetstein, on these passages, affirmed on the testimony of Galen that that πυρετῷ μεγαλῳ which is read in the Gospel (ibid.), and that ἀχλὺς which is in the Acts of the Apostles (XIII, 11), are ὀνόματα τέχνικα in medicine: add finally that the nouns ἴασις and ἰατρός and the verbs ἰάομαι, ὑγιαίνῳ were used either by Luke alone or far more often than by the others.

§ II. The conversion of St. Luke to Christ, and his journeys with St. Paul.

Chronological synopsis. Since indeed the principal chronological points of the life of St. Luke are to be taken from the Acts of the Apostles, we think we should give warning beforehand that it does not well suit our purpose, amid so great a variety of opinions, to wish to settle arduous and most intricate questions; especially since not a few depend on the particular judgment of each person, which varies among various people. We should therefore be labouring in vain if we heaped other men's opinions upon our own: yet lest we should leave the reader destitute of all help in the labyrinth of manifold ambiguities, we subjoin a table of those Critics whom we have been able to consult: with this as guide he will be able to emerge to some extent from innumerable perplexities ^a.

[15] St. Luke, in the second preaching to the Gentiles That St. Luke was among the first disciples of the Apostles may certainly be inferred from the ministry laid upon him of writing a Gospel, and from his inseparable companionship with Paul. It may nevertheless be inquired at what time our saint adhered to the doctrine of Christ. A threefold epoch, however, can be laid down at which this could have happened, according to the three times at which the Gospel was preached among the Antiochenes in those beginnings: for nothing persuades us that the Christian doctrines shone upon St. Luke outside his native city. Those who first brought the evangelical torch to Antioch were those who had been dispersed by the tribulation that had arisen under Stephen, Acts XI, 19; but these are reported as speaking the word to none but to the Jews alone: since, therefore, above at no. 11, led by probable arguments, we have laid down that Luke was not a Jew but a Gentile, he could not then indeed have been converted to Christ. But shortly after, about the same time, since the two narratives are joined together, some of them, namely of those dispersed on account of the calamity of Stephen, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, when they had entered into Antioch, spoke also to the Greeks, announcing the Lord Jesus, verse 20. Ἦσαν δὲ τινὲς ἐξ αὐτῶν ἄνδρες Κύπριοι καὶ Κυρεναῖοι, οἵτινες ἐλθόντες εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν, ἐλάλουν πρὸς τοὺς Ἑλληνιστὰς, εὐαγγελιζόμενοι τὸν Κύριον Ἰησοῦν. This passage is much vexed, some reading Ἑλληνιστὰς, Grecizers, others Ἕλληνας, Greeks Critici Sacri, volume VII, column 2268. Mill, New Testament, at this place.. Some accordingly interpret this passage as though the men of Cyprus and Cyrene had announced Christ to those Greeks who nevertheless belonged to the Jewish religion, so that between the Jews and the Greeks here named language alone made the difference, namely in the sense in which the word Ἑλληνισταὶ is taken in Acts VI, 1, where it indicates the difference of the two languages: for when there arose a murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews, γυγγυσμὸς τῶν Ἑλληνιστῶν πρὸς τοὺς Ἑβραίους, no one from among the Gentiles was numbered among the disciples of the Apostles, as can be sufficiently demonstrated from the sequence of the history, Cornelius the centurion, the first from among the Gentiles, having embraced the Christian religion later, Acts X, 1.

[16] by the preaching, Nevertheless, although we by no means reject the more received reading, which has Ἑλληνιστὰς, we judge that a wider signification must be given to the disputed word than can be held in Acts VI, 1. For first, if Greek-speaking Jews were to be understood by τοὺς Ἑλληνιστὰς, the men of Cyprus and Cyrene named in verse 20 would have done nothing other than what the other Christians of Jerusalem, dispersed after the slaying of Stephen, had done, who, travelling as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, had taught the Jews alone, among whom there certainly were those who knew only Greek: since this second preaching is attached to the former, the writer wished to indicate something different. Then, in the same chapter, in the preceding words, the dispute is related between the Apostle Peter and the Jews concerning the reception and baptism of the Gentiles, and it shows that God had given to the Gentiles also, ἔθνεσι, repentance unto life. In confirmation of what was said, St. Luke narrates a twofold preaching at Antioch, the former indeed to the Jews alone, but the other to the Greeks also: it is certain, therefore, that the sequence of the discourse favours our interpretation in every way. To which reasons is added finally the authority of the ancients [Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book II, chapter III. Chrysostom, Homily XXV on the Acts of the Apostles, Works volume XI, p. 200], who hold this interpretation as settled. Among these neophytes St. Luke too may with sufficient probability be counted; since St. Paul is nowhere read to have called him son, a term which he used towards those whom he himself had begotten in Christ; thus he calls Timothy and Titus, although already bishops, beloved sons at the head of his epistles.

[17] or by St. Paul There are, however, those who prefer that St. Luke embraced the Christian religion with Paul as master, when for a whole year the Apostle of the Gentiles dwelt at Antioch and taught a great multitude, Acts XI, 26. Those who so think make for themselves this argument: namely, that when Luke had heard of the wonderful cures wrought by Paul, he wished, not only from the common curiosity which draws all to consider portents, but on account of the art by which he was a physician, to examine the prodigious healings more closely and more intimately. But after he had ascertained the truth of the miracles, he believed in Christ, with Paul as instructor: and the Basilian Menologion, cited at no. 4, relates that Paul was Luke's initiator; but I would not admit that this happened at Thebes of Macedonia, because there is no city of that name in Macedonia, but in Boeotia. But omitting these things, which, because they belong to a more recent tradition, claim less credit for themselves, it is clear from what has been related so far that the passing of St. Luke to Christianity must be ascribed to one or the other preaching made to the Gentiles. Further, from the texture of the Acts it is sufficiently established that both preachings must be included within a space of eighteen months; for they relate these things, Acts XI, 19–30: Now they who had been dispersed by the persecution that arose on occasion of Stephen, went about as far as Phoenice and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to none, but to the Jews only. But some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they were entered into Antioch, spoke also to the Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believing were converted to the Lord. And the tidings came to the ears of the Church that was at Jerusalem, touching these things: and they sent Barnabas as far as Antioch. Who, when he was come and had seen the grace of God, rejoiced: and he exhorted them all with purpose of heart to continue in the Lord: for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. And a great multitude was added to the Lord. And Barnabas went to Tarsus to seek Saul: whom, when he had found, he brought to Antioch. And they conversed there in the Church a whole year: and they taught a great multitude, so that at Antioch the disciples were first named Christians. And in these days there came prophets from Jerusalem to Antioch: and one of them, named Agabus, rising up, signified by the Spirit that there should be a great famine over the whole world, which came to pass under Claudius. And the disciples, every man according to his ability, purposed to send relief to the brethren who dwelt in Judaea: which also they did, sending it to the ancients by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

[18] he seems to have been brought over to Christ about the year 43 But in order to define more accurately the time of these deeds, we must consider what immediately follows in Acts XII, 1, namely κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν, that at the same time Herod stretched forth his hand to afflict some of the Church, and in consequence killed James and seized Peter, who was afterwards wonderfully freed by an Angel. To all of which is attached the death of the same Herod, whom an Angel struck, Acts XII, 23: and these things indeed are interposed between the going up of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem and their return, for in verse 25 it is said: And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, having fulfilled their ministry, taking with them John, who was surnamed Mark. In the one year, therefore, in which Paul stayed at Antioch, before the death of Herod, the conversion at Antioch took place. And so we shall be able to define the time of the preaching at Antioch, and consequently of St. Luke's conversion, according to the year of Herod's death. Now from Flavius Josephus we have two things: namely, that Herod Agrippa received the whole of his ancestral kingdom from the emperor Claudius shortly after the latter assumed the empire on the 25th day of January of the year 41 of the common era Jewish Antiquities, book XIX, chapter V. Havercamp edition, volume I, p. 943.; and that, the third year of his reign having been completed, he met his last day at Caesarea On the Jewish War, book II, chapter XI. Havercamp edition, volume II, p. 172.. Now the fourth year of the emperor Claudius, and consequently of king Herod, coincides with the year 44 of the common era, and

the preaching at Antioch and St. Luke's passing over to the Christian religion fall in the preceding year, that is, the common year 43.

[19] he afterwards adhered to St. Paul, That Luke, says St. Irenaeus, book III against Heresies, chapter 14 Irenaeus, Works, p. 267. Paris edition of 1675., was inseparable from Paul and his fellow-worker in the Gospel, he himself makes manifest, not boasting, but brought forward by the truth itself. For when Barnabas and John, who was called Mark, had separated from Paul, he says, and had sailed to Cyprus, we came to Troas, and when Paul had seen in a dream a man of Macedonia saying to him: Come into Macedonia and help us, Paul; immediately, he says, we sought to go into Macedonia, understanding that the Lord had called us to preach the Gospel to them. The holy Doctor then relates in the same strain the remaining journeys of Paul with St. Luke up to the sojourn at Rome. From this passage of St. Irenaeus, commenting on the text of Acts XVI, 10, Tillemont deduces Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique, volume II, p. 536. that St. Luke was then for the first time associated with the Apostle Paul. And indeed from the text of the Acts adduced we have a certain and authentic proof that St. Luke was the companion of St. Paul on the voyage towards Troas; which must be laid down to have happened about the common year 50; cf. the table at no. 13. Nevertheless, whether he then for the first time began to adhere to the Apostle is not clear on every side. And certainly it is very likely that St. Luke adhered to the Doctor of the Gentiles to the extent of proving himself to him, so as to be taken up into the work of the ministry; and since this happened about the year 50, we judge that he had already followed Paul as master and teacher for some time before.

[20] but in the beginnings But another question arises, namely whether St. Luke thereafter so followed the Apostle that he could be called inseparable from Paul. And indeed, since in Acts XVI, 10–17 the writer had spoken in the first person, we sought, etc., he then relates the rest, up to Acts XX, 6, in the third person, as though Paul and Silas had been separated from their companions: and this indeed probably; since these two are reported to have been seized, brought before the magistrates, beaten with rods, sent into prison, and at length, as Roman men, honourably led out of prison, departed, Acts XVI, 19–40. Since, therefore, these things belong to Paul and Silas alone, the rules of legitimate interpretation require that we interpret what follows also of the same men, until we are warned by a change of style. And this reasoning, drawn from the rules of logic and grammar, gains strength also from this, that where Luke uses the first person of the verbs, the narration appears fuller and richer and adorned with more circumstances, which entirely betrays an eyewitness; but not so where he employs the third person. Wherefore it is rightly enough judged that St. Luke remained at Philippi or in the neighbouring regions until St. Paul returned thither, so as to set out with him to Troas, as is had in Acts XX, 5. Finally, the separation of Luke and Paul is confirmed from this also, that although mention is made of Silas and other companions in Acts XVII, 4, 10, 14; XVIII, 5; XIX, 22, 29 and XX, 4, yet nowhere is St. Luke named or does he himself intimate that he was present. But after he had set sail a second time from Troas for Jerusalem, thenceforth the saint was the inseparable companion of the Apostle of the Gentiles in bonds and in every tribulation as far as Rome, where also he remained for at least two whole years.

[21] after an interval of five years: These things being laid down, there comes the question of the time for which this separation of SS. Paul and Luke lasted, which in our judgment readily reaches five years. For the things related as done by St. Paul from chapter XVI, 19 to chapter XX, 5 of the Acts happened while St. Luke was absent from his company. Now in this interval of time St. Paul sat at Corinth a year and six months (Acts XIX, 8), and then, having separated the disciples from the company of the Jews, disputed in the school of a certain tyrant for two years (ibid., verse 10); in Greece too he spent three months (XX, 3). Which, joined together, already make four full years. Moreover, when he had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, he came to Thessalonica and there for three sabbaths reasoned with the Jews out of the scriptures (Acts XVII, 1 and 2); thence he came to Beroea, where many were converted to Christ (ibid., verse 10 and following), and then to Athens, where he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews and in the market-place every day with those who were there. Having left Corinth after a residence of eighteen months, as we have said, he went for a short time to Ephesus, and went down to Caesarea of Palestine and to Antioch, and having spent some time there departed, going through the region of Galatia and Phrygia in order, confirming all the disciples (Acts XVIII, 21–23), until he came to Ephesus (Acts XIX, 1), in which city, as he had promised (Acts XVIII, 21), and as we said above, he remained for two years and three months. But after the tumult stirred up at Ephesus by Demetrius had ceased (Acts XIX, 23–40), Paul departed to go into Macedonia, and having spent three months in Greece, returned through Macedonia, and about the days of the Unleavened Bread St. Luke met St. Paul at Philippi, thereafter to be his perpetual and inseparable companion (Acts XX, 1–6). And from these manifold journeys, foundations and visitations of Churches we easily make up a year, which, added to the four years, makes five.

[22] on which occasion it is inquired The sacred Critics also ask whether the Apostle treats of St. Luke in II Corinthians VIII, 18, saying: We have sent also with him (Titus) the brother whose praise is in the Gospel through all the Churches: and not that only, but he was also ordained by the Churches companion of our travels. Συνεπέμψαμεν δὲ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀδελφὸν, οὗ ἔπαινος ἐν τῷ Ἐυαγγελίῳ διὰ πασῶν τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν. Οὐ μόνον δὲ, ἀλλὰ καί χειροτονηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν συνέκδημος ἡμῶν. St. Jerome interprets this text of St. Luke in his Catalogue of writers Works, volume IV, part II, column 104., saying: He wrote a Gospel, of which the same Paul says: "We have sent with him the brother whose praise is in the Gospel through all the Churches." Here indeed St. Jerome takes the word Gospel for the volume itself, which meaning Origen and Sophronius also adopt, as may be seen in the edition of the Greek New Testament by Mill P. 120. Rotterdam edition of 1710.: although it must be admitted that in the sacred writings of the New Testament that word is for the most part to be taken not for some book comprising the life and doctrine of Christ, as we commonly understand it today, but for the Christian doctrine itself or its preaching. Certainly that word is to be understood in this latter sense in Mark XVI, 15: Preach the Gospel to every creature; nor would I think that any passage can be found in the New Testament in which we must not very frequently, and cannot always conveniently, interpret this word in that sense. The sacred critics therefore judge that nothing is to be presumed from the phrase whose praise is in the Gospel, which various writers interpret of various persons Cornelius a Lapide on this place, so that it cannot be applied to St. Luke alone; since St. Paul had with him many helpers in his preaching, and so in his Gospel, whose names occur here and there in his epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles.

[23] whether the text of II Corinthians VIII, 18 And indeed, as Estius notes Commentary on the Epistles of the Apostle, volume V, p. 1932. Louvain edition., the Greeks attribute this title to St. Barnabas, who by his evangelical preaching earned praise among all the Churches, and, as St. John Chrysostom says, Homily XVIII on II Corinthians Works, volume X, p. 565. Montfaucon edition., was ordained by the Churches companion of Paul's travels. But, as Estius has it in the place cited, this is not well founded. For it does not seem to have been fitting that Barnabas, an Apostle of great name, should be subjoined as companion to Titus: then, which is the chief point, before both epistles to the Corinthians were written, nay before the Apostle's coming to Corinth, Paul and Barnabas had long since parted from each other, cf. Acts XV, 39 and XVIII, 1; nor are they found to have met afterwards. After this parting, therefore, Paul came for the first time to Corinth, Acts XVIII, 1: and so both his epistles, directed to the Church which is at Corinth, founded by Paul's preaching, are later in time than the things related of his first coming to Corinth. Wherefore we judge that the opinion of the Greeks concerning St. Barnabas is to be entirely abandoned.

[24] of our saint, But with this opinion discussed, the matter is not concluded. For besides St. Luke there are also others who could have been adorned by St. Paul with the praise of the Gospel and of companionship; such were Apollo and Silas. I would not, however, think that Apollo is designated here, being known to the Corinthians, some of whom he had baptized and among whom he had acquired followers, as is sufficiently established from the first epistle to the Corinthians I, 12 and III, 4 and following. Accordingly he would have adorned him either with his proper name or with a praise more local, if one may so speak. As regards Silas, however, of whom our predecessors treated at the 13th day of July Acta Sanctorum, volume III of July, p. 476., it must be admitted that what is otherwise known to us of him entirely favours him. For after the parting from Barnabas, appointed as companion of his apostolate, Acts XIII, 2 and XV, 39, Paul is read to have departed having chosen Silas, delivered by the brethren to the grace of God: since further we find Silas thereafter frequently the companion of St. Paul, it is made sufficiently probable that the Apostle spoke of him in the epistle cited. But notwithstanding these things, it must be said that the words cited may also conveniently be interpreted of St. Luke; which indeed will be more readily done if, with certain Fathers adduced at no. 22, we understand the word Gospel of the volume itself.

[25] is to be explained of our saint, the faithful companion of St. Paul. We should be labouring in vain were we to set forth the things done by St. Luke in St. Paul's company, since we can find them in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. This is certain, that our saint finished that work when he had stayed with Paul at Rome for two whole years, as the last words of the book have it, Acts XXVIII, 30: And he (Paul) remained two whole years in his own hired lodging; and he received all that came in to him, preaching the kingdom of God, etc. Ἐμεινε δὲ ὁ Παῦλος διετίαν ὅλην ἐν ἰδίω μισθώματι· καὶ ἀπεδέχετο πάντας τοὺς εἰσπορευομένους πρὸς αὐτὸν· κηρύσσων τὴν βασιλεὶαν τοῦ Θεοῦ κ. τ. λ. But since among

the learned it is not agreed in what year St. Paul arrived at Rome, as may be seen from the table set out at no. 13, it cannot be defined with certainty in what year the book of Acts ends. But whether St. Luke adhered to his master until his martyrdom, and so was the companion both of his journey into the East and of his return to the Roman metropolis, is not clear on every side. Yet the title attributed to him of inseparable companion of St. Paul sufficiently persuades us that St. Luke thereafter faithfully adhered to him until the Apostle's death.

§ III. Of the writings of St. Luke, and their authenticity.

The Acts of the Apostles having been written while Paul was staying at Rome, At the time when St. Luke was following Paul, the Doctor of the Gentiles, he seems to have composed both canonical books, namely his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. And indeed, as regards the Acts of the Apostles, they were composed after the two years spent by Paul at Rome, since they end at that time. But if he had written later, he would have extended his narration to later times; Acts XXVIII, 30: And he (Paul) remained two whole years in his own hired lodging, and he received all that came in to him, preaching the kingdom of God; in which words St. Luke concludes his Apostolic history. I would not believe there is anyone among the interpreters who denies this epoch, although on account of the manifold diversity in the Pauline chronology it can hardly be tied to any one common year. But it is established that the Gospel preceded in time the writing of the Acts of the Apostles; for St. Luke himself pronounces this openly in the Prologue of the Acts, I, 1: The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, of all things which Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day on which, giving commandments by the Holy Ghost to the Apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up. Τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον ἐποιησάμην περὶ πάντων, ὦ Θεόφιλε, ὦν ἔρξατο ὁ Ἰησοῦς ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν, ἄχρι ἧς ἡμέρας ἐντειλάμενος τοῖς Ἀποστόλοις διὰ Πνεύματος ἁγίου, ὃυς ἐξελέξατο, ἀνελήφθη.

[27] the Gospel preceded, St. Jerome in his Prologue to the Commentaries on Matthew Volume IV of his Works, part I, column 3. says: The third (Evangelist) is Luke the physician, by nation a Syrian of Antioch (whose praise is in the Gospel), who was himself also a disciple of the Apostle Paul, and composed his volume in the regions of Achaia and Boeotia *; going back further on certain matters; and, as he himself confesses in the Proem, describing things heard rather than seen. If we accept this opinion, it will have to be said that St. Luke wrote his Gospel in that interval of time from when he began to follow St. Paul until, associated with that same Apostle, he was brought to Jerusalem and thence to Rome: which interval of time comprises nearly eight years. Among certain Greeks the opinion prevailed that the Gospel was written in the fifteenth year from the Ascension of the Lord, and consequently in the common year 48 of the Christian era Mill, Variant Readings at the end of St. Luke, 196.: but critics commonly reject this epoch, inasmuch as it preceded the companionship of St. Paul by three years [Glaire, Introduction à l'Écriture Sainte, p. 352. Sionnet, La Sainte Bible, volume XIII, p. 1.]. But that is not accurate on every side, since there are learned men who refer the deeds of Acts XVI, when St. Luke is first read to have been associated with the Doctor of the Gentiles, to the year of Christ 47 (above, no. 13). Nevertheless, although in a chronology of this kind the discipleship would have preceded the writing, I think that opinion less to be approved, both because the chronology itself is uncertain, and above all because in the very beginnings of his discipleship a book of such moment could hardly have been composed.

[28] which probably But if it were certainly established that the text of II Corinthians VIII, 18 is to be understood of Luke, we should have some point for resolving the chronological question. For it is sufficiently agreed among the learned that the second epistle to the Corinthians was written in the year 58 or 59 Glaire, Introduction, p. 401.; and so the Gospel must have been written before it. But above at no. 22 we saw that the commentators are doubtful concerning this text, and consequently that nothing certain can be concluded from it. It seems certain to us that St. Luke did not write his Gospel so long as he was the helper of St. Paul in preaching the word of salvation: for the Apostle and his companions, occupied rather in acting than in writing, had no leisure for composing a book of such moment and of due length. Our saint found such leisure first when St. Paul preached in Macedonia, Greece, Asia and Syria, St. Luke being absent for five years and staying in Greece, as we showed above at no. 21; the second, when he easily spent two years in Palestine with the holy Apostle, Acts XXI–XXVII, 1; the third, finally, when he dwelt at Rome for two years with St. Paul in bonds. The holy Evangelist thus found a threefold leisure suitable for writing, without its being possible, however, to define with certainty to which of the three the writing of the Gospel should rather be tied: in part, however, it depends on the place where the book was more probably written.

