ON SS. STRATONICA AND SELEUCUS, MARTYRS AT CYZICUS ON THE PROPONTIS,
PROBABLY IN THE YEAR CCCIX.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Stratonica, martyr, at Cyzicus on the Propontis. (S.)
Seleucus, martyr, at Cyzicus on the Propontis. (S.)
BY R. D. B.
§ I. On the Syriac Acts of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus. Their epitome.
Cyzicum or Cyzicus, on the homonymous island of the Propontis, or rather now peninsula Perrot, Explor. de la Galatie, vol. 1, p. 69 ff., Paris 1872. , was formerly a most celebrated town of Lesser Mysia and the metropolis of the Hellespont Cf. J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, vol. 1, p. 340 ff., Leipzig 1881. . The Acts of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus, translated from Egypt to Rome, Although of that splendid city, whose fortunes Joachim Marquardt has eruditely described Cyzicus und sein Gebiet. , only ruins survive today, yet there has not been blotted out the splendor which it long ago attained both from its ancient episcopal see and from the huge number of its martyrs [Oriens christianus, vol. I, col. 747 ff. Acta SS., vol. III March, p. 443. Cf. Acta SS., vol. III April, p. 617; vol. IV May, p. 310; vol. III Aug., p. 420; vol. II Jan., p. 1081; vol. IV Sept., p. 140.] . Among these athletes of the faith no lowest place is held by SS. Stratonica and Seleucus, whom certain Greek calendars commemorate at this day. Their Acts, rendered in German in the year 1836 by Pius Zingerle Akten H. Märtyrer des Morgenl., part II. , and published in French and Latin in the years 1846 and 1847 by J. B. Malou, afterward bishop of Bruges [Biblioth. ascetica, III, Mart. SS. Strat. et Sel., Louvain 1846. Le martyre de Ste Stratonice et de S. Seleucus, Louvain 1847.] , had first appeared in the year 1748, from a Syriac codex of the Vatican library. That is, Clement XI, when he had heard that in the monasteries of Egypt ancient and most excellent codices lay hidden, sent Elias, a presbyter of Antioch, in the year 1707 to the Scetic monastery of St. Mary of the Syrians, at Mount Nitria, in Lower Egypt [Sicard, in Let. édif., Mém. du Levant, vol. V, p. 16 ff. Cf. Curzon, Besuche in den klöstern der Levante, p. 56 ff.] . Among the books bought both by him and by Joseph Simon Assemani, whom Clement XI sent there in the year 1715, there were many Acts of holy martyrs. Of these some, such as SS. Stratonica and Seleucus, slain in Mesopotamia, Syria and the adjacent provinces this side of Chaldæa, were called western martyrs, others, slain beyond Mesopotamia, eastern martyrs [Joseph Simon Assemani, Bibliotheca orientalis, vol. I, preface, no. VII, XI, p. 606, vol. III, part I, p. 18 f., note. Steph. Evodius Assemani, Acta SS. mart. Orientalium et Occidentalium, vol. I, preface, p. XXXI f., p. XLII.] .
[2] and much praised by Assemani, Those codices, as appears in the inscription of almost each one, were translated from Mesopotamia to the cenoby of St. Mary of the Syrians in the year of Christ 932, by the superior of the monastery, Moses of Nisibis, who had received them partly as a gift, partly for a price paid Bibl. orient., vol. I, p. 83. . Moreover that the Syriac volume in which the Acts of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus are contained is to be referred to about the year 780, Stephen Evodius Assemani gathered from the very form of the letters Acta SS. mart. Orient. et Occid., vol. I, p. XXXVI f. . More recent are the copies which, kept in the British Museum in London, the distinguished G. Wright has accurately described. For the first (cod. 948) was finished in the year of Christ 850, the second (cod. 952) in the year 936, the third finally (cod. 960) in the year 1197 [Wright, Cat. of the syriac mss. in the British Museum, part III, p. 1102, 1115, 1132.] . We, following the most ancient codex of the Vatican library, shall present the Acts rendered in Latin by Assemani. Whose authority he himself extols in these words: Whoever … has exercised himself in handling the Acts of the saints, and has weighed the antiquity of the Chaldaic codex which supplies them to us, cannot indeed doubt that these are genuine and sincere Acts of martyrdom; especially since their writer affirms both that he received them from eyewitnesses above all exception, and that a sacred house was built over the sepulcher of those same martyrs by the most religious emperor, who certainly was no other than Constantine the Great, after peace was restored to the Church, in his own period. Which reckoning of the times indeed coheres excellently with itself; for from Maximian Galerius, in the fifth year