[29] not in the leisure in Greece, We do not believe, first of all, that the Gospel was composed by St. Luke at that time when, the Apostle Paul being absent, he stayed in Greece for five years. For our saint's conversion to Christianity was then recent, and so he seems to have been obliged rather to learn than to teach: absent also was the master under whose guidance he could have carried out an arduous design: finally, since Luke himself in the Prologue of his Gospel, I, 2, professes that, having diligently attained all things from the beginning, he wishes to write them in order, it seems that his writing should rather be deferred to that time when he was adhering to his master, and, being in Judaea with him, could inspect the places in person and hear those who had been spectators of the deeds from the beginning, οἱ ἁπ᾽ άρχῆς αὐτόπται, and consequently could be of the greatest help for weaving the narration diligently and in order. It is true indeed, as we saw above at no. 27, that St. Jerome assigns as the place of the writing of the Gospel the regions of Achaia and Boeotia, or, as many others read, Bithynia, or, to use a general word, Greece. But although the authority of the holy Doctor in questions pertaining to Holy Scripture is and ought to be of the greatest weight with us, I confess nevertheless that I can with difficulty reconcile St. Jerome's assertion with the words of St. Irenaeus, who, book III Against Heresies, chapter I Works, p. 229. Paris edition of 1675., says: Luke, the companion of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by him. Λουκᾶς ὁ ἀκόλουθος Παύλου, τὸ ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου κηρυσσόμενον εὐαγγέλιον ἐν βιβλίῳ κατέθετο. If this is so, I can hardly persuade myself that the disciple published a book of such moment while his master was absent and placed far away.

[30] but at Rome, St. Luke, therefore, does not seem to have been able to use the first leisure in Greece, since he neither had St. Paul as helper in the writing, nor had he yet attained the deeds so diligently, nor been able to hear those who had seen from the beginning. If moreover we consider that both books, namely the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, were inscribed to one and the same Theophilus, we shall readily acquiesce in the opinion of those who judge that both the Gospel and the Acts were composed at about the same time. There were indeed interpreters, among them Origen, Homily I on Luke, and St. Epiphanius, heresy LI, who judged the name Theophilus to be common to all the pious and those who love God; most, however, consider it the proper name of some man, probably brought by St. Luke himself to the profession of the Christian name: which the words also suggest, that thou mayest know the truth of those words in which thou hast been instructed, which indicate a definite man, already instructed in Christian doctrine: then from the address κράτιστε, most excellent, which the sacred author uses, it is gathered that he spoke to a definite man, known and of some dignity: for with the same appellation Paul salutes the governors of Judaea, Felix, Acts XXIV, 3, and Festus, Acts XXVI, 25, naming each κράτιστον, most excellent Cf. Maldonatus, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke I, p. 3.. All of which indeed leads us to consider that the Gospel was written by St. Luke at Rome, after he had considered all things, inspected the places and conversed with those who had seen from the beginning. There is further at Rome a tradition, which Cardinal Baronius, at the year 29, § V, recalls that he read in the ancient records of the deaconry of St. Mary in Via Lata, namely that St. Paul was first received there as a guest, and so also his companion St. Luke; on which account a stone was erected, witness of the old tradition, on which the following is read Aringhi, Roma Subterranea, volume II, p. 188. Paris edition of 1659.: Formerly the Oratory of St. Paul the Apostle, of Luke the Evangelist and of Martialis, Martyrs, in which there also stood an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was found, one of the seven painted by Blessed Luke.

[31] the Blessed Virgin Mary communicating various things, And since mention has fallen upon the Blessed Virgin Mary (of her images we shall treat below), it is worth while to observe that what St. Luke narrates of Christ as a boy must be believed to have been heard by him from His mother herself. For he says that he had diligently attained all things from the beginning, namely also those which are first in the history written by him: but of these what witness then survived, ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς αὐτόπτης, who had himself seen from the beginning and from whom he might inquire these things, so as to be able diligently to attain all things from the beginning, except the Virgin Mary? Some traces of this are shown by the Gospel itself, in passages where St. Luke names the most holy Mother of God for no other reason, as it seems, than to confirm by her testimony the things he narrates. There are two texts in particular which show this clearly enough, namely II, 19, when the shepherds came from Bethlehem to adore the newborn Christ, and in the same chapter, verse 51, when Mary and Joseph found Christ at twelve years of age, verse 46, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions: in both places it is said that Mary kept these words in her heart: I will set out the former passage: Ἡ δὲ Μαριὰμ πάντα συνετήρει τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα, συμβάλλουσα ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὑτῆς. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart Cf. Rosenmüller, Scholia in Novum Testamentum, volume II, p. 69 and following.. And on this head too there is approved to me the ancient and unanimous tradition (if you except Clement of Alexandria alone, in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History, book VI, chapter XIV.), which holds that St. Luke wrote after Matthew and Mark and made use of their books; for he borrowed much from each, and at the same time follows more accurately the order of times, not so observed by the earlier ones. The two earlier ones, moreover, have little, and that less fully worked out, concerning the coming, nativity and infancy of our Saviour.

[32] or in Palestine, But although it seems to me more probable

the opinion of those who judge that St. Luke wrote his Gospel at Rome, when he was staying there with his master Paul, I do not, however, entirely oppose the view of those who judge that the Gospel was composed by St. Luke when he was living in Palestine, whether at Jerusalem or at Caesarea. For there too, as afterwards at Rome, there was leisure suitable for writing; there were at hand frequent eyewitnesses, αὐτόπται, as he himself says, of the things done by Christ, and the very places in which Christ had lived also contributed their part, so that he might write accurately and diligently, ἀκριβῶς. Nor does this opinion entirely destroy the view of those who considered that both books were composed at about the same time, and therefore assigned the same place of writing. For, as is clear from the sequence of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul and his inseparable companion St. Luke, having been placed in custody at Jerusalem and thence, on account of the appeal to Caesar, carried over to Rome, remained in bonds about four years: which interval of time is not so long that whatever was done then cannot be referred to about the same time.

[33] was written in the Greek language. There is less difficulty in establishing the language which St. Luke used in writing both his books. If you except a few who have said that he used the Hebrew or the Latin language Cf. Kuinoel on the Acts of the Apostles, Prolegomena, p. XIII and following., all judge that he published his books in the Greek tongue. Of this we have an ample witness, St. Jerome, who, commenting on chapter VI of Isaiah, has this Works, volume III, column 63.: The ancient writers of the Church hand down that Luke the Evangelist was most skilled in the art of medicine, and knew Greek letters better than Hebrew. Whence also his language, both in the Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, that is, in both volumes, is more polished and smacks of secular eloquence: and he uses Greek testimonies (the version of the Seventy interpreters) more than Hebrew. And the same, in his letter to Pope Damasus, interpreting the word Hosanna, says Works, volume IV, part I, column 148.: Luke, who among all the Evangelists was most learned in the Greek tongue, being a physician, and one who wrote his Gospel for the Greeks, when he saw that he could not translate the proper force of the word (Hosanna), judged it better to keep silent than to set down what would raise a question for the reader. But although St. Luke is held to be the most learned in the Greek tongue among the canonical writers, Grotius observes in the Prologue to the Acts Critici Sacri, volume VI, p. 1152. that his diction often inclines towards the Syriac idiom.

[34] Frisch first attacked Luke's narrative, Such is the character of St. Luke's writings that, although many non-Catholics, who are called Rationalists, have tried with repeated assaults to shake the other Gospels, the works of our writer have nevertheless always stood unmoved, nor has anyone dared to attack them up to our own age. For the truthfulness of St. Luke as a writer was impugned in the secular jubilee year of Lutheranism, 1817, by Samuel Frisch, preacher at the church of St. Peter at Freiberg in Saxony, in a dissertation composed in order to obtain the highest honours in Theology at the university of Leipzig. The title of the little book was: That both of Luke's commentaries on the life, sayings and fortunes of Jesus and the Apostles have the character not so much of historical simplicity as of artful treatment. It is worth while to observe in passing that the Protestants, even while they applaud Luther for standing on the Bible alone, yet often in a certain way dry up the Bible itself, and so the sole fountain, for them, of Christian truth; to the extent that thereafter the Christian people lies destitute of all heavenly nourishment, whether sought from Holy Scripture or from Tradition. To this at last Protestantism has come, just as the great Bossuet had as it were foretold by prophesying Histoire des Variations, book V, § XXXI..

[35] as too poetical, Master Samuel Frisch, then, objects to the writings of St. Luke a poetic form and a selection of memorable things; and on that account thinks it demonstrated that St. Luke used not a simple but an artful manner of writing Frisch, p. 5.. To begin with the latter difficulty, what writer, I ask, while composing any history whatever, does not employ some selection in relating facts or memorable things? I have known no author to this very day who does not exercise a similar discrimination and selection in writing. St. John the Apostle certainly made a selection when he says, XXI, 25: But there are also many other things which Jesus did: which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written. Nor do I think that anyone will deny credit to a writer on this head, that not all things but certain selected ones have been set out. For it suffices that he narrate true things, although he profess that he wishes to attain his aim by the very truth of the facts. Let Master Samuel say openly, then, that a historian is in no way to be believed whenever he confesses that he is publishing parts of someone's life. How absurd this is needs no demonstration.

[36] and so fictitious: Further, Master Samuel perceives a poetic form, and so, as he himself says Ibid., p. 6., a fiction, whenever Luke narrates that several men, either dwelling in remote places or joined until then by no bond of relationship, were divinely admonished together to do, accomplish or believe something for the sake of one another. As an example he adduces Acts X, where Cornelius the centurion is treated of. A twofold vision is related there, admonishing both Cornelius and Peter concerning the conversion of the Gentiles. To treat these things in a human manner, and interpret the vision, which savours of the supernatural, as a thought, to which of us, if he will recall the events of his past life, has there not sometimes happened such a concurrence of thoughts that what we had thought at that very moment happens to us as if by chance? Certainly if anyone related such a thing, he would not straightway have to be banished among the poets. But here we have besides a most certain argument, namely that God willed to propagate the true faith to the Gentiles also; and that on that account He prepared both Peter and Cornelius for so great a work by a wonderful disposition of His providence. And so, as Master Samuel admits Ibid., p. 7., Eichhorn, free enough in interpreting the Scriptures, solves the difficulty, nor does the dissertator altogether deny it: but examples of a similar concurrence, he says, do not occur in the other sacred writers: wherefore he pronounces that histories of this kind are to be rejected as poetic, and therefore fictitious. According to similar rules of criticism I truly do not see what history, whether sacred or profane, would not have to be repudiated. For if writers always arrange their narrations according to the same form, consistent with itself, it will readily be said that their style smacks of nothing native, and therefore has no authority, since one has copied another. But if they differ in adorning their narrations, whenever they have departed from the beaten track they would have to be hissed off as walking alone. Truly, if profane history were to be judged by a similar norm of criticism, nothing would appear that was not in ruins, and the abyss of scepticism would swallow up all historical faith. So much for Master Samuel.

[37] but Strauss, with a heavier onslaught To this skirmish, as it were, succeeded the heavier onslaught of Strauss in his famous book on the Life of Christ, in which all the wonders that are handed down of our Saviour in the Gospels were exhibited as fabulous. Strauss indeed admits (I render his words into Latin from the confutation written by Doctor Tholuck [Valroger, Essai sur la crédibilité de l'histoire évangélique, by A. Tholuck, p. 139.]) that Luke was a disciple of the Apostles: for the book of Acts by the same author testifies to this; since the said author is there frequently cited as the companion of Paul, especially on the journey to Rome. Further, from the abrupt ending of the Acts (which end in the two years of the stay at Rome, no account being given of the appeal to Caesar) most have drawn the consequence that the book was written at the time of the residence at Rome, and so that the Gospel, which is designated as the first discourse, πρῶτος λόγος, was composed a little before those times, when he could be taught by Paul and the other Apostles. But that, says Strauss, is after all to argue from the silence of the author, a kind of argument which, to be valid, ought to be corroborated by internal grounds. It may be, therefore, that Luke composed the Gospel much later, when Paul could not help in the writing, and when he himself, moreover, was informed only mediately and imperfectly. In such a way eyewitnesses could have failed Luke, and so it could have happened to him that he mixed mythical elements with historical facts. So far Strauss.

[38] although he attacks Luke with mere conjectures: We see that Strauss sticks in mere possibilities, which no reason whatever that proves anything supports, and which are as easily denied as they are put forward. But to conjectures of this kind it can be opposed that no likely reason can be found for supposing that St. Luke did not bring the book to its conclusion: for it has a final clause which shows that it is complete; for it ends with a present participle, by which an action still continued is designated, Acts XXVIII, 30. And he (Paul) remained two whole years in his own hired lodging, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. Ἔμεινε δὲ διετίαν ὅλην ἐν ἰδίῳ μισθώματι … κηρύσσων τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ Θεού καὶ διδάσκων τὰ περὶ τοῦ Κυρίου Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Nor can it in any way be believed that Luke would have ended his writing with such a clause if he had then known of Paul's later liberation, his subsequent preachings, and finally his martyrdom. And yet this must be said, if St. Luke had finished his book some years after the death of St. Paul. To one reading, to use an example, the life of Pius VII, if the biographer ended in the French captivity, where the Pontiff is shown continually praying for the Holy Church of God and instructing the faithful according to the necessity of the time, would not the thought at once arise that the book was written then, when the Pontiff was still in captivity; and not after he, gloriously returned to Rome, governed the Church for nine whole years more and crowned a holy life with a holy death? But if we treated any book whatever and its age in such a manner, by what reason, I ask, should we apply another norm or balance for a canonical book?

[39] wherefore the saint is shown It is manifest, therefore, that the Straussian conjecture cannot stand: wherefore it remains for us to show that St. Luke both wished to hand down to us a sincere, and so truly historical, book, and was also able to accomplish it, being furnished with all those aids which are necessary for establishing the truth. Of his excellent will, first of all, we have as witness the very Proem of his Gospel. Before all things he in some manner excuses himself, that although he was not an eyewitness of the things he is about to relate, yet on account of the many who have undertaken to set in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished, it seemed good to him also to write. By which opening he signifies that already at that time there were several who had consigned the words and works of Christ to writing. Then St. Luke professes that he adhered to those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses, αὐτόπται, and ministers of the word. Furnished with such aids, he attained all things from the beginning, ἄνωθεν, and diligently, ἀκριβῶς: finally, the very aim of the book furnishes a certain pledge of his will

eager for the truth; for it was written so that Theophilus might know the truth, ἀσφάλειαν, the solidity and certainty, of those words in which he had been instructed: for that was why he inquired so accurately and diligently about Christ among the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, that is, the Apostles and the principal disciples. All these things follow clearly and plainly from the Proem, and create belief that St. Luke sincerely searched out the truth of the deeds.

[40] that he was both able and willing to relate true things, It will be worth while to compare the proem of our Evangelist with the beginning of the Prologue of Flavius Josephus; for from a comparison of both documents the authority of our Luke will shine forth. Josephus begins thus Works, volume II, p. 47. Havercamp edition.: Since the war which the Jews waged with the Romans, and that the greatest of all, not only of those which our age has seen, but almost of all those we have received by hearsay, when either cities or nations have clashed with nations, has been written of by some who were not present at the events, but gather futile narratives at variance among themselves from rumours, and undertake to write in the manner of sophists; while others who were present falsify the truth of events, either from a desire to flatter the Romans or from hatred of the Jews, and in their writings are found partly accusations, partly encomia, but nowhere the exact fidelity of history; I have therefore proposed to narrate the same things which I had earlier composed in my native tongue and sent to the barbarians of the interior, now translated into Greek for the sake of those who live under the Roman empire, I, Josephus, son of Matthias, a Hebrew by race, from Jerusalem, a priest, who myself also fought against the Romans in battles at the beginning, and was afterwards present at the events, compelled by necessity. Whoever has read these things in Josephus, how will he not readily persuade himself that such a man examined by rule whatever was narrated, to discern whether they related fables or history? But if we judge Josephus, a profane historian, by such a norm, and give full credit to his words, what reason at last can there be for us to deny the authority of the Evangelist, except that he is a canonical writer?

[41] inasmuch as he was furnished with all aids What has been said so far we believe suffices to show that St. Luke did not lack the will to search out and set forth the truth. It remains for us to show that our writer was furnished with those aids by which he could compose a most truthful history. For as a physician he had received a liberal education: even then the highest skill in the art was required of those who were put in charge of the care of bodies; the individual legions had their own physicians Steiner, Codex Inscriptionum Romanarum Rheni, nos. 379, 471, 529, etc., who also had their own professors, as becomes known from an inscription of Avenches in Switzerland Ibid., no. 568.. To a liberal education of this kind are added frequent journeys, which are of a nature to sharpen a man's wit, and these indeed to those places in which the writer could investigate most accurately the history he wished to compose: namely, detained for two whole years in Palestine with Paul, Acts XXIV, 27, he found a most opportune occasion to hear eyewitnesses in person, to compare their reports, and to inspect in person the places in which Christ had acted. The same writer, too, having probably spoken with Mary, the Mother of the Lord, as we showed above at no. 31, could receive from her mouth the mysteries of the nativity and infancy of Christ: whether St. John the Evangelist had not yet left Palestine and came later to Ephesus, because he was unwilling to abandon the Mother of the Lord whom he had taken unto his own; or whether Luke himself, the companion of St. Paul's frequent journeys through Greece and Asia Minor, visited the Virgin Mary at Ephesus when she was already living there. For it does not pertain to the present purpose to search out laboriously here the chronological order of the deeds of the Blessed Virgin Mary, since it suffices for our purpose to have shown that St. Luke brought forward what he relates from legitimate witnesses.

[42] for investigating the truth; But the highest credibility of the writer is established not only by these external aids, but also by the most exquisite accuracy in all that he narrates, proved from contemporary records. Certainly the information concerning chronology, geography and archaeology wins authority for the writer, which agrees on every side with what we know for certain from other histories and documents. This kind of argument indeed is not easily developed in the Gospel, since events in Judaea, a region scarcely known to profane writers, are related throughout: but a wide field opens in the Acts of the Apostles. For here there is a variety of regions, since the narration is continually carried over from Palestine into Greece, from Greece into Asia Minor and Italy; persons occur also who are very well known to profane historians too. If, therefore, Luke had related not facts but fictions, how easy it would have been to stumble, and here and there to trip now on chronology, now on geography or archaeology. But nothing of this is to be feared in our saint; everywhere he is consistent with himself, and the writings of others bring most useful support for confirming his credibility. Let us illustrate our assertion with some examples adduced.

[43] as is shown in relating the death of Herod Our Luke and Flavius Josephus relate the death of Herod; let us weigh the narration of each. In Acts XII, 19 we have this: And he (Herod), going down from Judaea to Caesarea, abode there. And he was angry with the Tyrians and the Sidonians. But they with one accord came to him, and having gained Blastus, who was the king's chamberlain, they desired peace, because their countries were nourished by him: and upon a day appointed, Herod, being arrayed in kingly apparel, sat in the judgment seat and made an oration to them. And the people made acclamation, saying: It is the voice of a god, and not of a man. And forthwith an Angel of the Lord struck him, because he had not given the honour to God: and being eaten up by worms, he gave up the ghost. Josephus relates the same event in the following tenor, Jewish Antiquities, book XIX, chapter VIII, no. 2 Works, volume I, p. 950.: The third year had now passed since he had held the kingdom of all Judaea, when he entered the city of Caesarea, which was formerly called Strato's. There he was giving spectacles in honour of Caesar, since he understood that these festal days had been instituted for his welfare. To this festivity a great number of those who were eminent in honour and dignity among their own people had flocked together from the whole province, ἐπαρχία. On the second day of the spectacles, clad in a garment woven entirely of silver with wonderful workmanship, he came forth into the theatre at early dawn. There the silver, lit up by the first strokes of the sun's rays, shone forth in a wonderful manner, striking something fearful and dreadful into those who fixed their eyes upon it. And soon the flatterers, with cries that were to bring no good even to themselves, acclaimed him from one side and another, calling him a God, and saying "be propitious to us, and although hitherto we have revered you as a man, yet hereafter they would hold him greater than mortal lot." But the king neither rebuked them nor rejected their impious flattery. But a little after, raising his eyes on high, he saw above his head an owl sitting on a certain rope: and at once understood that this was the messenger, ἄγγελον, of evils, which had formerly been the messenger of good things, and soon he grieved to the heart; and pains of the belly came upon him, most violent even from the beginning. Turning his eyes therefore to his friends, "Behold," he said, "I your god am now compelled to depart from life, the necessity of fate at once convicting of falsehood the words wickedly attached to me; and I who was called immortal by you am now hurried away to death. But the condition of fate must be borne, since it has so seemed good to God; for we have not lived badly or meanly, but in that splendour which men judge most blessed." While he was saying these things, the force of the pain meanwhile increasing, he was tormented. He was therefore quickly carried into the palace, and the rumour was at once spread through the city that the king was on the point of leaving life. And at once all the common people with their wives and children, sitting on sackcloth spread out after the custom of their fathers, besought God for the king's welfare, and all places were full of wailing and lamentation. But the king, lying in a lofty upper chamber, when he looked down from on high upon them prostrate on the ground, did not himself refrain from tears. At length, worn out by continual pains of the belly for five days, he ended his life.

[44] from the utmost agreement Let us observe first that our Luke and Josephus agree wonderfully in describing the character of Herod. He was, on the testimony of Josephus, Antiquities book XIX, chapter 7 Works, volume II, p. 948, Havercamp edition., kind towards the men of his own Jewish nation and ready to help them above others in adversities … a most religious observer of the institutions and rites of his country. And these things agree exceedingly well with what Luke has in Acts XII, 1 and following, that Herod, having killed James the brother of John, seeing that it pleased the Jews, proceeded to take up Peter also. Inclined, namely, by zeal for religion and towards the Jews, he formed the plan of persecuting the Christians. In relating Herod's death, St. Luke presents a circumstance omitted by Josephus as too minute, namely that the Tyrians had sent an embassy to entreat the king's anger; by which our writer is shown to have been excellently informed of all the circumstances of his narration. He did not even omit that the Tyrians used courtly art, namely the services of the chamberlain, whose name, Blastus, he also knows, in order to pave their way to the prince: just as the conspirators against Domitian employed Parthenius, who was placed over Caesar's bedchamber, as being intimately familiar with his master, to entice Domitian into the snare prepared. Suetonius, Domitian 17. Nor indeed does this lack its own authority, that it greatly concerned the Tyrians to win Herod over to themselves by every means; for the harbour of Caesarea, recently constructed, as Josephus has it, Antiquities book XV, chapter IX, no. 6 Works, volume I, p. 772., was the only one that afforded a safe anchorage to those sailing to Egypt, and if it were closed great loss would threaten the commerce of the Tyrians.

[45] with Flavius Josephus Yet there seem to be discrepancies between the narration of Luke and that of Josephus, which must be reconciled. For first our saint substitutes the Angel of the Lord for the owl: and indeed Luke in no way says that the minister of the Lord came upon the scene in visible form. For the rest, whether or not Josephus's owl, the messenger of evil, was present at the event matters little; indeed our Luke is to be praised for having ordered the augural bird to be banished from his narration, which no one ought to accept more indulgently than those who condemn every heavenly intervention as superstition. The second discrepancy consists in the kind of disease, inasmuch as Josephus assigns as the cause of death pains of the belly, τῆς κοιλίας ἄλγημα, but Luke worms; but these in no way exclude each other, since the pains of the belly themselves could have been excited by worms: nor should it be omitted that Luke, as a physician, must have known the kind of disease better than Josephus. There is finally a third, and no graver, discrepancy, inasmuch as Luke assigned as the time of the disease the admission of the Tyrian envoys, but Josephus the spectacle. But there is no conflict here: for Herod's oration seems to have looked to the settlement of peace with the Tyrians, and, as Rosenmüller rightly notes on this passage of the Acts, it was among the institutions of the Greeks that

the things they wished to reach the knowledge of as many as possible they set forth at the celebration of the games; which we find in Tacitus, Histories book II, chapter 80, who says: having entered the theatre of the Antiochenes, where it is their custom to deliberate. From all these things it is clear how accurately St. Luke pursued all the parts of his history, even those otherwise indifferent to the deeds of the Apostles.

[46] and from accurate knowledge of geography and archaeology: His accurate skill in writing history is shown by another example, by which it is confirmed that he lacked nothing of the knowledge needed for treating his subject well. Certainly nothing was easier for a man not contemporary with the things narrated by him, as his adversaries suppose, than to stumble in the provincial division of the empire and in the titles of governors: and yet here too St. Luke proves his supreme trustworthiness. The provinces of the Roman world were then divided into senatorial, inasmuch as they were assigned to the senate and people, and imperial, inasmuch as they were assigned to Caesar: over these latter indeed were set magistrates who received the name of procurator, legate or propraetor, while the governors of the senatorial provinces were called proconsuls [Dio Cassius, Roman History, book LII, chapter XIII, volume I, p. 705. Hamburg edition of 1750.]. Let us see, therefore, whether St. Luke always proceeded correctly even in these, as it were, subtleties of history. Two proconsuls meet us in the Acts of the Apostles. The first is Gallio, proconsul, ἆνθύπατος, of Achaia or Greece, Acts XVIII, 12: but Achaia under Tiberius, Tacitus, Annals book I, chapter 76, had been assigned to Caesar: happily, however, we have from Suetonius, Claudius chapter XXV, that Claudius Caesar restored to the senate the provinces of Achaia and Macedonia, which Tiberius had transferred to his own care Cf. Dio Cassius, ibid., book LX, chapter XXIV, volume II, p. 961., and so that proconsuls were set over those provinces. The other proconsul praised in Acts XIII, 7 is Sergius Paulus, governor of Cyprus, over which, as an imperial province, a praetor ought to have presided; but although it was first assigned to Augustus Ibid., book LII, chapter XII, volume 1, p. 704., it was afterwards, because it had no need of arms, restored to the people, and thus proconsuls also began to be sent into that province Ibid., book LIV, chapter IV, volume I, p. 733., an opinion which is also supported by a coin with the image of the emperor Claudius, on the reverse of which stands in the middle the word ΚΥΠΡΙΩΝ, with the circular inscription ΕΠΙ ΚΟΜΙΝΙΟΥ ΠΡΟΚΛΟΥ ΑΝΘΥΠΑΤΟΥ. Finally, in Acts XXVIII, 7 there is shown us Publius, the chief man of the island, πρώτος τῆς νήσου, to which title a coin inscribed to Prudens, a Roman knight, lends its authority, which has: ΠΡΩΤΟΣ ΜΕΛΙΤΑΙΩΝ Essai sur la crédibilité de l'histoire évangélique, p. 184.. We could multiply examples of this kind, but we have given enough to show with how great diligence, ἀκριβεία, our Luke composed his books.

[47] nevertheless Strauss objects the passage Luke II, 1, But although our Evangelist displays such knowledge of things even in the smallest and secondary matters, yet, in the judgment of Strauss, his Gospel contains grave errors, such that all authority seems to be denied him as one rightly informed and contemporary. Which Strauss demonstrates especially by two chronological points. The first is where the time of the Nativity of Christ is treated; which Luke II, 1 describes thus: And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria, etc. Ἐγένετο ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις, ἐξῆλθε δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Ἀυγούστου ἀπογράφεσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην. Αὕτη ἀπογραφὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου. κ. τ. λ. In this text and in what follows Strauss sees capital errors heaped together, which show that St. Luke's narration deserves no credit. For at the very first glance there presents itself the enrolment of the whole world, as made under Augustus, of which, however, no trace is found among the ancients. It is said indeed that this word the whole world, πᾶσα ἡ οἰκουμένη, is to be restricted to Judaea alone: but not even this explanation, such as it is, removes the difficulty, since Christ was born while Herod was living, and so Judaea, not yet subjugated by the Romans, could not undergo a Roman enrolment, ἀπογραφὲν, and especially under Cyrinus, governor of Syria, ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου, who was set over that province at last ten or twelve years after Christ's birth: but even if we were extricated from all these knots, there remains another difficulty to be resolved, namely how a Roman enrolment was made in the Jewish manner, Joseph going up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judaea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; how finally Mary also went up with Joseph, since, even in the Jewish manner, women were not registered in enrolments of this kind.

[48] which, both from the preliminary question So far we have set out the reasons of Strauss. To which, however specious, we may oppose the question which we commonly call preliminary. For if we thought we had found such a heap of errors in a profane writer, we should certainly inquire whether the information we have about the author is such that errors could easily be supposed, and so that it is no wonder that such foul blunders occur in him. But if on the contrary, a diligent investigation having been made, we found that the writer in the rest of his narratives was exceedingly well acquainted with the things he relates, we should conclude that the critic who found such a heap of errors had been false in his judgment: in which case we should have recourse to interpretations or even conjectures to remove the difficulties objected: but if the dispute could not be settled even in that way, we should say nevertheless that Luke could not have erred concerning a fact known to him on every side, such as was the ἀπογραφὴ, the enrolment or registration, of which he makes mention in Acts V, 37, treating of Judas the Galilean. Since these things are so, having seen the proem of the Gospel, and having considered also the examples adduced above, which show the supreme skill of the writer, we must, according to the rules of sound criticism, pronounce that our Luke is such that we should not deny him authority even when certain difficult things, nay things impossible to explain, are thrust upon us: and in that case indeed we should fearlessly pronounce that some documents which illustrate the matter are lacking to us. But we are not driven into such straits.

[49] and from the interpretation And first there meets us the word ἀπογραφὴ, enrolment, which is taken in a twofold sense, for a census or enrolment either of lands only, or of lands and persons together; among the Greeks it sometimes comprised also the proscription of goods, and so their spoliation. In what sense the word is to be taken in this place we shall investigate below. Next comes πᾶσα ἡ οἰκουμένη, the whole world, which our adversaries interpret of the Roman world; but since both the Greeks and the Romans called their own particular region the whole world, there seems nothing to prevent Luke from using the same term to designate Judaea; especially if we interpret οἰκουμένη not as the world but as the land, in which case it could signify the whole land of Judaea: and in this sense the same word is understood by many in Acts XI, 28, when a famine is said to be coming ἐφ᾽ ὅλην τὴν οἰκουμένην, upon the whole world, of which Flavius Josephus seems to treat, Antiquities book XX, chapter V, no. 2 Works, volume I, p. 965., and restricts it κατὰ τὴν Ἰουδαίαν, throughout Judaea. And in very truth the following verse intimates that the scarcity of food would rage chiefly in Judaea, for the disciples, every man according to his ability, purposed to send relief to the brethren who dwelt in Judaea; whence we are given to understand that Antioch, where these disciples lived, was not harassed by so great a dearth of provisions, since it could stretch out a helping hand even to outsiders.

[50] of the individual words, As regards the enrolment, however, inasmuch as it was made by the governor of Syria, Cyrinus, this too is not without its difficulties. For at the time at which Christ is related to have been born, not Cyrinus, that is P. Sulpicius Quirinus, but C. Sentius Saturninus governed Syria with authority: wherefore many judge that St. Luke slipped here, or at least that the name of Cyrinus crept falsely into the text of the Gospel in place of that of Saturninus, by a most ancient error of the copyists, being uniform everywhere. We readily admit that Sentius Saturninus governed the province at the time when Christ was born, namely, according to the reckoning of Sanclemente, from the year 744 to 748 of the founding of the City, Christ being born in the year 747 Sanclemente, De vulgaris aerae emendatione, pp. 343, 346 and 349.. Certainly Tertullian too, of whom more below, ascribes the enrolment to Sentius Saturninus. But although the matter stands so, there is nevertheless no reason for us to accuse St. Luke of falsehood, since we are able to resolve the difficulty objected in various ways. And first of all the Greek text can conveniently be translated in this way: This enrolment was made before Cyrinus was governor of Syria; so that πρώτη is here put for πρότερα, the superlative for the comparative, by no means a new usage Essai sur la crédibilité de l'histoire évangélique, p. 195.: and so ἡγεμονεύοντος … Κυρηνίου, a genitive, is governed by the comparative degree, after the manner of the Greeks. Indeed, the version of the Seventy shows us plainly that chronological notes are constructed in such a form, where in Jeremiah XXIX, 2, in the Greek XXXVI, 2, is read: Ὕστερον ἐξελθόντος Ἰεχονίου τοῦ βασιλέως, which words the Vulgate renders: After Jechonias the king was gone forth. Wherefore the literal version of our text would be: This enrolment is earlier than Cyrinus the governor of Syria, who made the other enrolment afterwards.

[51] and of the things But if such an interpretation pleases some less, there is another at hand. There exists, namely, a marble of Tivoli, edited by Sanclemente, erected after the death of Augustus in honour of a certain leading man, who is said to have governed Syria and Phoenicia a second time Sanclemente, p. 414.: and Sanclemente shows that this man is none other than Cyrinus or Quirinus, and so that he administered the governorship of Syria twice; first indeed with extraordinary authority for making the enrolment, on which occasion he is cited by our Luke, the ordinary governor Sentius Saturninus being omitted; and Quirinus was set over Syria a second time with ordinary authority about ten years after his first governorship Ibid., p. 424 and following.. Whoever admits an interpretation or conjecture of this kind will confess that our Luke is a most accurate writer, and omitted nothing of the ἀκριβείας which he promised, inasmuch as he searched out things even the most minute and foreign to his purpose, and consequently by investigations of this kind the authority of the Evangelist will not only not be diminished but will be confirmed.

[52] which create the difficulty, But in order to extricate ourselves from these perplexities, we ought not to rely so on profane writers as to repudiate domestic testimonies. For Justin Martyr, in his first Apology, which was formerly called the second, brings forward the census held at the birth of Christ as a notorious fact, which has this Works, p. 58. Sylburg edition of 1593.: There is a certain village Bethlehem in the region of the Jews … where Christ Jesus was born, as you can also learn from the enrolments made under Cyrenius, your first

procurator in Judaea. And Tertullian professes the same more openly, confidently appealing to the archives of the empire, book IV against Marcion, chapter VII Works, p. 839. Plantin edition of 1584., where, treating of the reality of the flesh, and so of the nativity of Christ, he says: How could He (Christ) have been admitted into the synagogue, one so sudden, so unknown, of whom no one was yet certain as to his tribe, his people, his house, and finally his enrolment in the census of Augustus, which the Roman archives keep as the most faithful witness of the Lord's Nativity? And chapter XIX Ibid., p. 854.: But it is also established that censuses were then held in Judaea under Augustus through Sentius Saturninus, in which they could have inquired into His (Christ's) lineage. Finally, in the book On the Flesh of Christ, chapter II Ibid., p. 649.: He hates delays who was suddenly bringing Christ down from heaven. Away with them, he says, the ever-troublesome censuses of Caesar, and the narrow inns, and the squalid swaddling-clothes and the hard defences. From these it certainly becomes manifest that the ancients, who had ancient documents at hand, were persuaded that some census was held at the time of Christ's Nativity; indeed Tertullian names Sentius Saturninus as the enroller, either because he then governed Syria with ordinary authority, or because he was conducting the census in Judaea under Quirinus: this at least is established, that Tertullian, in designating Saturninus as enroller, drew his information not so much from St. Luke as from other documents.

[53] is most fully Yet these graver difficulties having been discussed, others remain. For Strauss objects against our Luke that he saw nothing in the whole world besides Judaea, and therefore called this enrolment the first, although censuses had already often been held among the Romans before those times. But here it must be admitted that Strauss abuses the rules of sound criticism. For what if it were said: in the year 1846, in the month of July, bishops were preconized for the whole world: this preconization was the first made by the Roman Pontiff Pius IX: would it be permissible to deduce from such forms of speaking that no preconization had been made before this year? But, says Strauss, if there was an enrolment, it would certainly have been made in the Roman manner, by no means in the Jewish. Certainly here one might turn back upon him the reply so often thrust forward by himself, namely, whence he learned this. But let it be: the difficulty objected would have some force if there were question of an enrolment made in some Roman province, which, as those skilled in antiquities teach us Cf. Pitiscus, Lexicon Antiquitatum Romanarum, under Provincia., was not only tributary to the Roman people, but, stripped also of its own laws, used the Roman provincial law. Such certainly was not the condition of Judaea at the birth of Christ, which, still standing under Herod, followed its ancestral laws, and so, when a census or enrolment occurred, was divided according to its ancient tribes and families. But Strauss infers that it was also foreign to the custom of the Jews that Mary, the betrothed, should be registered; for it sufficed that Joseph should be enrolled. Some interpreters Rosenmüller, Scholia in Novum Testamentum, on this place, volume II, p. 48. say that Mary also went away to Bethlehem for this reason, because she was the sole heiress of her family, cf. Numbers chapter XXXVI: and although this cannot be shown by a certain argument, it suffices nevertheless to blunt the objection, since the text cannot be convicted of falsehood. For the rest, that the Romans enrolled wives and children too among foreign nations is established from a marble tablet inscribed to M. Plautius Silvanus, on which it is said Sanclemente, p. 415. that he brought over, or transcribed, more than a hundred thousand from among the number of the Transdanubians, with their wives and children and their chiefs or kings, to pay tributes. Moesia was a Cisdanubian province by Mount Haemus, which today comprises Serbia and Bulgaria: and in order that Silvanus might bring over the Transdanubian peoples to pay tributes, he must have held a census, in which, as is clear, not only men but also wives and children were enrolled. These things amply suffice to show that the journey of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, was not useless.

[54] justified: Nor yet is this the end of the difficulties, since a graver one still remains; namely, how, while Herod was reigning in Judaea, Augustus, the Roman emperor, could have ordered a census or enrolment. This kind of argument would have force if there were question of kings in the true sense of the name, subject to no mortal, in whose kingdom consequently no one could exercise any command. But such was not the condition of the Herodian sceptre. Already before Augustus Judaea paid tribute to the Romans, as Appian clearly affirms, On the Civil Wars book V, chapter VII Appian, History, p. 516. Paris edition of 1840.: then Herod, who had followed the party of Antony and after the victory at Actium feared for himself, went to Augustus at Rhodes, and, soothing him with a skilful speech, again obtained the royal diadem, so that, says Josephus, Antiquities book XV, chapter VI, no. 7 Works, volume I, p. 758., beyond his hope he saw the kingdom again, afresh, more firmly established for him, both by the gift of Caesar and by the decree of the Roman senate. Παρ᾽ ἐλπιδας ὁρῶν ἀυτῷ πάλιν ἐξ ὑπαρχῆς βεβαιοτέραν τὴν βασιλείαν δόσει Καίσαρος και δόγματι Ρωμαίων. And from these it becomes manifest that Herod was entirely bound to Caesar, both on account of the tribute to be paid to the Romans and on account of his royal dignity confirmed or restored. Wherefore no one can rightly doubt that Caesar ordered an enrolment in Judaea, especially at the time when, with a mind more hostile to Herod, he was directing threats against him on account of the Arabian war. For Josephus relates that Augustus in anger said of Herod, Antiquities book XVI, chapter IX, no. 3 Ibid., p. 812., that he had formerly held him among his friends, but would now hold him as a subject; ὅτι πάλαι χρώμενος ἀυτῷ φίλῳ, νῦν ὑπηκόῳ χρήσεται. Finally, we have a document of an enrolment made under Augustus in Tacitus, Annals book I, chapter IX [Cf. Dio Cassius, book LVI, chapter XXXIII, Works, volume II, p. 832. Suetonius, Augustus, chapters XXVIII and CI.], when Tiberius, on entering upon the empire, ordered a register to be brought forward and read aloud. In it the public resources were contained; how many citizens and allies were under arms; how many fleets, kingdoms, provinces, tributes or taxes, and necessary expenses and largesses: all of which Augustus had written down with his own hand. It is clear, therefore, that Augustus had not only the provinces of the empire but also the allies and the kingdoms enrolled most accurately. This last accusation therefore also collapses, and by the very scrutiny of the difficulty the diligence, ἀκριβείαν, of our Luke in writing shines forth.

[55] in like manner the text There is also another text in which Strauss represents our saint as having slipped and as ignorant of the things he describes. St. Luke, namely, writes in his Gospel III, 1: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and Philip his brother tetrarch of Ituraea and the country of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilina, under the high priests Annas and Caiphas, etc. Ἐν ἔτει δὲ πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας Τιβερίου Καισαρος, ἡγεμονεύοντος Ποντίου Πιλάτου τῆς Ἰουδαίας, καὶ τετραρχοῦντος τῆς Γαλιλαίας Ἠρώδου, Φιλίππου δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ τετραρχοῦντος τῆς Ἰτυραίας καὶ Τραχονίτιδος χώρας, καὶ Λυσανίου τῆς Ἀβιληνῆς τετραρχοῦντος, ἐπὶ ἀρχιερέως Ἄννα καὶ Καἳάφα κ. τ. λ. Critics commonly use this text to show St. Luke's accurate manner of writing. Abilene, for example, is a region of small importance, situated by Lebanon and scarcely known to writers; yet here our Luke expresses the name of its prince and the time of his rule: whence the writer is shown to have been exceedingly well informed about things even the most minute. Nevertheless Strauss reckons this a fable: because Antony, at the instigation of Cleopatra, had killed Lysanias, lord of Abilene, in the year 33 before Christ, Josephus, Antiquities book XV, chapter IV, no. 1 Works, volume I, p. 749., whose possessions Zenodorus afterwards administered, by the title, as it seems, of lessee, ibid., chapter X, no. 1 Ibid., p. 774.; after whose death some contend that that region was given to Herod: but among the regions given on that occasion, which the same Josephus enumerates, Abila does not occur, ibid., no. 3 Ibid., p. 775., and so it was either joined to Syria, or Caesar reserved it to himself. We see indeed that afterwards under Caligula, Agrippa I was established by that emperor as king of the tetrarchy which had been Philip's, the tetrarchy of Lysanias also being added, δωρησάμενος αὐτῳ καὶ τὴν Λυσανίου τετραρχίαν, Antiquities book XVIII, chapter VI, no. 10 Ibid., p. 897., from which words it is deduced with sufficient probability that the principality of Lysanias was then in the power of Caesar. That tetrarchy therefore seems to have been vacant for a good long interval.

[56] Luke III, 1 is explained. Wherefore, in order to untie this knot, critics have said that St. Luke does not treat of that Lysanias who was killed by Antony, but of another who succeeded him. This indeed is a conjecture which, if no historical document supports it, also has nothing that contradicts known records, which certainly suffices for us to vindicate St. Luke from every stain of error. Indeed, probability too supports the conjecture. For it is well known that in families, especially royal ones, the same name is propagated to descendants, of which the Herodian family itself affords a striking example. If, therefore, Lysanias, killed by Antony, left an heir of his own name, will it seem strange to anyone that Augustus, whose interest it was, restored to their former rank those injured by his rival Antony? The silence of Josephus would have some force if he had composed his history according to our custom: for in setting kings and princes in order we distinguish them individually by numbers, which certainly contributes much to historical clarity, so that we should distinguish Lysanias I from his later namesake with no trouble. But the ancients did not proceed by such a method; they gave names indeed, but for the most part distinguished by no marks: thus Josephus treats of various men who bore the name of Herod, but unless one reads attentively and also recalls to memory what has already been read, he will often bring together into one and the same man what pertains to different namesakes, from which great confusion will arise. And these are the things we had to say concerning the authenticity of the books of St. Luke, since difficulties of this kind are not found in the commonly available books: but whoever desires to know more, let him go to the books which by their purpose treat of the genuineness and authority of the sacred books. For the rest, what has been said so far sufficiently indicates that we have treated the books of St. Luke as though merely historical, but by this manner of arguing we wish nothing to be taken away from their authority and the reverence due to them, inasmuch as they are θεοπνεύστοι.

* many others read: and of Bithynia

§ IV. The preachings of St. Luke through various places, and of the images painted by his hand.

St. Luke in Germany, After the passion of St. Paul (for no reason persuades us that St. Luke left his master before the Apostle's death, since he is constantly called by the ancients the inseparable companion of Paul), St. Luke himself also continued the ministry of preaching the Gospel. A testimony of this preaching is related by St. Epiphanius, Heresy

LI, which is that of the Alogi, chapter XI Works, volume I, p. 433. Paris edition of 1622: To him (Luke), then, the office of preaching the Gospel was entrusted: and he first discharged it in Dalmatia, Gaul, Italy and Macedonia: as Paul testifies in his epistles concerning some of his companions: "Crescens," he says, "in Gaul." For it is not to be read in Galatia, as has undeservedly pleased some, but in Gaul. No documents more ancient than this concerning St. Luke's preaching meet us. As regards first the Dalmatian preaching, our Daniele Farlati says Illyricum Sacrum, volume I, p. 259. that it is confirmed by a certain extraordinary inclination and devotion towards this most holy Evangelist, implanted and almost inborn in the minds of the Dalmatians, who, having received by report and tradition that their homeland was imprinted with his footsteps and cultivated by the precepts of the Gospel, repay to him the gratitude due, as far as they ought and are able, with the highest veneration and a mindful heart. Indeed, that our saint also made an excursion from Dalmatia into Noricum is held, on the testimony of Hansiz Germania Sacra, volume I, p. 15., by the tradition of Lorch, a monument of which, says the said writer, are verses written in ancient characters on the tower of the town of Enns, commonly Ens in Upper Austria, whose author indeed is unknown, as is their age, which perhaps does not go beyond the times of the Lutherans, who seized that church in the time of the emperor Maximilian II: yet their authority avails thus far, that it is clear there was a constant tradition concerning the two holy Evangelists, or founders of the Church of Lorch: and they run thus:

You behold a small city, and one of no great name, which yet the eternal God cares for and loves. This is what remains of Lauriacum: on these shores Mark, together with Luke, professed the doctrine of Christ.

[58] Italy Of the Italian preaching no trace, so far as I know, survives among the Churches of Italy, although, if we give any credit to the German records, since he is handed down as the companion of St. Mark in Noricum, it would not be absurd to conjecture that he also had some care of the Church of Aquileia, of which Mark is said to be the founder De Rubeis, Monumenta Ecclesiae Aquileiensis, p. 1.. But the Macedonian or Achaean apostolate of St. Luke is confirmed by St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration XXXIII, otherwise XXV Works, volume I, p. 611. Paris edition of 1778., saying: Let Judaea indeed be Peter's, namely because he himself was a Jew; what has Paul in common with the Gentiles, Luke with Achaia, Andrew with Epirus, John with Ephesus, Thomas with India, Mark with Italy. Gregory, therefore, was persuaded that Achaia was the chief theatre of St. Luke's preaching. In the Life to be edited below, no. 9, it is also said that he preached the Gospel in Egypt, especially in the Thebaid, and indeed that he was set by the Spirit as pontiff and pastor of the lower Thebaid. But one may suspect that the Egyptian mission flows from a confusion of names and cities. For there are two Thebes, namely that of Egypt and that of Boeotia, which adjoins Achaia; and although Metaphrastes relates the Egyptian mission, he nevertheless speaks of Thebes in such a way that we must understand the Boeotian: for, assigning the holy Evangelist to the Thebaid, he nevertheless surnames the chief city of the region, Thebes, ἑπτάπυλους, of the seven gates, which fits uniquely the Boeotian Thebes, while the Egyptian Thebes was called ἑκατόμπυλοι, of the hundred gates Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, volume II, column 207.. From a confusion of this kind it must be judged that the opinion of an Egyptian mission of St. Luke flowed Cf. Tillemont, Mémoires ecclésiastiques, volume II, p. 538..

[59] and in Gaul he is said to have preached. There now remains the question, skilfully debated on both sides, namely of the preaching of St. Luke in Gaul. We see in the text of St. Epiphanius adduced above that he spoke deliberately of Gaul, since he says that the Pauline text II Timothy IV, 10 should also be corrected according to this view. Petavius, in his Animadversions on this passage of Epiphanius, says Epiphanius, Works, volume II, p. 90.: That Luke preached in Gaul no one, so far as I know, has recorded. And I do not know whether he means Cisalpine Gaul, through which he made his way into Dalmatia and Greece. This modest opinion was not approved by Pierre de Marca in a letter addressed to Henri de Valois, editor of the Ecclesiastical History, and prefixed to the History of Eusebius, in which he wholly defends the view of those who say that SS. Luke and Philip illuminated the Gauls by their preachings, and that disciples of the Apostles founded the principal Churches of the Gauls. But the view of Pierre de Marca was attacked by Jean de Launoy, a ready patron of rash opinion, in his Treatise entitled: Examination of the letter on the time at which the faith of Christ was first received in the Gauls Launoy, Works, volume II, part I, p. 72.. Pierre de Marca had said that Augustus, having abolished the name of Gaul throughout Italy, bounded the Gauls by the barrier of the Alps, and so that by this name no part of Italy, formerly Cisalpine Gaul, is meant: but Launoy shows that even after the age of Augustus the name of Cisalpine Gaul persisted among writers Launoy, p. 78.. This indeed I will willingly concede: but I can hardly bring myself to believe that the name of Gaul, whenever it is set down simply and absolutely, can be understood of some part either of Italy or of Greece, however much it be shown that the name was formerly common to other nations also, issuing from the Transalpine Gauls. And this kind of argument is pressed all the more strongly here because St. Epiphanius in this same place says that St. Luke also preached in Italy. For the rest, concerning the origins of Christianity in the region of the Gauls we have treated fully enough above in the Commentary on St. Florentius, which the kind reader may consult.

[60] That the same man was a painter, We now digress to a more laborious question, namely of the art of painting which St. Luke is reported at one time to have practised, inasmuch as various images are exhibited under his name, especially of the Virgin Mother of God, painted, as it is said, by his hands. Anyone who is even a little acquainted with Christian antiquities will certainly readily concede that the use of sacred images is most ancient and reaches to the very cradle of Christianity, as is made sufficiently manifest by the paintings which were found, and are found daily, in the most ancient Roman catacombs. And although, after the Nestorian heresy arose and was overthrown, the practice of painting the most blessed Virgin holding her Son in her arms or on her lap became more frequent, yet images of this kind older than that age are found; Boldetti exhibits one impressed in glass, and notes that it was found sprinkled with blood and laid up in the sepulchre of a Martyr, wherefore its making must be referred to times earlier than Constantine Boldetti, Osservazioni sopra i Cimiteri, volume I, p. 202.. These things I think should be observed for this reason, that it may be shown that no prejudice is created either to the use of sacred images or to the cult of the Virgin Mother of God, to whichever side each may at length incline his opinion. Now let us approach the question itself. The reasons for each view are set out most clearly by the abbot Giovanni Crisostomo Trombelli of Bologna in his Dissertations on the cult of the Saints.

[61] most recent writers deny, Most of the more recent critics Tillemont, Mémoires, volume II, p. 137. deny that St. Luke was ever a painter, and so pronounce that the images distinguished by his name must be adjudged to someone else. In confirmation of their view they bring forward roughly the following arguments. For our saint was either a Hebrew or a Gentile. If he was a Hebrew by race, it is known that painting and the kindred arts were banished from the borders of the Hebrews by a severe prohibition: by what means, then, could Luke, ignorant of painting, have depicted any image? But if we call him a Gentile, another difficulty springs up, since, having embraced the Christian religion some time after the death of Christ, at the preaching of Paul, he could have known Mary only when she was sixty years old, whom nevertheless he would have shown in his painting in the flower of youth. But to an argument of this kind it can indeed rightly be answered: St. Luke does not seem to have been a Hebrew by race, as we have shown above at no. 9. But if we concede that he was a Gentile, he certainly knew the Virgin Mother of God only when she was sixty: but this does not prevent a painter from being able to represent her in flourishing youth, especially the Virgin, free from those emotions of the mind which are wont to alter the human face; wherefore it was not so difficult for a painter to sprinkle something youthful upon features already growing old: nor on that account is it necessary to devise anything portentous: there sometimes occur men upon whom the form of old age is imprinted very late indeed.

[62] both on account of the authority of St. Augustine The second argument of the critics is sought from St. Augustine, book VIII On the Trinity, no. 7 Works, volume VIII, column 870. Paris edition of 1694., when he says: Nor do we know the face of the Virgin Mary, of whom He (Christ), untouched by man and not corrupted in the very birth, was wonderfully born. Nor have we seen with what lineaments of limbs Lazarus was, nor Bethany, nor the sepulchre and that stone which He ordered to be removed when He raised him; nor the new tomb hewn in the rock, whence He Himself rose, nor the mount of Olives, whence He ascended into heaven: nor do we at all know, whoever of us have not seen these things, whether they are as we think them; nay rather we judge it more probable that they are not so… We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin, who was called Mary. But whether that was the face of Mary which came to mind when we speak or recall these things, we neither know at all nor believe. Here therefore, with faith unharmed, it is permitted to say, perhaps she had such a face, perhaps not such: but that perhaps Christ was born of a Virgin, no one will say with Christian faith unharmed. This text the patrons of the view asserting that St. Luke was a painter explain in various ways: the obvious and true sense, however, seems to me to be that St. Augustine or his hearers had not seen the face of the Mother of God, without his asserting on that account that her likeness did not exist: certainly, in affirming the same of the new tomb hewn in the rock, whence Christ rose, he by no means denies that it exists, but only that he had ever seen it. Which may similarly be said of the image of the Virgin Mary, at that time indeed not so well known.

[63] and because the Virgin Mary carries her Son The critics also seek support in this, that in the said paintings the Mother of God is shown carrying her Son in her hands or on her lap, which before the council of Ephesus and the overthrow of the Nestorian heresy had hardly been customary: but after that council she began to be painted thus, so that by the images themselves the Christian people might be taught and confirmed in the orthodox faith. It is true indeed that images of the Virgin carrying her Son were not so frequent before as after Nestorius, who denied that Mary was the Mother of God: yet images of this kind older than Nestorius have been found, not only when some mystery of Christ was represented, for example the adoration of the Magi, in which the Blessed Mary is seen on an adorned seat presenting her Son to be adored Aringhi, Roma Subterranea, volume I, p. 347, volume II, pp. 44 and 272.; but also where the Blessed Virgin herself is principally offered to the veneration of the faithful. Already above at no. 57 we treated of the painted glass which

shows Mary carrying her Son, and must be referred to pre-Constantinian times. Father Giuseppe Marchi also shows a similar image on the frontispiece of his excellent Work on the Monuments of the primitive Christian arts [Monumenti delle arti cristiane primitive nella metropoli del cristianesimo. Cf. Gaume, Les trois Rome, volume IV, p. 219.], nor do I doubt that he found several likenesses of this kind; would that the excellent book, interrupted by the iniquity of the times, might some day come forth complete in all its parts! Another likeness of the Mother of God is cited in Aringhi Roma Subterranea, volume II, p. 165., found in the cemetery of Pope Julius on the Via Flaminia, whose age, however, is not clear on every side, since in Anastasius the Librarian it is read that this Pontiff made three cemeteries, and one indeed on the Via Flaminia; but Emmanuel Schelstrate observes that Pope Julius may be understood to have made cemeteries in two ways, either because he ordered the ancient cemeteries of the Martyrs, discovered in his times, to be opened to the Christian faithful, or because he commanded underground places, or sand-pit crypts, to be adapted to the use of Christian burial. In either way Julius can be said to have made cemeteries. But in which way he made them is not ascertained by me Bianchini, Vitae Romanorum Pontificum, volume III, p. 6. Rome edition of 1728.. For the rest, even if there were only the one example of such an image that is brought forward, it would suffice to show that the argument is not rightly pressed on this head; for what was done once could have been done more often in such matters. This, however, must be conceded, that when the Nestorian heresy had spread, images of the Mother of God carrying her Son were multiplied, namely according to the custom of the Catholic Church, which inculcates her doctrine upon her faithful by rites and signs all the more solicitously the more gravely it is assailed: as may be seen in the Holy Eucharist, whose cult has been celebrated both more frequently and more solemnly from the time when various heresies came forth.

[64] finally from the silence These reasons having been discussed, a graver argument arises, namely the silence of the ancient writers, such that no one recorded that St. Luke either fashioned any image of the Blessed Virgin or even was a painter. And indeed no author is to be found older than Theodore the Lector, who flourished in the sixth century and is said to have spoken of an image depicted by St. Luke, which itself, however, the critics call in doubt; since, when the heresy of the Iconoclasts emerged in the 8th century, neither St. John Damascene nor the Fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea, while gathering from every side the old records of the orthodox faith that proved the ancient doctrine, made mention of any image painted by St. Luke, which they would surely not have omitted if the writing of Theodore the Lector had then been known. This kind of argument, sought from the silence of authors, is commonly called negative: but for it to bind powerfully two conditions are required, namely that all, or at least most, of the authors who wrote before the tradition became established should be known, and then that they could hardly have composed their writings without mention of that history which afterwards grew up by tradition Honoré de Sainte-Marie, Sur l'usage de la Critique, volume I, p. 265.. Assuredly those two conditions of the negative argument do not occur in the present controversy: for it is notorious that the books of many writers have perished by the injury of time, nor is it sufficiently established from the writings preserved so far that the authors could not have passed over the fact of which we are treating.

[65] of the ancients Against the latter assertion, however, exception might perhaps be taken from the silence of the Fathers who wrote in the cause of the Iconoclasts; for, as has been said, it greatly concerned them to show not only that the use of sacred images was coeval with Christianity itself, but also that the art of painting was practised by such a man as St. Luke, whose praise was in the Gospel through all the Churches, and who had adhered as an inseparable companion to St. Paul. The exception seems no light one: if, however, the fragment in which an image of the Mother of God painted by St. Luke and sent from Jerusalem to Constantinople is related is truly, as will be examined below, by Theodore the Lector, a writer of the 6th century, the exception collapses, as being destroyed by a contrary and earlier fact. For it will not be permissible to say that the opinion concerning St. Luke's art of painting first arose after the Second Council of Nicaea, and so after the eighth century was already growing old. Which moreover is shown from the Oration against Constantine Caballinus (Copronymus), chapter VI John Damascene, Works, volume I, p. 618. Le Quien edition, Venice 1748., in which it is asserted that St. Luke painted the Mother of God: and although this oration is denied to the Damascene, it was nevertheless written before the Second Council of Nicaea, both because it is directed against Copronymus, who reigned from 741 to 775, and because it cites for the cult of holy Images the Quinisext Council, no mention being made of Nicaea. But how it could have happened that no one in a controversy so skilfully conducted employed this kind of peremptory argument we leave to the investigation of those who attribute too much weight to the silence of Authors, since by the fragment of Theodore and the Oration against Constantine the force of the negative argument is broken, even when such silence or omission seems explicable by no reason.

[66] which is refuted from the testimony We must therefore come to the testimony of Theodore the Lector (for it is the first in time in which St. Luke is asserted to have been the painter of an image of the Mother of God). He flourished, on the testimony of Johann Albert Fabricius [Bibliotheca Graeca, volume VII, p. 435. Hamburg edition of 1801, and Ceillier, Auteurs ecclésiastiques, volume XVI, p. 186.], under the emperors Justin and Justinian, that is, about the middle of the sixth century; Aubert Le Mire indeed reports that he lived about the year one thousand three hundred and twenty Bibliotheca ecclesiastica, p. 259. Antwerp edition.; but this seems wholly to be rejected, since St. John Damascene already treats of him at the end of Oration III On Images Works, volume I, pp. 380 and 386., and Fabricius, Dom Ceillier and others tie Theodore to the sixth century. Further, he relates this, book I, no. 1 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, volume III, p. 563. Cambridge edition of 1720.: Eudocia (the empress, residing at Jerusalem) sent from Jerusalem to Constantinople, to Pulcheria, the image of the Mother of Christ which Luke the Apostle had painted. If Theodore's reading is admitted, the opinion becomes entirely probable that already under St. Pulcheria, and consequently about the middle of the fifth century, it had become widely current that St. Luke painted some image of the Mother of God, and so the view of those who affirm that our Evangelist was a painter is to be held as sufficiently ancient; in which case indeed the negative argument would lose its chief force. Wherefore the adherents of the contrary opinion take various exceptions against the genuineness of Theodore's text. And first they object that the only guarantee of the lost works of Theodore is Nicephorus Callistus, a schismatic man, in whose Ecclesiastical History not a few false things occur.

[67] of Theodore the Lector But that way of resolving the difficulty seems to prove too much and to tend to the detriment of historical truth. For how many fragments of authors, both profane and ecclesiastical, are preserved among more recent writers, which nevertheless we do not repudiate on this account, that their complete works have not come down to us? Unless, therefore, Nicephorus is convicted of having cited authors and their writings wrongly, or of having corrupted them, there is no reason in this matter for us to deny him credit; especially since in a narration of this kind the controversies agitated between the Latin and the Greek Church were in no way touched. And that the History of Theodore, or its excerpts, is said to be ἀπὸ φωνῆς Νικηφόρου Καλλίστου τοῦ Ξανθαπούλου, that is, at the dictation of Nicephorus Bibliotheca Graeca, volume VII, p. 436., does not hurt its authenticity: for there is nowhere any trace that Nicephorus brought forth supposititious works under a false name. Nor does it help to say that Theodore composed his History from Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, and so that, since nothing similar about St. Luke occurs in those writers, this is falsely attributed to him: for he wrote another Ecclesiastical History composed by his own effort Place cited., fragments of which, or, as they are commonly called, collectanea, have come down to us, where the text cited above is also to be found.

[68] not rashly to be set aside, Since these things are so, saving a better judgment, we judge that the text of Theodore is to be retained. Further, the image of the Mother of God sent to Constantinople by Eudoxia was placed by St. Pulcheria in the church of St. Mary built by her, which, since there were various churches at Constantinople under the name of St. Mary, was surnamed Hodegetria, ἀπὸ τῶν Ὁδηγῶν. For Nicephorus Callistus relates this, book XIV of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter II Volume II, p. 440. Fronton du Duc edition, Paris 1630.: Likewise the church which is renowned by the surname τῶν Ὁδηγῶν, that is, the guide of the way, in which Pulcheria caused to be kept her divine image, which Luke the Apostle left painted on a panel, and the sacred distaff and the swaddling-bands of the Saviour Himself, as a treasure, which the Augusta Eudocia sent to her when she went to Jerusalem. And book XV, chapter XIV Ibid., p. 607.: The second church (built by St. Pulcheria) is that of the ὁδηγῶν, the guides of the way, where she dedicated the image of the Mother of the Word sent from Antioch, which the divine Apostle Luke painted with his own hands, she being still alive and seeing the panel itself and so imparting grace to that likeness of herself. This image was first in the place which is called the Tribunal, where the miracles which are still wrought now were performed. Further, she arranged that on the third day of every week a vigil and a supplication should likewise be performed in that church; which is observed to this very day.

[69] by whose help the later tradition, Wherefore what Codinus relates is to be rejected De aedificiis Constantinopolitanis, p. 80. Bonn edition of 1843.: that the church of the Mother of God, surnamed of the Guide of the way, was built by Michael Methystes, whom Basil the Macedonian slew. Formerly it was an oratory of a great many blind men, who, washing themselves in the spring of that place, had recovered their sight; for which reason the church itself also was surnamed of the guide of the way, ὁδήγος. But greater credit is to be given to Theodore the Lector, an ancient writer, saying that this church was built by St. Pulcheria, than to Codinus, a more recent author, unless perhaps it be said that the church, falling into ruin from age, was restored by Michael Methystes. Charles Du Cange also records Constantinopolis Christiana, p. 92. that an image of the Mother of God is kept in Sicily, surnamed from Itria, because it is a copy taken from the image which was kept at Constantinople in the church τῆς Ὁδηγητρίας, whence it also kept the name, though in a truncated word: and he adds that the custom has grown up in Sicily that very many, on the third weekday, just as St. Pulcheria had instituted, perform some act of devotion, either by abstaining from meat and milk foods, or by visiting two churches of the Mother of God, in which, by old custom, the Most Holy Sacrament is exposed to be publicly adored with a great concourse of the people.

[70] even admitting that some images Further, there is no need for us to show at more length that the art of a painter was attributed to St. Luke, for this tradition had prevailed in the middle ages among all, both Greeks and Latins. Yet not on that account are all the images which are venerated under the name of Luke his

that we maintain they were painted by his one hand: nor indeed, says Du Cange Place cited, have I any doubt that the other images of the Mother of God which are said to have been painted by St. Luke, and are venerated both at Rome and elsewhere, are copies of that which was kept in the church τῶν Ὁδηγῶν. By this caution indeed the difficulty arising from the multiplicity of the images is met, namely that, granted St. Luke was a painter, he would nevertheless not have had leisure, amid his journeys and apostolic labours, to spend so long a labour in painting: for copies taken from a prototype are easily, in the lapse of time, held to be the prototypes themselves, as we learn by daily experience in panels and statues far more recent. Let no one think that what has been said so far aims at this, as though we wished to hand down here as an undoubted fact that St. Luke both practised the art of painting and represented an image of the Mother of God. For we wished only to show that the silence of the ancients, or the negative argument, is not to be exaggerated; since only rarely, and under the conditions indicated at no. 64, does it have so much force as to demonstrate some tradition to be false and fabulous. At the same time, however, we admit that the negative argument has this effect, that it renders an existing tradition uncertain, unless it can be supported from elsewhere.

[71] it supports that they were wrongly attributed to St. Luke. From what has been said so far it nevertheless follows that the interpretation of those is to be rejected who would have the common opinion about St. Luke the painter to have flowed from some confusion with another of the same name, namely a certain Florentine monk who in the ninth century painted some images of the Virgin Mother of God. For by such an interpretation it is not explained in what way at last the tradition was derived not only to the whole Latin Church but also to the Greek: for in that very century the fatal schism began and grew, which thereafter prevented any tradition from being carried over from one Church to the other. The testimony of Theodore the Lector, far more ancient, also stands against the view of Luke the monk painter. On this head, therefore, the common tradition cannot be impugned: if some painter, Luke by name, fashioned the celebrated images of the Mother of God, some more ancient namesake must be found. As to the manner of painting (they commonly call it the style), I am not such as to be able to put forward a certain judgment about it, even if I had before me the various images about which controversy could arise, which I lack. Against the image of the Mother of God at Bologna, that it should not be held to have been painted by the hand of St. Luke the Evangelist, it is objected that on it is distinctly read: The work of Luke the chancellor. Whether this is true I have not been able to investigate: if, however, it is, this one thing will follow, namely that the image of the Mother of God at Bologna is not to be attributed to St. Luke, without its being permissible to deduce from such a denial that our saint was not a painter, and so left no paintings behind him Cf. Biographie universelle, under Luca Santo. Gretser, Works, volume XV, p. 179..

§ V. Of the death of St. Luke and its circumstances.

The time of St. Luke's death is established as far as may be: Concerning the death of St. Luke various uncertain things occur, which must here be elucidated to some extent. For his age, the manner of his death and the place are disputed: on each we shall bring forward what the more ancient writers have handed down. And first, as regards his age, St. Jerome is commonly held to have written: He lived eighty-four years, having no wife: these words indeed, as if Jerome's, are read in the Roman Breviary at the 18th day of October, but, as Dom Martianay observes in his edition of Jerome St. Jerome, Works, volume IV, part II, column 104., no trace of these words exists in the manuscript codices, nor do I know whence these rotten fabrications flowed. All agree that St. Luke died an old man, but they differ in assigning the number of years. The gloss interpolated into the Hieronymian Catalogue seems to have flowed from the Greeks; for most of the Latins make him seventy. The Menaea assign eighty years, ὀγδοήκοντα ἐτῶν γενόμενος, ἐν είρήνῃ ἀνεπαὑσατο Month of October, p. 110. Venice edition of 1843., which age Nicephorus too assigns to St. Luke, book III, chapter XLII Nicephorus, Ecclesiastical History, volume I, p. 210. Paris edition of 1630.. But the Latins, as I have noted, ascribe to the saint a life of seventy years, yet with some discrepancy. For Bede (and no older witness meets us) says in his Martyrology Acta Sanctorum, volume II of March, p. XXXV.: Never having either wife or children, he died at seventy-four years of age in Bithynia. Rabanus copied Bede Canisius, Thesaurus Monumentorum, volume II, part II, p. 344.. But Ado enlarged Bede's eulogy, except that he reduces the age by one year, which Usuard also did; so that these report that St. Luke died at seventy-three years of age. We are easily enough inclined to the opinion of the Latins, since they enjoy the prerogative of antiquity. This, however, must be observed, that some copies of Usuard have the age of eighty-three years, but without suitable authority, as our Du Sollier has it at this day; wherefore it is to be wondered at that this too deceived Tillemont Mémoires ecclésiastiques, volume II, p. 537.. Whence, as we noted at the head of this Commentary, we judge that our saint died between the year of Christ 75 and 100.

[73] various authorities are brought forward Nor is there less diversity of opinion among the ancients in indicating the manner of his death. The Menaea cited above, when they say that our saint rested in peace, ἐν εἰρήνῃ ὰνεπαύσατο, intimate that he closed his life by a natural death, which the Life to be edited below confirms at no. 10, saying: Being now full of days (whose number, however, it does not give), he returns in peace to the God of peace, the dust indeed being left to the dust, but the soul commended into the hands of Him who had given it. But over testimonies of this kind the authority of St. Gregory Nazianzen ought to prevail, Oration IV, otherwise III, no. 69, who openly numbers our Luke among the Martyrs Works, volume I, p. 108. Paris edition of 1778.: Did you not fear (Julian) the victims slain for Christ? nor dread the great champions, that John, Peter, Paul, James, Stephen, Luke, Andrew, Thecla, those who also after them exposed themselves to dangers for the truth?… Of whom even the mere drops of blood and slight tokens of the passion can do the same as the bodies. Nevertheless Elias, metropolitan of Crete, scholiast of St. Gregory in the 8th century Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, volume VIII, p. 430., denies that St. Luke died a Martyr St. Gregory Nazianzen, Works, volume II, p. 322. Paris edition of 1630., and shows this by the example of John, whom he says is the Evangelist, not the prophet. But to one inspecting the text of Gregory it is not clearly evident of which one he speaks; he says indeed that John, Ιωάννην ἐκεῖνον. But it is not sufficiently perceived from the preceding words which of the two is designated; further, even if we concede that he spoke of the Evangelist, the difficulty is not removed; since John the Evangelist was thrown into boiling oil, in which punishment, had he not been preserved by divine help, he would have suffered death, a true Martyr, and so could be called a victim slain for Christ. For the rest, the whole context of Nazianzen shows that he is treating of Martyrs, among whom he reckons St. Luke.

[74] of the holy Fathers Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia, who died about the beginning of the 5th century, without any ambiguity pronounces St. Luke a Martyr in his oration on the day of the dedication of the basilica of the assembly of the Saints. For he enumerates the Relics with which the said church is made illustrious, namely of SS. John the Baptist, Andrew, Thomas, and finally, in the fourth place, Luke [Collectio veterum Patrum Brixianae Ecclesiae, p. 336 and following. Brescia edition of 1738.], and continues thus: Of these four we have the blessed Relics, who, preaching the kingdom of God and His justice, were slain by the unbelieving and the wicked, and are shown by the powers of their works to live always to God. John is related to have been consummated in the city of Sebaste of the province of Palestine, Thomas among the Indians, Andrew and Luke at Patras, a city of Achaia. Jean Mabillon, in the notes to the most ancient Calendar of the Church of Carthage, in which our saint is announced under the 3rd day before the Ides (the 13th) of October in these words Vetera Analecta, p. 166. Paris edition of 1723.: On the 3rd day before the Ides of October, of Saint Luke, Evangelist and Martyr, subjoins this: Two things here do not agree with the others, namely the day and the name of Martyr: since Luke is usually noted on the 15th day before the Kalends of November, nor does the name of Martyr commonly obtain. Although the oration of Gregory Nazianzen against Julian intimates it, and Paulinus and Gaudentius say it openly.

[75] concerning the manner of death But the testimony of Paulinus is not so clear as Mabillon thinks, since its value depends on punctuation, scarcely used by the ancients. For the saint speaks of the Relics kept in the basilica of Fundi, describing which, in letter XXXII, otherwise XXII, he says St. Paulinus, Works, volume I, Letters, p. 210. Paris edition of 1685.:

Hic Pater Andreas et magno nomine Lucas Martyr et illustris sanguine Nazarius. Here is Father Andrew, and Luke of great name, / Martyr and illustrious in blood, Nazarius.

On which verses the commentator who illustrated the said edition notes the following Ibid., volume II, p. 75.: Baronius, on the Roman Martyrology at the 18th of October, reads together Lucas Martyr, and thinks that Paulinus was of the opinion that he believed Luke to have suffered martyrdom, which our Servius also follows in his Apparatus Evangelicus, who adds that Paulinus also calls Luke a Martyr in Natalis IX. But neither passage plainly proves that Luke underwent martyrdom. For in the former passage Martyr can be referred to Nazarius, as we have printed from the old editions: in the latter, there is no mention of martyrdom in the verses which concern Luke. Unless you would have him a Martyr because there (verse 424 Ibid., volume I, Poems, p. 153.) he is joined in among the Martyrs: but he could also be called a Martyr because he suffered much for the name of Christ, as the Roman Martyrology has it, in the way that Paulinus also calls Felix of Nola a Martyr in the same Natalis (verses 152 and 309 Ibid., 146 and 150.). And these last words cause what is brought forward from St. Paulinus to seem to me of no moment for the present question; however at last they are punctuated, they will effect nothing, since St. Paulinus does not interpret the word Martyr strictly.

[76] by martyrdom; Nevertheless, even leaving aside the authority of St. Paulinus, it is sufficiently clear that the opinion flourished among the ancients that St. Luke fell a Martyr, while the contrary view has found its patrons only among the more recent; unless we wish to reckon also among the ancients those who, because they made no mention of a violent death, are supposed to have thought that the saint died a natural death. But such a manner of reasoning degenerates into a negative argument, whose strength is not great when contrary things are related among the ancients. I think it more probable, therefore, led by these testimonies, that St. Luke died a Martyr, without holding on that account as true in every respect the history of his passion as it is related by Nicephorus Callistus, book II, chapter XLIII Nicephorus, Ecclesiastical History, volume I, p. 210., in these words: When he had been with Paul at Rome, he returned into Greece,

and there enlightened very many with the light of divine doctrine and knowledge: and at length, hanged by the despisers of the divine word on a fruitful olive tree, because there was no supply of dry wood from which a cross might be made, he commended his spirit to God. In Mill's edition of the Greek New Testament, in the preface to the Gospel according to Luke, a text of St. Hippolytus is cited from manuscripts of the Bodleian library Mill, Greek New Testament, p. 120., which says that Mark, converted to the Lord through Peter, and Luke through Paul, were deemed worthy of the evangelical preaching or writing, εὐαγγελίζεσθαι καταξιοῦνται, for which they also underwent martyrdom, ὑπὲρ οὗ καὶ ἐμαρτύρησαν, the former consumed by fire, πυρποληθεὶς, the latter crucified on an olive tree, σταυρωθεὶς ἐπ᾽ ἐλαίας. The authority of St. Hippolytus would certainly add great weight to our opinion if there were sufficient certainty about his writings; but their genuineness is doubtful to many; moreover here too he makes St. Luke one of the seventy disciples of Christ, which we refuted above at no. 10, and St. Mark consummating his martyrdom by fire, of which the ancients are silent, except that they relate that the heathen, in order to destroy his Relics, wished to burn the body, but, a storm rushing upon them, were dispersed Acta Sanctorum, volume III of April, p. 348, no. 9..

[77] whether this was at Thebes in Boeotia, The manner of his death having been inquired into as far as may be, it remains for us to investigate the place of his death. Concerning this question there are various opinions. In the Life to be edited below we read that he made an end of living at Thebes ἑπταπύλοις, with the seven gates; and, as we have already observed above at no. 58, the biographer evidently confuses the Egyptian Thebes with the Boeotian, nor does any of the ancients, so far as I know, assign Egypt to our saint, but all confine his preaching within Europe and Greece. And indeed Nicephorus says that St. Luke was buried at Thebes in Boeotia, and so died there Ecclesiastical History, volume I, p. 210.; but Alban Butler, in the compendium of the Life under the 18th day of October, represents this assertion as an error, reckoning that it arose from a confusion of Luke of Stiris, who died in Boeotia, with our saint. Which I judge to stray from the truth; for Sterium or Stirium, as is clear from the Life of the Stiriote, written by his disciple and edited by our predecessors on the 7th day of February, is situated in the province of Chrysiaria, as the said biographer makes manifest Acta Sanctorum, volume II of February, p. 97, no. 69., when he speaks of a certain monk, Cosmas by name, who, setting out for Italy, when he had come to the parts of Chrysiaria, thought to refresh his body there with a little rest. To the man as he slept a certain divine dream was shown, which, as he told it to the inhabitants of the place, he heard that he must halt his journey in that place. Understanding, therefore, that he was destined to serve St. Luke, he is led by the inhabitants to the place where the holy man's burial was, which he saw to be kept unbecomingly and neglectfully, wherefore he cleansed and adorned it.

[78] Luke of Stiris being confused with the Evangelist, From these things it is clear that Stirium is to be found in the province of Chrysiaria. And Chrysaria or Chrysis is the same region as the province of Phocis, as the Life plainly teaches Ibid., p. 84, no. 3., the forefathers of the Divine Luke migrating to the province of Phocis or Chrysis. And there is situated the town of Stiris, Στίρις Cellarius, Orbis antiquus, volume I, p. 915. Leipzig edition of 1773., which, however, whether it is the same as our Stirium, Στήριον, I will not plainly define. Let it suffice us to have shown that the Stirium of St. Luke the monk is to be sought not in Boeotia but in Phocis: and so that the reason brought forward by Alban Butler is not valid in every respect. Indeed, that Stirium is a fair distance from Thebes, the capital of Boeotia, is drawn from another passage of the same Life, chapter X Acta Sanctorum, volume II of February, p. 95, no. 59., in which the saint, summoned to Thebes by Crinitus, governor of Attica, reproaches him that by sending for him he had been the cause of so many labours. For if Stirium had lain very near Thebes, there would have been no place for such a complaint. Finally, since that Luke is noted to have died about the year 946, a confusion of two namesakes nearly nine centuries apart from each other is supposed with difficulty. The opinion which lays down that St. Luke the Evangelist died at Thebes does not, therefore, seem to be rejected for this reason, but rather because it borrows no authority from antiquity. The same must be judged of those who, with the said Alban Butler, say that the holy Evangelist met his last day at Elea, for which view St. Hippolytus is cited, which seems to flow from the text at no. 75, in which is read σταυρωθεὶς ἐπ᾽ ἐλαίας, fixed to an olive tree, as though ἐλαία here signified a city, in which case the preposition ἐπὶ would be used rather badly.

[79] whether he was buried in Bithynia or in Achaia is examined The classic Martyrologies of Usuard and Ado, and the Roman, announce that St. Luke died in Bithynia full of the Holy Spirit. Which indeed, in the absence of more ancient documents, would have to be accepted, since they are weighty witnesses who for the most part followed the sources themselves. But we are prevented from descending to that opinion both by the statements of more ancient writers and by the place of the translation, the body having been carried to Constantinople not from Bithynia but from Achaia. And as regards the more ancient writers, St. Gregory Nazianzen, when he designates Patras, a city of Achaia, as the proper place of St. Luke's preaching, intimates that he died there where he had laboured most at spreading the Gospel: for, refuting the objection made against him that he, a stranger and foreigner, had been imposed on the see of Constantinople, he brings forward among other reasons this also, that the Apostles and their disciples, if you except Peter, who preached to the Jews, were sent to foreign nations, Oration XXXIII, otherwise XXV, chapter XI Works, volume I, p. 611. Paris edition of 1778.: Let Judaea indeed be Peter's. What has Paul in common with the Gentiles, Luke with Achaia, Andrew with Epirus, John with Ephesus, Thomas with India, Mark with Italy? etc.; which view of Gregory is excellently confirmed by St. Gaudentius of Brescia, already cited, in the sermon on the Dedication of the Basilica of the Saints Veteres Patres Ecclesiae Brixianae, p. 339.: John (the Baptist), he says, is related to have been consummated in the city of Sebaste of the province of Palestine, Thomas among the Indians, Andrew and Luke at Patras, a city of Achaia. Since moreover it is certain that St. Andrew both suffered and was buried in Achaia, it can rightly be concluded that our holy Evangelist found the same arena of labours and the same seat of burial. To this is added also that Bithynia is situated on the other shore of the Bosphorus, namely in Asia. Wherefore it could be explained by almost no reason how the body of the holy Evangelist would have been brought to Constantinople by such roundabout ways. Led by these reasons I should judge that the place of St. Luke's burial is to be established in Achaia rather than in Bithynia. Since, further, the things handed down concerning the age, manner of death and place of St. Luke are so ambiguous, it is sufficiently understood that it cannot be defined in what year of the common era he closed his last day: wherefore we have assigned the first century broadly as the time of his death: although, the chronology of the Life of St. Paul being inspected, it could be determined with some probability within the years of Christ 75 and 100.

§ VI. Of the various translations of the body of St. Luke.

The body of St. Luke first to Constantinople That the body of St. Luke was first translated to Constantinople, together with St. Andrew, we have most ancient and contemporary testimonies. In Scaliger's edition of Eusebius of Caesarea this translation is indeed noted Scaliger, Thesaurus temporum, part I. Amsterdam edition of 1658.: but if we consult the more accurate edition of the Eusebian Chronicle, which Angelo Mai, now Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, brought out at Rome in 1833, the genuine chronicle of Eusebius ends in the twentieth year of Constantine the Great, since it concludes with these words: The Vicennalia of Constantine were held at Nicomedia, and the following year celebrated at Rome Mai, Scriptorum Veterum Collectio, volume VIII, p. 400.. But the translation of our saint, by the agreement of all, is placed in the twentieth year of Constantius: accordingly recourse must be had to some later Chronologer. To this translation St. Jerome lends his authority in the Catalogue of Writers, saying Works, volume IV, part II, column 104.: St. Luke was buried at Constantinople, to which city in the twentieth year of Constantius his bones were translated with the Relics of Andrew the Apostle: he has similar things also in the Book against Vigilantius Ibid., column 282 and following.: with all of which the Hieronymian Chronicle itself agrees, which notes the following Mai, Scriptorum Veterum, volume VIII, p. 403.: Constantius having entered Rome, the bones of Andrew the Apostle and of Luke the Evangelist were received by the people of Constantinople with wonderful favour. Prosper of Aquitaine has the same things finally in his Chronicle, tying the translation to the 9th consulship of Constantius and the 2nd of Julian Caesar Canisius, Thesaurus Monumentorum, volume I, p. 292..

[81] translated, The Roman Martyrology, however, under the 9th day of May comprises in one eulogy the translation of SS. Andrew, Luke and Timothy, for which announcement Usuard without doubt showed the way; but, as our Du Sollier observes at the said day, less happily. For it is established that the translation of those three Apostles is not well connected, worse referred to the same time, worst of all to the same day, and especially to this 9th day of May. And first, the bones of these saints were not translated to Constantinople in one year; since in the Chronicle, both the Hieronymian and the Prosperian, the transfer of St. Timothy preceded the translation of the others by one year. It must next be noted that the translation of the saints by no means fell on the 9th day of May. For the consular Fasti, commonly attributed to Idatius, bishop of Aquae Flaviae (Chaves in Lusitania) and an excellent chronologer of the 5th century [Nicolás Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus, volume I, pp. 256–260, and Idatius, Chronicle, Preface, pp. 13 and 41. Brussels edition of 1845.], assign the 3rd day of March to the translation of SS. Andrew and Luke, in these words De Aguirre, Concilia Hispaniae, volume III, p. 70.: Constantius for the 9th time and Julian Caesar for the 2nd (that is, the year of Christ 357, concurring with the 20th of Constantius). In this consulship the Relics of the holy Apostles Andrew and Luke entered Constantinople on the 5th day before the Nones of March, and Constantius Augustus entered Rome on the 4th day before the Kalends of May. Which two things, namely the entry of Constantius into Rome and the translation of the saints, are noted under the same year in the Hieronymian Chronicle cited above. But the day of the translation of St. Timothy is referred by the same Idatian Fasti, in the place cited, to the preceding year and to the Kalends of June. In which matter we have another suitable witness agreeing, Theodore the Lector, writing in his Excerpts, book II, chapter LXI [Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, volume III, p. 583. Cambridge edition of 1720.]: In the times of Constantius the Relics of the holy Apostles were brought to Constantinople, of Timothy on the 8th day before the Kalends of July (as regards the day Theodore differs from Idatius: but this we have, that it is different from the following translation); but of Andrew

and Luke on the 5th day before the Nones of March; and they were deposited in the great Church of the Holy Apostles dedicated by him.

[82] and then under Justinian it was found: Further, in order to find something true in what is noted at the 9th day of May, it does not help to have recourse to a certain translation made under the emperor Justinian, of which Procopius treats, book I On the Buildings of Justinian, chapter IV [Corpus Historiae Byzantinae, Procopius, volume III, p. 189 and following. Bonn edition of 1838.]. For the old basilica dedicated to all the Apostles by Constantine having been demolished, Justinian set about building a new one: and the workmen, says Procopius (the pavement having been dug up completely, lest anything badly put together should remain), saw three wooden coffins, which had been left there neglected, and which signified by their inscriptions that the bodies of the Apostles Andrew, Luke and Timothy were in them, which the emperor himself and all the Christians beheld with the greatest delight. These having been honoured with pomp and festal celebration, and the customary honours duly paid, they committed the closed coffins again to the earth; and, lest the place should lack a mark of note for memory and frequent visiting, they piously dedicated it to the bodies of the Apostles. This translation indeed could have been commemorated with an annual rite, although the Calendar of Constantinople edited and illustrated by Stefano Morcelli is silent about this one too; but Theophanes in his Chronographia sets this pomp under the year 542, on the third weekday, the 28th day of July Ibid., Theophanes, Chronographia, p. 352.: some fault has crept in by the carelessness of a copyist, for either the translation was made on the second weekday, or it must be put off to the 29th day of the month, that year being marked with the dominical letter E. But I do not know why the said Morcelli transferred this whole business to the year of Christ 550 Calendarium Constantinopolitanum, volume I, p. 197.: for by no reason known to me am I able to resolve this difficulty.

[83] but the year of that translation It is sufficiently agreed that the translation of SS. Andrew and Luke was made in the twentieth year of the emperor Constantius, as St. Jerome clearly testifies in his Catalogue, above at no. 77: but it is not so agreed concerning the year of Christ to which the twentieth year of Constantius is to be tied. The difficulty is created by the Hieronymian Chronicle, more accurately edited by his Eminence Mai, which joins the twentieth year of Constantius with the common era 362, if indeed Constantius, on the death of his father Constantine the Great, was named Augustus in the year of Christ 342. The question depends on the year of Constantine's death, which most have established as 337 [Baronius and Pagi at this year. Petavius, De doctrina temporum, volume II, p. 413. Antwerp edition of 1713. Rationarium temporum, p. 904. Leiden edition of 1710. L'Art de vérifier les dates.], while the said edition of the Chronicle puts it off to the fifth year, or 342. But various things persuade us that the more common opinion is to be held. And first, Idatius in his consular Fasti notes the death of Constantine under the consulship of Felicianus and Titianus, which are assigned to the year of Christ 337, in these words De Aguirre, Concilia Hispaniae, volume III, p. 70.: In this consulship Constantine Augustus was taken to the heavenly kingdoms on the 11th day before the Kalends of June, and in the same year three Augusti were proclaimed, Constantine and Constantius and Constans, on the 5th day before the Ides of September.

[84] although the new edition of Eusebius protests, But if what Eusebius and the Paschal or Alexandrian Chronicle adduce is true, that Constantine died on the very day of Pentecost [Corpus Historiae Byzantinae, Chronicon Paschale, volume I, p. 533. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, book IV, chapter LXIV.], the year 337 is excellently confirmed by such a report: for in that year, Easter falling on the 3rd day of April, Pentecost coincided with the 11th day before the Kalends of June, or the 22nd of May. Credit is lent to the more common opinion by what Baronius brings forward at this year, § III, concerning laws passed under the same consuls in the name of the new emperors. "There exist," he says, "several examples of these, as in the Theodosian Code under the title On the Annona and Tributes, where the fourth constitution is read as given by Constantius on the 8th day before the Ides of December at Thessalonica, Felicianus and Titianus being consuls. But also under the title On the sale of pledges there is a rescript of Constantius Augustus to Egnatius Faustinus, given under the same consuls on the day before the Ides of December. And again in the same Code, under the title On Honorary Codicils, under the consuls of the following year, Ursus and Polemius, there exists a constitution of Constantius given on the 17th day before the Kalends of June to Asconius, vicar of Africa. Which laws indeed, like others passed by Constantine, would have had to be inscribed with the title of Constantine, if he had survived and prolonged his life into the following years; but because he had departed from this life, they are found noted with the name of his son Constantius Augustus." Finally, we are forbidden to depart from the ancient and more common opinion also by the celebrated solar eclipse of the 28th day of August 360, which, as Petavius notes Rationarium, p. 994. Cf. the same, De doctrina temporum, book XI, chapter XLV. from Ammianus book XX, preceded the death of Constantius by one year; while another solar eclipse, of the 6th day of June 346, falls in the tenth year of Constantius.

[85] is to be joined with the year of Christ 357, However great, therefore, the merit of the Eusebian and Hieronymian Chronicle recently edited, the reasons brought forward are nevertheless of such weight that I do not think one should depart from the common opinion which refers the death of Constantine to the year of Christ 337. If, further, this year is to be retained, it now follows of its own accord that the twentieth year of Constantius concurs partly with the years 356 and 357. But since we have from Idatius, above at no. 81, that the Relics of SS. Andrew and Luke were translated to Constantinople on the 5th day before the Nones of March, this must be referred to the year of Christ 357, in which the twentieth year of Constantius was running until the 5th day before the Ides, or the 9th day of September. And to this year, moreover, marked by the 9th consulship of Constantius Augustus and the 2nd of Julian Caesar, agree Prosper of Aquitaine Canisius, Thesaurus Monumentorum, volume I, p. 292. and the Paschal Chronicle Volume I, p. 542., which also has that in the month Dystrus, which corresponds to the Latin month March, on the 3rd day, the Relics of SS. Andrew and Luke were brought to Constantinople, and this in the 20th year of Constantius, when the same emperor celebrated his Vicennalia at Rome with great display. Baronius sets the translation of the often-mentioned saints under the year 358, § XXV, but relying on no suitable reason, wherefore he is also corrected by Pagi at the year 356, § XIII, and the year 357, § I.

[86] when the body was brought from Achaia: We promised above at no. 79 that we would confirm the place of St. Luke's death from the place whence his sacred body was translated to Constantinople. Most editions of Jerome read that the body of the holy Evangelist was carried over from Achaia, but that this crept wrongly into the genuine text, since it is absent from most and better codices, is noted by the Maurist editor of the Works of St. Jerome, Jean Martianay St. Jerome, Works, volume IV, part II, column 104.. But where Jerome is silent, his contemporary Philostorgius, although a Eunomian heretic Ceillier, Histoire des Auteurs ecclésiastiques, volume VIII, p. 659., in his Ecclesiastical History, preserved in epitome by Photius, book III, chapter II Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, volume III, p. 486., openly teaches that Luke the Evangelist was translated from Achaia to Constantinople. Fiorentini indeed, in his edition of the Hieronymian Martyrology under the 18th day of October, conjectures from Philostorgius's manner of speaking that the days of the translation of Andrew and of Luke were different: But this can by no means be taken from his words, which sound thus: He (Philostorgius) writes that he (Constantius) translated the Relics of Andrew the Apostle from Achaia into the church which he himself had completed, which is called that of the Apostles: and that beside that church he placed his father's tomb: moreover, that Luke the Evangelist was translated by him from the same Achaia into the aforesaid church: finally, that Timothy the Apostle was carried from the city of Ionia, Ephesus, into that celebrated and venerable basilica by order of the same Constantius. From this text, I say, Fiorentini argues that the translation of SS. Andrew and Luke was celebrated on different days, especially because the 18th day of October too is marked in his Hieronymian copy with the Translation of St. Luke. But these things are not of such weight that we must turn aside from what Jerome, Prosper and Idatius teach us, as we showed above at no. 80.

[87] an objection taken from the Arianism of Constantius is met. From what has been said so far it is sufficiently clear that the Relics of our saint were brought from Achaia to the royal city, and at the same time the scruple of Cardinal Baronius in the Notes to the Roman Martyrology under the 9th day of May is removed. For when that most learned man had related the words of St. Jerome against Vigilantius, in which he ironically says that the emperor who had translated the holy Relics of Andrew and Luke to Constantinople was sacrilegious Jerome, Works, volume IV, part II, column 282 and following., he subjoins: Which words indeed, it is ascertained, cannot fit Constantius, whom all know to have been an Arian. Yet although some copies have the name of Constantine substituted for Constantius, all nevertheless agree that the translation of the saints is to be ascribed to this emperor; both because copies of better note write Constantius, and because the ancient Chronologers agree in this also. But that Constantius favoured the Arians does not harm our view, since among their errors that one does not occur by which the honour due to the Saints is denied. Indeed St. Gregory Nazianzen too, in Oration IV (otherwise III), after he had praised in §3 St. Gregory Nazianzen, Works, volume I, p. 78. Paris edition of 1778. the faith of Constantius, though afterwards shamefully deceived, reproaches the emperor Julian that he not only does not venerate but even despises the Relics of the Saints, §§69 and 70 Ibid., p. 188.. From all of which it is clearly proved that Constantius retained the exterior form of Religion, to which certainly the cult of the Saints also belongs, although in the gravest dogmas of the faith he erred foully and was hostile to most holy men Ibid., p. 76..

[88] Concerning the body of St. Luke come from the East several churches contend: Further, how the body of St. Luke came from Constantinople, or from the East, into the West, no record, so far as I know, teaches us. Meanwhile three churches chiefly claim these Relics for themselves. The first is the monastery of St. Saviour of Goleto, also called of St. William from the burial of that holy man, founder of the Benedictine Congregation of Montevergine, and situated in the Principato Ulteriore of the kingdom of Naples, in the diocese of Nusco, of which our Papebroch treats at length in the Appendix to the Life of St. William under the 25th day of June, § II [Acta Sanctorum, volume V of June, p. 138. Cf. Hélyot, Histoire des Ordres religieux, volume VI, p. 121.]. The history of this translation, preserved in the papers of the Bollandian Museum Manuscripts of the royal library at Brussels, no. 8913., we relate from the Williamite Breviary.

When the body of St. Luke had been carried from Constantinople to Brindisi, it was kept there for a long time by a pious man of that city, Nicholas Campanino. He, turning over in his mind by what means he might procure due honour for the sacred Relics, remained in doubt; when his only son, a young physician, harassed by a dreadful fever, began to invoke the help of St. Luke. Then the holy Evangelist appeared to both in sleep, promising health if they would carry his body to the church of Goleto to be kept. And in fact, health having been restored to the son, Nicholas summons some brethren of Goleto, who carry the sacred body from Brindisi to the church of St. Saviour. And with a great accompaniment of the people it was laid up in the often-mentioned church.

[89] first that of Goleto in the kingdom of Naples; There is the history, excerpted from the Breviary of the Williamites under the 2nd day of May. Many things hinder us from giving our credence to this narration. First indeed, no note of time is added; nothing is had either concerning the year, or concerning the bishop either of Brindisi or of Nusco, or the abbot of Goleto, under whom these deeds, surely momentous, are related to have been done: and yet circumstances of time would be of great use for establishing some truth of the history. There is another thing too which weakens credit, namely that the genuineness of the sacred body must rest on the sole testimony of Nicholas Campanino, an unknown man, since neither are witnesses alleged of the miracle wrought on the son, nor is an account given by which so great a treasure fell into the hands of a private man. Certainly when such Relics were brought from the parts of the East, especially of the more celebrated Saints, such as St. Luke was, they were placed in the principal churches, or at least there was great rivalry among peoples, each to claim so great a patron for himself. But here nothing similar occurs; Nicholas receives the sacred body, keeps it a long time, turns over in his mind, no counsellor at least who is named having been called in, by what means he may procure veneration for the sacred body. These things, I confess, are so strange that they surpass my belief, unless suitable documents persuade otherwise. Finally, that very Breviary in which the history is contained is said to have been printed at Venice in the year 1555: I will not say that the narration then first arose, but, ancient records being lacking, it is permissible to hold the translation as doubtful until we are taught more certain things. It is read indeed in Felice Renda, a writer of the 16th century verging on its end, that an arm of St. Luke was translated from Goleto to Montevergine Acta Sanctorum, volume V of June, p. 114., but that testimony is too recent to create belief, and moreover by no means demonstrates the possession of the whole body or of its greater part.

[90] then the Venetian church of the Friars Minor; The second church which glories in possessing the body of St. Luke is the monastery of St. Job of the Friars Minor of the Observance at Venice. We present the course of events from Wadding's Annals of the Minors [Wadding, Annales Minorum, volume XIII, p. 271 and following. Rome edition of 1735. Cf. Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae Venetae, volume XXII, p. 91.]: The Turks this year (1463) having made themselves masters far and wide of the kingdom of Bosnia … rage against all Christians. Among others the Franciscans, driven from the most strongly fortified citadel of Jajce, … by a happy boldness, while the city was being plundered, removed the body of St. Luke the Evangelist, which had been translated thither from Constantinople, and, having carried it to Venice, gave it to Christopher Moro, a most pious prince, on this condition, that they should be permitted thenceforth to dwell freely and under the patronage of the republic in the houses and dwellings which they had hitherto possessed in the Venetian dominion under the name and rule of the province of Bosnia, and that the most serene prince should add other convents of the province of Dalmatia for gathering the Bosnian brethren driven from their homes. The pious prince, having most honourably received the religious bearers of the sacred pledge, caused the Relics to be carried from the ship into the church of St. Nicholas, built on the Lido, which he intended to transfer with solemn ceremony to the church of St. Bernardine, otherwise called of St. Job, wonderfully adorned by him for this end, and to lay up in a precious reliquary.

[91] finally the Paduan church of St. Justina: Meanwhile a rumour having been spread that the true body of St. Luke had been kept for three hundred years at Padua in the monastery of St. Justina of the Order of St. Benedict, doubts began to be raised about this one recently brought. In haste the abbot, monks and some citizens of Padua flew to Venice, to defend their noble deposit and to weaken the opposing claim. In a most grave matter, lest he should seem to attempt anything rashly or to decide against the city of Padua, the prince sent illustrious men to inspect the Relics of the monks diligently and examine prudently on what warrant they rested. There were no records or monuments of the monastery which would repel every doubt and extort certain belief. Bernardo Giustiniani, a Venetian, ambassador in the City, was accordingly ordered to seek the judgment of Pope Pius (II). There was then at Venice as pontifical legate the Cardinal of Nicaea (Bessarion), to whom Pope Pius committed the cause to be examined and judgment to be given. He, through the archbishop of Siponto, Niccolò Perotti, famous for learning and skill in affairs, the order of judgment being observed, both parties heard, and the reasons, put forward more than once, discussed, at length pronounced sentence: namely Ibid., p. 277. that the bones existing in the church of St. Justina of Padua, which have hitherto been held, considered and venerated as the bones of St. Luke the Evangelist, were not and are not the bones of the same St. Luke the Evangelist, nor ought they to be considered, held or venerated as such: but that the body lately brought from the kingdom of Bosnia and now existing in the church of St. Nicholas on the Venetian Lido, and hitherto held, considered and venerated as the body of the said Evangelist, is to be considered, held and venerated for such and as such, and ought to be considered, held, reputed and venerated, and we ourselves consider, hold, repute and venerate it for such and as such, and we will and decree that it be considered, held, reputed and venerated.

[92] between the two latter a controversy arises: The Apostolic Letters by which Pope Pius II committed the examination and judgment of the controversy to Cardinal Bessarion, and which are in the judicial instrument whose principal words we have related above, were given under the ring of the fisherman at Tivoli on the second-last day of August 1463: and the sentence that ensued was pronounced on the 9th day of December of the same year. The reasons of the Venetians for claiming the body of St. Luke, at least the principal ones, are found in the Vatican codex marked no. 392, fol. 59 Manuscripts of the royal library at Brussels, no. 8913.. And first they allege an instrument written in the Greek language and dated in the year 6753 of the era, as I suppose, of Constantinople, which concurs with our common year 1245: and in the said instrument it is related that the body of St. Luke was bought at Constantinople by Athanasius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and carried first to Jerusalem, then by two monks to Acre, which is the present Ptolemais. There, however, three merchants met the relic-bearers, Nicholas Cataflonis, John Marconisa and Canatius Xanthus, who, a price of 700 Saracen bezants having been paid, carried the sacred body away to Thebes in Boeotia.

[93] the reasons of the Venetians The instrument adduced certainly has this merit, that it does not run against known history and chronology; for at that time the see of Jerusalem was occupied by Athanasius III, slain by the Agarenes, as the instrument has it Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, volume III, column 506.. But exception can deservedly be taken against it, that it is a private confession, nay of men seeking gain, namely of those who sold the body itself, by whom consequently one ought not to stand. Then the twofold sale of the sacred body, and its carrying away to Thebes by merchants, is little likely, who rather seem bound to have carried off so great a treasure to their own homes. And all the more so, since in this very year 1245 the danger threatening the empire of Constantinople, and so Greece, was graver, as the words of Innocent IV in the First Council of Lyons testify: for the Pontiff, in order to avert the most imminent ruin, prescribes in the 14th constitution Labbe, volume XI of the Councils, column 651. an extreme remedy, namely that half of all revenues, as well of dignities and personates as of ecclesiastical prebends and other ecclesiastical benefices, should be paid by all who do not reside personally for at least six months, those only excepted who are in the service of the Roman Pontiff, of the cardinals or of their own prelates, or are engaged in the schools or in the business of the church, or are signed with the cross. But who would believe that, matters being placed in such peril, those merchants, who had acquired the treasure for themselves at a huge price, would leave it in the midst of dangers?

[94] The Venetians also brought forward in proof both the Bull of indulgences of Pius II and various letters written from Bosnia in the year 1463: are weighed: but these can teach nothing certain in matters which preceded by two full centuries, unless they related more ancient records, which, however, they do not do. In roughly this way the Paduans discussed the documents brought forward by the Venetians. It remains, therefore, for us to bring the reasons of the Paduans themselves to the balance. Our predecessors used a contemporary instrument kept in the Ambrosian library, a copy of which, mutilated towards the end, we have still preserved in our archives, together with another manuscript taken from the library of St. Justina, whose readings we prefer, because it proceeds more simply. Before, however, we proceed further, it will be worth while to observe that Pietro de' Natali, bishop of Equilio, a writer of the 14th century, in his Catalogue of the Saints, book IX, chapter LXXX, holds it as a fable that the citizens of Padua possessed the body of St. Luke. This, however, is certain, that the same already in the year 1174 gloried in having the said body laid up among them, as the manuscript praised above makes credible, which has a contemporary anonymous author. For he shows this at the beginning of his narration, speaking in this way Cf. Acta Sanctorum, volume III of October, p. 810, no. 86.: But most recently, in the year one thousand one hundred and seventy-four, almost all the dwellings of noble Padua, and also the movable goods of that possession, are known to have fallen into ashes by a plague of fire. So also at the end of the same: But the sound of the narration, although it is little adorned by the arrangement of words, is nevertheless made clear by the proof of truth. For I myself, at the time of the finding of the Evangelist, very often directing my steps to his fragrant chest, looked upon, unworthy though I was, the herald of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection, and also eagerly considered the signs of the wonders which God had then raised up there.

[95] yet an older tradition Our predecessors relate in the Commentary on St. Justina praised above Place cited, no. 86 and following that in the year of Christ 1174 by far the greatest part of the city of Padua was destroyed by fire, but returned after a short time to its former splendour and dignity: at the same time there suddenly came upon nobles and commoners alike a desire for the holy Relics which, formerly buried behind the church of St. Justina for fear of the barbarians, a faint report still retained. In order, therefore, to satisfy the wishes of the people, the magistracy of Padua on the Kalends of March 1177 chose sixty men to be present at the search for the sacred Relics. Accordingly Gerardo Pomedella, the bishop, about the beginning of Lent (Ash Wednesday falling this year on the 9th day of March), together with Dominic, abbot of St. Justina, and very many clerics and laymen, began the search for the Relics. And first indeed two chests, the one

of lead, the other of marble, in which the remains of the Holy Innocents were contained, they dug out. Rejoicing so at the sight of these, says the anonymous writer Place cited, no. 87., while they were giving themselves to the search for the divine treasure, they then found the sepulchre of Blessed Justina in the very centre of the cemetery under the altar.

[96] favours the Paduans, Our anonymous writer then continues in these words: Digging, therefore, they found very many bodies of Saints, declared by individual inscriptions, among which that of the Blessed Apostle Matthias was the chief, before they enjoyed the sight of Blessed Luke's burial, and having found them they placed them with the honours of devotion. The Relics of the Saints having thus been placed, happily reaching by digging a wonderful structure of stones, and breaking through its joints with all their strength, they found a marble chest lying hidden, in which they found a leaden chest, none suspecting it. For on it there appeared, designed on the outside with handsome workmanship, three faces of calves, and also the figure of a double cross. The skilled, inspecting it diligently, remembered that the fourth of the Evangelists bears figuratively the form of a calf, whence they said that it represented St. Luke. But the faithful, by no means believing because the inscription lay hidden, veiled the leaden chest with a pall, and besought with prayers the clemency of the divine majesty, that it would deign to remove the waverings from their hearts and reveal to its servants by a clear mark of signification. And the benignity of the Godhead, satisfying their devout prayers, having considered their doubt, revealed by a vision, as the time of night came on, the hiding-place of the inscription to the minds of very many of the faithful.

[97] whose possession already from the year 1127 As the dawn grew light, those to whom the description of the inscription had then been revealed by the supreme gift swiftly directed their steps to Dominic, abbot of that church, and at the same time to the guarded Relics *, and happily made known to them the vision. Moved, therefore, by their persuasion over three days, a very large religious gathering of clerics and laymen together having assembled, they sought the hiding-place of the inscription with the greatest reverence. When they opened the leaden chest, so great an odour then came forth from the body of most blessed Luke as is wont to come forth from the burning of spices; on the corner joint of the chest was written thus: Saint Luke the Evangelist: so under a veil, that unless the grace of the divine gift had revealed it to the minds of the faithful, it would by no means have been believed that any mark of description lay hidden there. The glory of so great a treasure having been known, they copied in a wax seal the clear inscription of the writing and the handsome faces of the calves, and sent it to their bishop, who had gone to Ferrara to the Apostolic Lord (namely Pope Alexander III). For in those times Alexander, the supreme Pontiff, had gone to Ferrara, and the bishop of Padua, having received the seal, presented it to the most holy Alexander and made known the course of the finding.

[98] had at least begun: Meanwhile the canons of the greater church of Padua, and the clerics of the city, bearing banners, with crosses going before, hastened with the people of the city, and there celebrated the divine offices: and the bishop of Padua, returning to Padua, refreshed his people with heavenly doctrine. Meanwhile the inhabitants of the city, the castles and the villages, rejoicing at the revelation of Blessed Luke, ran together most devoutly to his chest, bringing candles and other gifts of reverence. The divine mercy gave light to very many deprived of sight who approached the Evangelist's chest, and healed very many withered persons, whose cures I myself knew of. For a certain young woman of Ora, which is called Terra-Longa, whose hand had been withered, desiring to be healed by the power of most Blessed Luke, approached his chest on the sixteenth day at the entering in of the month of April, and, as she was about to receive the gift of divine grace while the evening mysteries were being celebrated, the Godhead of benignity restored her to her former health. And in the following * night-time a certain boy, blind from birth, from the village which is called Titulus, sitting beside the chest of the Evangelist, rejoicingly feeling his eyes with the fingers with which he had touched the chest, received the sight of his eyes.

[99] when the finding was made illustrious by miracles; A certain man of the town of Monselice, deprived of the sight of his eyes, hastened to the threshold of so great a physician, and, having there received his sight, returned to his own home. And John Bonus of Caldera, hearing that various ailments were cured by the power of St. Luke, his son, whose eye had been covered with a large scrofula, when he had touched the place of the sickness to the Evangelist's chest, the boy's scrofula was healed by the power of St. Luke. And so on the eleventh day of the month of May, then going out, when almost all the inhabitants of a certain village which is called Montagnana had run together with gifts of devotion to see the Evangelist, singing praises, Our Lord Jesus Christ healed before the multitude of the people one of them, whose name was Almericus, whose arm had been withered. Mark of Verona, son of Dominic Fundacus, pierced through the head with a lance , (when) he could be healed by none of the physicians, committed his wound to be healed by the power of Blessed Luke, and promised that, health being received, he would go to his chest: and so, as he thought day and night on the power of the holy Evangelist, the place of the wound is known to have been so closed up that the scar was thought to be like the puncture of a needle: restored to health, he hastened devoutly to the threshold of his physician, and in honour of Blessed Luke the Evangelist hung up a wax image over his chest.

[100] in the year 143 the Paduan Relics are visited So far the report of the contemporary anonymous writer, from which it is manifestly clear that the right of possession, being far more ancient, favours the Paduans more than the Venetians. But since controversies which have their root in some fact ought to be supported not so much by presumptions as by history, we think the remaining instruments which we have in hand should be subjoined: for in this way the reader will more easily be able to resolve the question raised. When the monks of St. Justina at Padua, as we said above at no. 91, were trying to weaken the genuineness of the Venetian Relics of St. Luke, the Venetian Senate ordered that the chest which contained the bones of the holy Evangelist should be opened, and in this way a road be paved to the investigation of the truth: of which visitation the Paduan manuscript already praised presents an instrument of this tenor: The most illustrious Zaccaria Trevisan, jurisconsult and knight of the golden militia, and Luca de Lege, administering justice in the city of Padua for the most serene Venetian dominion; since to the renowned prince of Venice, Christopher Moro, a body which was said to be that of Blessed Luke the Evangelist had been brought as a gift from Liburnia (today Croatia), and on that account, a contention having arisen, it was doubted lest * his body should be found in the church of Blessed Justina in the chapel dedicated to the aforesaid Blessed Luke: by decree of the most illustrious Venetian senate a certain alabaster chest in the aforesaid chapel was opened. In it was found a certain leaden box, about six feet in length and one and a half or thereabouts in width, closed, yet with no key or fastening; which above was in the manner of a basket, having in the middle of the bottom a certain hole going through, which age had made.

[101] and all the bones are found, the head excepted, In which were covered the bones which are said and affirmed to be of the body of most blessed Luke, divided, however, and separated from one another, the head only excepted, which is said to have been carried away by a certain most serene emperor of the Romans, whom some say was Frederick Barbarossa: and for that reason, lest what remained of the most glorious body could be diminished or taken, it was laid up with this leaden box, placed in a certain other wooden one, in a certain iron chest, which lie at the present day behind the altar, and by order of the clergy was placed in this stone sepulchre of the alabaster chest. There was found moreover with these most holy bones a certain medal, or coin of copper, holding a little silver, in the likeness of a copuletus, with writing on one of the sides: Saint Mark, but the rest of the letters could not be made out. (If it is the same medal of which our predecessors treat in the commentary on St. Justina, no. 121 Acta Sanctorum, volume III of October, p. 819., on the reverse side was seen the image of the doge of Venice with the inscription: Francesco Foscari, by the grace of God doge of Venice. He governed the Republic from the year of Christ 1423 to 1457.) Of these bones, therefore, in order to increase devotion and confirm the faith of those to come, I, Zandomenico Sparzareno, notary and citizen of Padua, being requested, shall make mention below, naming each one of them, the bones of the shoulder-blades, of the arms, of each forearm-bone … of the hips and legs, of the feet and hands, the kneecaps, the ribs and the vertebrae of the back, all of which I testify that I both saw and touched, in the year of Christ MCCCCLIII. The same Zandomenico Sparzareno, notary. The enumeration of the bones which is had here is much entangled and not easy to read in the copy which I use, whence I have proceeded at times by divining rather than by transcribing.

[102] which formerly to Rome Besides arguments of this kind, the Paduans also objected to the Venetians that the body kept in the church of St. Job was not that of St. Luke, inasmuch as it was entire, whereas on the contrary the genuine corpse of the Evangelist was lacking its head, which had been kept at Rome from of old. And in very truth this head is shown in the Vatican church of St. Peter with a fairly ancient inscription Cancellieri, De Secretariis ecclesiae Vaticanae, volume III, p. 1195.: CAPUD BEATI LUCE EUĀGELISTE TRĀLATŪ DE CŌSTĀTINOPOL ROMĀ PER BTM GG DOCTORĒ PP PRIMUM, that is: the head of Blessed Luke the Evangelist, translated from Constantinople to Rome by Blessed Gregory the doctor, Pope, the first. Credit is given to this by an instrument drawn up in the year 1464 by Francesco de' Tolomei of Aquila, doctor of Decretals and Vicar of the Vatican basilica. Cardinal Baronius has the same at the year of Christ 586, § XXV, and adduces as witness of the assertion a record written on the first page of a codex containing the Dialogues of St. Gregory. But Luke Wadding cleverly observes Annales Minorum, year 1463, volume XIII, p. 279. Rome edition of 1735. that the cardinal is not consistent with himself, since in the Notes to the Roman Martyrology on the 9th of May he treats only of an arm of St. Luke, but in the Annals of his head. And indeed, if we inspect the very document to which Baronius appeals, it is manifest enough that there could by no means be question of translating the head of St. Luke.

[103] by St. Gregory For when St. Gregory, then a deacon and apocrisiarius of the Apostolic See with the emperor Tiberius, having already obtained the Relics of St. Andrew, desired to obtain also even a small particle of the sacred body of Blessed Luke, he went (I use the words of the document from Wadding, place cited) to the emperor Tiberius and with great humility besought him that he would deign to hear him in this also: namely that he would join to the arm of St. Andrew some of the Relics of Luke the Evangelist. But when the emperor heard this, he began to be saddened and to be most sorrowful, since what the Lord Levite asked could not be done without the gravest difficulty. For the sarcophagus in which the Evangelist lay was of most hard marble, like adamant, most tightly bound together with iron and lead. The emperor also feared lest a tumult should arise thence in the city if the body of so great and so precious an Apostle and Evangelist were moved by any contrivance. How, therefore, to satisfy the most holy Gregory he could not find, and he said to Blessed Gregory: Pray to the Lord Jesus Christ in your accustomed manner, that by the gift of His mercy He may open to you a way of accomplishing the desired work; take care, however, that what you do be accomplished cautiously and without the talk of the crowd. Having heard this, therefore, the blessed Levite enjoined upon himself and his people a fast of seven days. Which having been completed with much weeping and tears,

he went on the eighth day to the place in which the Evangelist rested, and bending his knees prayed that God, the author of wonders, would not cheat him of his desire.

[104] is said to have been translated, He besought Blessed Luke too that, if his devotion were honourable, he would grant him the power of accomplishing what he wished, but otherwise that what he desired should be frustrated. And while the blessed Levite lay prostrate before the sepulchre, the hardness of the lead was turned into the softness of wax, and the iron with which the marble of the sepulchre was bound, broken, fell before the feet of Blessed Gregory, and the sarcophagus was divinely opened without human aid. Blessed Gregory, therefore, rising from prayer, saw the sepulchre unlocked, and behold the glorious Evangelist raised up his own arm and gave it to Blessed Gregory. Which the blessed Levite received with great reverence, and diligently placed it together with the arm of Blessed Andrew in a silver casket with spices. At a suitable time, therefore, he went up into a ship, and at once, a favourable wind arising, he came pleasantly to Rome, the pledges of the Saints being left in the city of Ostia. On hearing which the venerable Pope Pelagius, filled with joy, at once arose, and having called together the bishops and cardinals, deacons and subdeacons, and all the orders of the curia, together with Blessed Gregory (whom he had already received with honour), went with hastened step to the city of Ostia, and receiving with bowed head the arms of SS. Luke and Andrew, carried them to Rome with psalms and hymns and all veneration. It then relates by what means St. Gregory, made Pontiff, in the second year caused the arms of the same Saints to be deposited at the church of St. Andrew beside the basilica of the Prince of the Apostles in the Vatican, whence they were translated into the basilica itself when the church of St. Andrew was destroyed Cancellieri, De Secretariis, volume III, p. 1105..

[105] but wrongly; From what has been related so far it is sufficiently clear that in the very document which Baronius alleges for himself, not only is there silence about the head of St. Luke brought to Rome, but it is implicitly denied, since the various difficulties set forth as opposed, the miracle wrought in the stretching out of the arm, the constant mention of the arm, and the utter silence about the head, sufficiently intimate that nothing from the Relics of the holy Evangelist except the arm was brought to Rome by St. Gregory. Francesco Cancellieri, in his learned work on the Sacristies of the new Vatican basilica, book II, chapter II Volume III, p. 1192 and following., seems to treat the present question rather confusedly: for he wholly holds that the head of St. Luke was brought to Rome by Blessed Gregory, and adduces various testimonies to this effect: nevertheless he says that various writers, among others Torrigio and the Maurist Benedictines, were led by the authority of Baronius to say that the head of St. Luke was carried to Rome by St. Gregory, which is the very assertion of Cancellieri, as far as I can make out, when he says that Mallius wrongly named the Arm instead of the head of St. Luke Ibid., p. 1194., or approves Vegio saying Ibid., p. 1193. that the head of St. Luke was joined to his arm, as though he had drawn the head out of the sepulchre together with the arm as some accessory.

[106] for before the 12th century What, therefore, more recent writers hand down (for I do not see others cited by Cancellieri) I do not think should be admitted: for the whole foundation on which the translation made by St. Gregory rests lies in the document adduced above. Either, therefore, it is to be accepted as it sounds, and so that St. Gregory obtained nothing from the Relics of St. Luke except his arm: or, if it is said that the head too was brought to Rome on the same occasion, the document cited will have to be rejected and the assertion demonstrated by another suitable testimony, which no one has yet done. Yet on that account we by no means deny that the head of the holy Evangelist is kept at Rome. For it could have been carried to Rome by the emperor Frederick I, called Barbarossa, as the instrument of the visitation of the Relics made in the year 1463, adduced above at no. 101, relates; about the same time at which the body of St. Luke was being found at Padua, Frederick was staying in Italy, and indeed in Lent at Cesena, while meanwhile Pope Alexander III landed at Venice on the 24th of March, whence on Passion Sunday, which fell that year 1177 on the 10th day of April, he came to Ferrara Muratori, Annali d'Italia, year 1177, volume VII, p. 23 and following.. And this agrees excellently with the history of the finding of the Relics, in which it is related that the bishop of Padua, since in those times Alexander, the supreme Pontiff, had gone to Ferrara, made known the course of the finding to the most holy Alexander: above, no. 97.

[107] no suitable mention is made of the head; From these things it becomes sufficiently probable that the head of St. Luke then first appeared at Rome: we know indeed that that finding was celebrated and frequented by the concourse of many; and since there was then question of settling peace between the Pontiff and the emperor, which was also settled afterwards in the summer of the same year, we are easily persuaded that Frederick, whose interest it was to win the Pontiff's favour for himself, soothed by this art too the mind of Alexander, a most pious man and an especial venerator of the Saints Ciacconius, Vitae Romanorum Pontificum, volume I, column 831. Edition of 1677.; and indeed wished to gratify the Romans, glorying in the apostolic see, with so precious a pledge. But when afterwards it became known from documents or tradition that St. Gregory had brought some Relics of St. Luke from Constantinople to Rome, it could easily have come about that, a confusion arising, the translation which pertained to the arm alone was attributed to the head. Wherefore the objection of the Paduans stood unshaken, who said that the true body of St. Luke could not be at Venice, being entire with its head, when that part of the body had already been kept at Rome for centuries. Nor does it help Wadding, for abolishing the objection, to argue that Baronius was not consistent with himself Annales Minorum, year 1463, § XVII, volume XIII, p. 278.. The most learned cardinal may indeed have erred concerning the time and other circumstances, and drawn others with him into error, which we willingly confess; but an error of this kind does not detract from the opinion of those who say that the head of the holy Evangelist was at Rome when the controversy began; and so that the true Relics of St. Luke are to be sought in a trunk rather than in an entire body, which so far the Paduans alone have demonstrated.

[108] although the division of Relics at Constantinople But Pietro de Castro intervenes in the whole controversy with his letter to the Maurist Benedictines, concerning certain things little consistent, omitted and improbable found in the Life of St. Gregory the Great prepared by them and published in volume IV of the Works Cancellieri, De Secretariis, volume III, p. 1197.; and he affirms that Gregory could by no means have obtained sacred gifts of this kind from the emperor; and he brings forward the reason for his assertion, that Gregory himself, letter XXX, book IV Gregory the Great, Works, volume II, column 710. Paris edition of 1705., pronounces that in the Roman or the whole Western parts it is wholly intolerable and sacrilegious if anyone should wish to touch the bodies of the Saints, and therefore he says that he doubts whether it is true that the Greeks are said truly to take up the bones of the Saints. Although from this text the opinion is sufficiently constant among men of the first rank that before the 8th century it was unlawful in any way to gather bones or particles from the bodies of the Saints, others nevertheless show [Honoré de Sainte-Marie, Réflexions sur les règles de la Critique, volume III, p. 396 and following.] that this was done at times even before the times of Gregory, not only in the East but also in the West, indeed that the holy Pontiff himself did it, as we have shown to some extent in the preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Magnobodus at the 16th day of October, § III Acta Sanctorum, volume VII of October, p. 935..

[109] the custom of the Latins does not stand in the way. For the rest, that the Greeks were accustomed to distribute the bones and ashes of the Saints piecemeal is made credible both by the very petition of Constantia Augusta, by which she asked for herself a part of the body of St. Paul, and by the contrary usage alleged for the Romans alone: and so the doubt touched not so much the very partition of the Relics as their genuineness; for before he expressed his doubt, he had related that Greek monks coming to Rome had, in the silence of the night, dug up beside the church of St. Paul the bodies of the dead lying in the field, and had laid up their bones, keeping them for themselves until they departed. When they had been held and diligently questioned why they did this, they confessed that they were going to carry those bones to Greece as Relics of Saints. From their example, the holy Doctor continues, as has been said before, a greater doubt has arisen for us whether it is true that they are said truly to take up the bones of the Saints. The sense of the last sentence, therefore, is that Gregory, since the Greeks proceeded so rashly in such a matter, vehemently doubted whether the Relics which were carried about by Greek men were true and genuine. Since these things are so, it is in no way inconsistent that St. Gregory, using the custom flourishing among the Orientals, both accepted the imperial gift of Relics and at the same time disapproved of that custom, inasmuch as it was unknown among the Westerners, indeed sometimes dangerous.

[110] Finally the Roman Martyrology stands for the Paduans; But to return whence we digressed, the circumstance of the truncated body of St. Luke, because its head was kept at Rome, seemed of such moment to the Paduans that they judged it should be produced before all else, on the testimony of Wadding Annales Minorum, year 1463, § XVI, volume XIII, p. 278., as a most solid argument. But what the said Annalist represents as the bare assertion of a recent anonymous writer, namely that the Friars Minor of St. Job were forbidden to make any innovation concerning the cult of the Relics, this is most certainly established from an instrument kept in the archive of St. Justina at Padua. Pope Paul II, on the appeal of the Paduans, had given as judges the Cardinals Juan de Carvajal, a Spaniard, bishop of Piacenza and deacon, first Cardinal of the title of St. Angelo, whence the name stuck to him, then bishop of Porto Ciacconius, Vitae Pontificum et Cardinalium, volume II, column 925., and Berardo Eroli, called the Spoletan, of the title of St. Sabina Ibid., column 1036.. These on the 21st day of March 1465 issued a public instrument, by virtue of which they cited the Friars Minor of the monastery of St. Job, or St. Bernardine, to their tribunal, and forbade them, while the suit was pending, to presume to attempt anything, by themselves or another, publicly or secretly, directly or indirectly, under any pretext sought, to the prejudice of such suit and in contempt of the Apostolic See. What was done further we have not found: we have only this, that the Roman Martyrology, some protesting De Aste, In Martyrologium Romanum Disceptationes, p. 474., pronounced for the Paduans in these words: The Natalis of Blessed Luke the Evangelist, who, having suffered much for Christ, full of the Holy Spirit, died in Bithynia: whose bones were translated to Constantinople, and carried thence to Padua.

[111] in the year 1562 a new one is made at Padua But while these things were being inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, a new translation of the holy Relics into the new church of St. Justina had already been made in the year 1562 under Pope Pius IV. From whose authentic instrument

we learn the following concerning our saint Acta Sanctorum, volume III of October, p. 815, no. 105.: On Wednesday, the 4th day before the Nones of March, … we came to the chapel dedicated to St. Luke; the cover of the chest, made of alabaster, having been raised, there was found in it, and thence devoutly carried into the new church, a leaden box, in the manner of a basket, about five feet long, closed only, with no cord and no seals, in which the bones of St. Luke the Evangelist are, as most true testimony will be rendered by the things which will be adduced a little later. But that testimony could be nothing other than these two things which are narrated a little lower in the same instrument. Namely: Meanwhile a certain curious youth, having entered the altar from which the bodies of the Saints had been taken out, found, and caused to be shown to the aforesaid reverend abbot in the presence of the Lords Sages, Provisors and others, a little leaden box, about half a foot long, so closed and soldered that it could not easily be opened, in which three little bundles, wrapped in green silk cloth, were secured *, which, being untied, in each there appeared a label in these words: in one "Of the Holy Apostles Simon and Jude": in another "These are the Relics of St. Luke:" the words of the third, perishing from age, could not be read: which Relics, laid up there at the time of the consecration of the altar, it was asserted had been handed over to Dom Celsus the prior in the same box to be guarded. But lest the things which are worthy of memory be passed over in silence, the divine majesty willed to show this sign above all in His Saints. For when, the wall of the altar having been broken through, the bodies of the friends of God began to be taken out, the sky then being clear and the sun bright, being unexpectedly overshadowed by a cloud, snow, by no means seen this year in the city of Padua, began to fall from heaven, and, driven by the force of the wind through the window opposite the altar, which happened then to be open, upon the bodies of the Saints and upon us standing by, it truly appeared as manna. But when the holy Bodies had been taken out, the sky and the sun appeared more clear: from which (for good is signified by manna) it is to be believed that almighty God, on account of the merits of His friends, will preserve the city of Padua.

[112] of the Relics The sudden change of the sky which is here represented as a kind of portent does not seem very wonderful if we reflect that it happened in March, a month of most changeable sky; wherefore on this head the most true testimony by which the Relics of St. Luke can be proved fails. We return to our instrument Ibid., no. 107.: On Thursday, the 3rd day before the Nones of the same month, the Reverend abbot, the monks, the sages, the provisors and the other citizens, desiring to see the bodies of the Saints and to show them to the whole people standing by for the sake of devotion, having come to the place of the sub-confession, ordered the boxes to be opened. In the leaden box in the manner of a basket were found and seen the bones of St. Luke the Evangelist without the head, concerning which a document executed in the year from the birth of Christ sixty-three above one thousand four hundred and forty *, in the red book of the city archive, folio 174, renders testimony. This likewise being proved by two eulogies found in the box itself, one in a glass, the other in a wooden little box, registered below: "Who, filled with the Holy Spirit, wrote the Gospel, and set forth the Acts of the Apostles, as St. Jerome testifies, and, aged 74 years, died in Bithynia, whose blessed body, brought to Constantinople in the 20th year of the reign of Constantine (rather Constantius), was kept in the church of the Apostles." In another similar wooden box were found the bones of St. Matthias the Apostle without the head, with one eulogy testifying this: "He, the Holy Spirit co-operating, Peter praying, was numbered in the happy fellowship of the Apostles."

[113] from the old into the new church of St. Justina The bodies of these, devoutly kept in the church of the Apostles in the city of Constantinople, Dom Urius, custodian of the church, seeing the cruelty of Julian the Apostate, successor of Constantine (rather of Constantius, the son of Constantine, at least the immediate one), against the faithful of Christ (for the impious emperor raged not only against the living servants of Christ, but also took care to burn the dead, the crosses and the other images of the Saints, lest anything of their memory should be left to posterity), by divine inspiration, the head of St. Matthias being left with Grusillus, his companion, having placed them in a ship seeking Italy, carried them first to Venice, then to Padua, and devoutly placed them in the church of St. Justina, where he himself too, serving God, wished to be buried. But the head of St. Luke is said to have been carried off by the emperor Frederick, called Barbarossa, and an apostolic brief given at Rome in the year from the Lord's Nativity MCCCCLXIV, registered in the same Red book, page 174, testifies that it is kept at Rome, having been carried thither. What the instrument relates of the translation to Padua under Julian the Apostate lacks truth; for, as we showed above at no. 82, the body of St. Luke was still at Constantinople when under the emperor Justinian, and so in the 6th century, on the occasion of the renewal of the church of the Holy Apostles, it was found and laid up again with worthy honours in the same basilica. Wherefore the Italian Hagiology at this day professes indeed that Urius carried the body of the holy Evangelist to Padua, but, as it says, at the time when the impious Constantine Copronymus was raging sacrilegiously against sacred images. Would that it had proved the assertion by suitable testimony!

[114] the translation, made illustrious by miracles, After the said instrument has related that various prodigies were wrought by the contact of the holy Relics, it narrates at no. 114 Acta Sanctorum, volume III of October, p. 817. that the same remained exposed for nine continuous days to the devotion of the people, and then on Sunday, the 15th of March, which in that year 1562 fell on Passion Sunday, a solemn supplication of the whole clergy and people was made, in which the Relics of the Saints went before the Holy Eucharist, which, carried back into the church, remained exposed there for some days, the people greatly desiring it. Finally, on the fifth weekday, the 14th day before the Kalends of April Ibid., p. 818, no. 116.: The Reverend Suffragan (of Padua), the abbot, the monks, the sages and provisors, having come to the place of the sub-confession, where the bodies themselves were found, all things being now prepared, decreed to lay up the bodies of the Saints in their chests, to remain there forever. Each of the wooden boxes having therefore been opened, each of the bodies of the Saints was taken out, and, wrapped in silk cloth of red colour, was placed in as many leaden boxes, about three feet long, newly made, a eulogy of each Saint and making mention of the present act being enclosed in each box. Having then narrated how some Relics were separated from the bodies of certain Saints, it continues: Then the remaining two leaden boxes having been opened, from one the body of St. Justina, from the other the body of St. Luke, taken out, each wrapped separately in similar cloth, was laid up again in their former boxes with a similar eulogy enclosed, as aforesaid…

[115] as is clear from the authentic instrument, And when the aforesaid nine leaden boxes, containing nine bodies of Saints, had been closed, bound with cord, and with three seals, one bearing the sign of St. Justina, the second of the aforesaid suffragan, the third of the commune of Padua, duly impressed in wax, the wooden boxes likewise having been placed in the several chests for the sake of preservation, and when all other things had been prepared, the Reverend suffragan and abbot, the monks with lighted candles giving due praises to almighty God, the masters sages, the sages provisors, and the fathers and people assisting and devoutly following, solemnly blessed the several altars and the several chests, dedicating each to each. Finally, under the name of each Saint, the aforesaid bodies of the Saints were laid up each in the several chests dedicated to each, and, a marble cover being placed upon them, were closed, to remain there forever, this order being observed: namely in the choir of the new church at the high altar, St. Justina: on the right side of the choir, in the first chapel, the three Innocents: in the second, St. Arnaldus: in the third, in his alabaster chest, St. Luke: in the fourth, St. Felicitas.

[116] and by a twofold To the instrument, of which we have recited the part pertaining to St. Luke, there is subjoined in the preliminary Commentary on St. Justina, no. 120 Ibid., place cited., a twofold eulogy of our saint in these words: These are the eulogies found in the box of St. Luke in a wooden vessel. That a memorial of this most holy Luke the Evangelist may be left to posterity, we have thought it worth while to set out in a compendious narration what happened in our days. In the year of the Lord MCCCCLXIII, at which time the renowned man Christopher Moro was doge in the Venetian city, and in this monastery the Reverend Dom Bernard of Piacenza presided, who had under him nearly LXX monks, living in the observance of true Christian piety and in the Religion of our holy Father Benedict, reformed by the truly blessed man Dom Ludovico Bacto, two Friars of St. Francis brought to Venice from the parts of Boxina * a certain body, which they asserted to be that of St. Luke the Evangelist: but since for a thousand years already, from most clear testimonies of writings both Latin and Greek, there had been most certain knowledge that the same Evangelist was at Padua in the monastery of Justina, in order that the truth of the matter might be known, it was decreed by the renowned Venetian dominion that his sepulchre should be opened, in which almost all his bones, except the head, which the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, passing through here, is said to have taken away, were found in a little leaden box, and so all, perceiving the truth, glorified God, and the whole multitude of the people ran together to that glorious finding, praising God, who had exalted this royal city with a worthy gift. Already above at nos. 82 and 113 we treated of the time at which this translation could have taken place, and saw that it is not to be tied to the reign of the emperor Julian: and the same reasons which militate against such a chronology also hold against the Paduans, when they claimed for themselves a possession of a thousand years in the year 1463. For it is certain that the body of St. Luke existed at Constantinople in the 6th century, and so nine hundred years before.

[117] eulogy of the saint. In the said instrument the following too are read: The things written below were found in a glass vessel: "Jesus. In the name of the Most Holy Trinity. In this most holy altar, dedicated in honour of the most Blessed Luke the Evangelist, are laid up the bones of the same Evangelist, which the Reverend Father in Christ, Dom Marco Negro, bishop of Cattaro, consecrated on Sunday the 2nd of October, in the year MCCCCLXV, and by the authority granted there (to him?) by the Roman See mercifully granted to those devoutly visiting this altar on the day of its consecration an indulgence of forty days, to endure forever." The second Sunday of October cannot fall on the 2nd day of the month of October, and so the middle number between the words Sunday and of the month cannot be referred to the day of the month; inasmuch as it would coincide with the fourth weekday. Marco Negro, bishop of Cattaro, is read to have been elected to that Church on the 5th day of December 1459 Ughelli, Italia Sacra, volume VII, column 698., the see of Padua being then occupied by Jacopo Zeno, a Venetian noble Ibid., volume V, column 456.. So much indeed as we have said so far shows that the possession of the Paduans is older than all the others. Nevertheless it must be confessed that the translations of sacred remains, on account of dangers or other causes, not rarely gave occasion to error and confusion, as Honoré de

Sainte-Marie rightly notes Réflexions sur la critique, volume III, p. 410.. But as regards the body which is venerated at Venice in the church of St. Job under the name of St. Luke, what if they were the remains of Luke the Stiriote? Above at no. 76, although we denied that Luke the monk was buried at Thebes in Boeotia, and indeed showed that Sterium is a fair distance from Thebes, the conjecture is nevertheless not absurd, since the region of Phocis, where we know the holy Anchorite was entombed, is not far distant from Bosnia, whence the body was carried off: and, as is apt to happen when there are two Saints of the same name, the people, the clergy sometimes conniving, attribute the Relics to the more celebrated saint, whom they hear more often both named and praised, as most frequently happens with the Evangelists, from which at length a tradition is born, strengthened by the testimony of many years.

[118] Relics of St. Luke are venerated in Spain, Besides the body of St. Luke in which the Paduans glory, many other churches say that they are enriched with Relics of the same Evangelist, and declare that they possess larger or smaller particles of the sacred body. Thus from the description of Mount Athos we have that in the monastery of the great laura of St. Athanasius the Athonite there is laid up in the middle of the altar, in a chest skilfully made and adorned with mosaic work, part of the venerable hand of the holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke Montfaucon, Palaeographia Graeca, p. 456.: and that in the monastery of the Iberians on the same mountain certain parts of the holy Apostle Luke are held in veneration Ibid., p. 474.. In Spain, moreover, it is read that remains of St. Luke are kept in the church of St. Saviour at Oviedo in the Asturias, in a diptych tablet covered with silver plates, though small on account of the smallness of the case Morales, Viage Santo, p. 74.. Similarly near Valladolid there is a Cistercian monastery which borrows its name from a Thorn of the Lord's Crown [Cf. Acta Sanctorum, volume IV of August, p. 203, no. 470. Manrique, Annales Cistercienses, year 1147, chapter XVIII, volume II, p. 86.] and is called Espina: there a bone of the arm of St. Luke is venerated Morales, Viage, p. 188.. An arm of the same holy Evangelist used to be shown at Barcelona in the royal chapel of the palace: of which Relics indeed Martin, king of Aragon, already makes mention in the year 1407 in his testament: nevertheless these Relics seem to have been lost or dispersed in the lapse of time, which must be judged to have happened to the arm of St. Luke too, since it is not reckoned among those preserved Ribera, Cappilla Real de Barcelona, p. 57 and following.. Valencia, an archiepiscopal city of Spain, glories in possessing two fingers of the left hand of St. Luke, which with other Relics are shown every year on Easter Monday with solemn rite to the veneration of the people, with these words, which I render into Latin from the Hispano-Limousin dialect: Devout Christians, in this reliquary are two fingers of the left hand of St. Luke the Evangelist, which Queen Doña Margarita, wife of King Don Martin, gave as a gift to this (cathedral) church Villanueva, Viage literario, volume II, p. 43.. Margarita de Prades married Martin, king of Aragon, already widower of María López de Luna, kinswoman of the antipope Pedro de Luna, called Benedict XIII.

[119] in Gaul and in Belgium; As regards Gaul, there is in our archives a letter of Claude Chastelain to Papebroch, dated the 31st of December 1683, in which he reports that the cathedral church of Sens, sacred to St. Stephen, possesses a finger of St. Luke, furnished with its nail and skin. But, as the present Canon and treasurer of the Church of Sens, the Reverend Monsieur Carlier, writes back to me on the 19th day of February 1849, that remarkable pledge disappeared in the year 1793, when impiety was raging. At Valenciennes, moreover, in the diocese of Cambrai, there was formerly a reliquary shrine (Fierte de Notre-Dame des Miracles), which a confraternity of nobles (Confrérie des Damoiseaux) used to keep and carry round the city every year with solemn pomp on the 8th day of September. In the year 1565, buried in the earth for fear of the heretics, and discovered in the year 1572, it was burned with fire: wherefore in the year 1588 a new chest was made D'Oultreman, Histoire de Valenciennes, p. 431 and following., and in it, among other Relics, Louis de Berlaymont, archbishop of Cambrai, laid up part of the head of St. Luke Bulletins de la commission royale d'histoire de Belgique, volume X, p. 110., which was perhaps taken from the part of the upper cranium kept at Douai in the parish church of St. Aubin Raissius, Gazophylacium Belgicum, p. 10., just as this is related of the fourth part of the cranium which the people of Liessies gloried in possessing Ibid., p. 279. Nor was our Belgium without Relics of St. Luke: for at Mechelen, in the church formerly of the Society of Jesus, now the parish church of SS. Peter and Paul, a Tooth of the holy Evangelist is kept Ibid., p. 494., given as a gift by Adriana de Ridder: in the cathedral church of Tournai there were three bones of St. Luke, one large and two very small Ibid., p. 315.. This, however, must be observed, that these Relics, and many others which are held in veneration in various places, share in the doubt which envelops the very body of the holy Evangelist.

[120] the title of St. Luke added to the church of St. Martina at Rome. The church which was formerly at Rome at the foot of the Capitol, sacred to St. Martina, Virgin and Martyr, when it had been committed to the care of the confraternity of painters, was renewed by order of Urban VIII, the title of St. Luke being added, as the inscription placed on the inner face of the said church teaches Ciacconius, Vitae Romanorum Pontificum et Cardinalium, volume IV, column 521.: Urban VIII, Supreme Pontiff, ordered the most ancient church of St. Martina, Virgin and Martyr, distinguished by the added title of St. Luke the Evangelist, to be built in a better form, after the body of the same Virgin had been found and laid up again here. Francesco Cardinal Barberini, following his uncle's will and piety, adorned and completed it, in the year of the Lord MDCL. For painters and sculptors were accustomed to celebrate St. Luke as their proper patron, as one who practised the same art, as the common opinion has it. Certain colleges of physicians chose the same as their tutelary saint for a similar reason, although others adopted SS. Cosmas and Damian as their saviours. Of how great antiquity, further, such societies of the arts and crafts are cannot easily be determined. For it is inborn in human nature that men of the same condition or kind should be joined to one another by a certain confederation, both for managing the common concern more accurately and usefully, and for bringing help to those who may have fallen into want. Under the Romans there were colleges of this kind, as is clear especially from law 4 of the Digest On Unlawful Colleges (XLVII. 22), in which Gaius says: Members of a sodality are those who are of the same college: which the Greeks call ἑταιρίαν. And to these the law gives power to make for themselves whatever agreement they wish; provided they corrupt nothing of the public law, etc. Such customs and laws, as being excellently consonant with the Christian religion, the Church by no means abrogated, indeed promoted, as Ludovico Antonio Muratori shows in his Antiquities of the middle ages [Dissertation LXXV, On the pious Confraternities of laymen, volume VI, p. 449. Milan edition of 1742.]. But at what time colleges of this kind, which according to the variety of regions and times were called Confraternities, Societies, Schools, Guilds or Gildoniae, Sodalities, adopted special patrons for themselves among the heavenly citizens, is not sufficiently established for us to make a lengthier discourse at present. I cannot take my hand from the panel without professing that, in what I have written concerning the books of St. Luke, I owe very much to our confrère Francesco Saverio Patrizi, professor of Sacred Letters at Rome and, not so long ago, when our Society had been dispersed by the force of the storm, at Louvain: whose great and accurate learning all who have known him proclaim.

* custodians of the Relics, Ambrosian manuscript.

* following

* when

* pierced through

* whether

* found

* read MCCCC

* of Bosnia

LIFE OF LUKE, APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST.

By Symeon Metaphrastes: it exists in the Oeconomium after the Apocalypse and the Life of St. John the Apostle.

Luke, Evangelist. (S.)

BY SYMEON METAPHRASTES.

Luke, an Antiochene by homeland and a physician by profession, If a certain divine and wise man has laid down by divine law that the memory of the just is to be celebrated with encomiums [a], how great a praise, surely, is it fitting that we together should bring to an Apostle of Christ? Since justice made him in a wonderful manner both worthy of the Apostolate and such as to appear beloved by Paul. But indeed, since he has gained praise in the Gospel, the laws of encomiums being altogether left aside, whatever it is necessary to narrate of him we shall relate after the manner of a history. Who is ignorant of the city of Antioch, what situation and size it has, or what boundaries? and what it is, and how much land it occupies, or by what river it is watered? This is the Orontes; here, where man was first enriched with the appellation of Christian, from this city the divine Luke sprang: and he had indeed a nature and disposition such as was noble and precious, as is manifest from this, that he both appeared most zealous in his life and handed down a discourse most conformed to his life. And having from a boy given himself to every kind of learning, he was both taught most exactly the Syriac and Hebrew language ^b, and, like a tree by the springs already flowering and grown, made wonderful progress in the study of the divine scriptures. Reaching youth, therefore, he frequented the gymnasia which were then both in Greece and in Egypt, and gathered the most beautiful learning among the Greeks, attaining perfectly grammar and poetics: and reaching the summit of rhetoric and of the art of speaking well, nor yielding to anyone in the dignities of philosophy, but using logic as a step to ethics, and ethics to practice.

[2] believes in Christ Thus applying himself to all good things, he at length attains medicine, the most beautiful and at the same time the most humane, and that to such a degree that he was for the most part designated and called by it. And after he had run through every art by the dexterity and greatness of his wit more quickly than a bird through the air, and had acquired enough of human learning, he passes to a more sublime and better state. But what was the manner of the passing? Meanwhile He who had come free from sin, to call sinners to repentance, was holding discussions and meetings concerning the salvation of the world, and this after the struggle against the adversary and the trophies won over him, after the testimony of the Father heard from above and the descent of the Spirit. And the report ran through all Judaea and Galilee, and in some places even outside the borders men followed the things that belonged to the Gospel preaching. Then many indeed stopped the ears of their heart to this true doctrine and closed the eyes of their mind, and were worthy neither to receive the word of life nor to behold the true light. But those in whom a trace of the truth was imprinted, and who had the character and proportion of the good ground, gazed (as they say) with all their eyes, and applied the pricked-up ears of the soul to listening, and were most swiftly carried over to the truth, and omitted nothing that it was fitting to do, in order that to that which

was honourable they might draw near, and might convey certain truth to the very naked soul.

[3] and leaves all things: Of these one was this admirable herald and teacher of the truth, who, enlightened in the eye of his mind to the pious preaching, despises all his kindred, despises even the bowels of nature, casts away money, possessions and all his substance, so that no one would so easily cast off the dust of his feet and the dirt of his hands: so that, in his very haste, he could certainly not even be occupied with this, namely distributing his means to the needy. And, to speak briefly, all lower things being despised, he swiftly embraces the things above, and comes to Judaea, and goes to Him whom he desired, and at once, at the sight and the words of Jesus, becomes a splendid receptacle for the precious ointment of grace ^c. Nor yet did he need frequent discourses and miracles for the knowledge of Him, but the more he excelled others in learning and prudence and dexterity of mind, the more swiftly did he know both the truth itself purely and the word preached.

[4] and a disciple of Christ: From this time he is made a legitimate and true disciple of Christ. And having been frequently present with his master, and having followed his signs and prodigies, he is not wanting even in His saving sufferings. And as he had been present at all things, so indeed was he also a beholder of the resurrection. For the Lord after the resurrection, standing by him as he set out with Cleophas to the field of Emmaus (O that approach full of awe!), reproaches the slowness and the unbelief of their heart, and by interpretations of the Scriptures confirms His passion and the great mystery of the resurrection ^d. But what was the husbandry of this divine conversation? The divine fire already glows in their souls, and already, the day declining, they in a manner compelled the Lord to remain with them. Further, He, wishing to breathe upon them a greater knowledge of God, not only met them in the common manner, but also reclines at table together with them, and, being more exactly recognized in the breaking of bread as the same who had been dead three days, at length vanished, none of their senses perceiving it, the resurrection of the dead having in this way been made firmer in them.

[5] he preaches the Gospel, Moreover, from the Saviour's taking up into heaven and the descent thence of the most holy spirit, he, associated with the twelve Apostles and filled with the same grace and power, is designated teacher of the Gentiles, teaching in a divine manner the mystery of the dispensation, and leading many by the hand from error to the knowledge of the Creator, and consecrating them by baptism. For this divine Luke ran, sowing the preaching everywhere, and with the net of his discourses drew many from the depth of ignorance to God, afflicted for the Gospel, when he went to the most wicked Greeks to sow his discourses. He endured many hardships on land, on sea, in every city. The desert was said to be a friendly soil to him, provided he found in it some whom he might bring to God and carry over to piety.

[6] and is joined as companion to St. Paul: And when Paul too had ascended to heavenly things, so as to behold the truth and preach it openly, and, the darkness of error being cast away, had adhered to the truth and been numbered in the choir of the disciples, Luke is everywhere appointed his companion on the road and comrade in his journeying, longing for contests on behalf of piety, and for that reason joining himself to such a soldier, and together with him afflicted even to bonds as an evildoer, and at the same time sending forth the rays of knowledge to the ends of the earth, made so conformed and familiar to him, and pleasing in all things, that Paul, writing to the faithful, frequently named Luke the beloved: who from Jerusalem and the places round about as far as Illyricum fulfilled the Gospel together with him, and, bound together with him from Judaea as far as Rome, shared the same labours, the same afflictions, the same shipwrecks, wishing to be declared altogether a partaker also of the crowns to be received on account of these labours.

[7] his writings; Thus, therefore, when he had traded in various ways with the talent of the preaching together with Paul, and had brought and ensnared so many nations to piety, both a true lover of his master's whole dispensation and a beloved disciple, he is shown to be the writer of a sacred history and at the same time an Evangelist, as one who had both attained beforehand and learned these things from those who had been ministers from the beginning, or had even been taught in sacred things from above. For this Evangelist unfolded the mystery of Gabriel the paranymph brought to the Virgin, who had announced a grace common to the world. He also openly set forth the nativity of Christ, showing Him as lying newly born in the manger, and describing the swaddling-clothes, and the shepherds, and the Angels heralds of joy. He made manifest, with love of the true and the honourable at once, sayings and doctrines exceeding every mind, mingling the nobility of discourse with the truth of things, so that he might set before the eyes the excellence both of mind and of tongue. In parables too he unfolded saving doctrines, in this also more copious than the others. And, to speak briefly, as he gave clearly to be known the descent of the Word to earth, so also he made manifest His ascent into the heavens and return to the Father's throne, like one coming from heaven ^e.

[8] the art of painting: And this among other things is most pleasing, that he first, tinting with wax and lines the very figure of the humanity assumed by my Christ, and the likeness of her who had borne Him and given Him the assumed humanity, handed it down, so that they are honoured in images to these very times, as if thinking it not enough unless he also conversed through image and figure with those whom he desired, which is the sign of the most fervent love. And not only this, but he also graciously gave these things, which were the greatest, to all the faithful and lovers of Christ ^f. But Luke did not confine the grace of the spirit that was in him to these things alone, nor did he have his tongue ministering to the Gospel alone, but after the end of the miracles of Christ he sets forth also the actions of the Apostles. And first the divine taking up of the Saviour into heaven, then the descent of the spirit upon them in fiery tongues, next the stoning of Stephen, the conversion of Paul, namely the call from heaven made by Christ, and the passing from the letter to the spirit, his bonds in every place, prisons, wounds, scourgings, the various plots of the Gentiles, how he came from Jerusalem to Rome, the labours at sea, afflictions, dangers, calamities, shipwrecks: of which he had been not only a spectator but also a partaker ^g. And for that reason he is a diligent narrator of these things.

[9] he preaches in Egypt: But Paul being left at Rome, he departs again to the East, and, running through all Libya, comes into Egypt ^h. And when he had received the upper Thebaid within his teaching, and had brought it to the master through the Gospel, he goes to the lower Thebaid, the city of seven gates, in which also he is set by the spirit as pontiff and pastor. The statues and impure shrines of the demons being cast to the ground (for this was his zeal, to show error fleeing, as they say, with all its feet), he erects on the contrary sacred temples to God alone, and takes care that those who were held in the deep darkness of ignorance, regenerated through the Gospel to the knowledge of God, should become gentle sons.

[10] he dies. Having therefore offered fruits of this kind to his master, impiety having been removed from the midst, temples erected, altars established and consecrated, and priests and deacons created among the believers, and the definition of the right faith having been handed down to them: and now indeed bringing testimonies from the scripture of the old covenant, and now interpreting to them from the Gospel which he himself had composed the things which concerned Christ, and showing that the old covenant is altogether consonant with the new, and that one and the same is God who had established both this and that, being now full of days, he returns in peace to the God of peace, the dust indeed being left to the dust, but the soul commended into the hands of Him who had given it, passing thither where is the region of the living, where is the sound of those celebrating festival, where is the dwelling of all who rejoice. Such are the narratives of the Apostle's contests for piety: this was for him the end of the labours suffered for Christ, whose sheaves he now also reaps in gladness, so that he too can say with Paul: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: for which there is laid up for me a crown of justice.

[11] The body of St. Luke from Achaia Nevertheless I think it now follows upon these things to make mention whence and how, and indeed at what times, these sacred Relics were brought back from Achaia like some divine treasure, and restored to the famous and royal city. Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, but the third of the brothers, was once passing from Sirmium to the Ister: and having encamped for no long time on this bank of the Ister, he heard that the barbarians who were beyond the Ister were about to clash with the Roman government: and, fearing lest they should do some evil in his principality, he at once rode to Thrace and Byzantium. And when he had come to the region of the Odrysians, where Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans, having built a city, gave his own name to the place ⁱ, a certain Bishop comes to him, bringing as it were some gift most pleasing to him, showing that the bodies of Andrew and Luke, disciples of Christ, were buried in Achaia. Further, he both rejoiced at the news, and Artemius ^k, whom he especially employed, and whom he knew to be a fervent lover of charity towards Christ *. And the divine contest and danger undertaken by him for Christ in the times of Julian attest this man's love.

[12] to Constantinople under Constantius This friend Artemius, then, breathing with such fervour for piety, he at once sends forth for the bringing back of the precious bodies. For this Constantius was both moderate in other matters and gentle and modest in his ways, and occupied with a very great love for the building of churches. Whence also in his father's city, around his tomb, as if rendering honour to his father, he builds from the very foundations a very great church: in which also, when Artemius had brought back the Relics of the holy Apostles from Achaia, he laid them up in the very divine altar of the sacred table: the bodies being translated, of Andrew from the city of the Patraeans, but of Luke from Thebes of Boeotia. And after a short interval he also brings back from Ephesus of Ionia Timothy, who had shone like a bright star in the choir of the disciples of Christ, again using Artemius as minister for this. But the circuit of the sacred table had him too, as if rendering some debt of piety to its helpers. Timothy, then, had such a bringing back of his body. Further, at the bringing back of the divine Luke such a miracle is produced, worthy of speech and memory.

[13] is translated, A certain eunuch, Anatolius, one of those who were then of the royal bedchamber, was held by a wretched disease of the body. When, therefore, he knew the disease to be greater than could be cured by the art of physicians, knowing well that the things which are impossible with men are possible with God, leaving all other things, he fled to Luke, the disciple of Christ, and uses him as helper against the disease. For when the urn which contained his precious body had already been brought to the sacred temple which Constantius had raised from the foundations, this said Anatolius, approaching and carrying it together with those who were bearing it, is at once freed from the oppressing disease: and, living after being as dead, having obtained such a benefit,

for his whole life he did not cease to give thanks to the Apostle and to God, who through him produced such miracles.

[14] and is found again under Justinian. Thus, therefore, the body of the most divine Luke, first brought back from Thebes, is laid up very honourably and magnificently together with Andrew and Timothy in the church which had been built by Constantius: while concerning the laying up of the sacred Relics the works of faith and the fervent desire of Constantius were very greatly shown. Although he afterwards, caught somewhat in the snares of the evil one (O wretched fall, alas turbulent overthrow!), drank in the dogma of the Arians. But many times afterwards, Justinian, having taken up the sceptres of the empire, is affected still much more magnificently towards these sacred bodies of the Apostles, and enclosing them in a silver case lays them up around the altar itself with vehement love of God, namely precious things in a precious repository. And indeed he made the case the table of the sacred altar: further, the church is called by the common name of the Apostles ^l. To which indeed all the faithful who come together praise him as a disciple, celebrate him as an Evangelist ^m, call him blessed as one who in sacred sweats and labours was always the companion of the divine Paul. And partaking of sanctification thence, they are filled with spiritual joy: and this by the grace and benignity of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ages of ages, Amen.

ANNOTATIONS.

* supply: he called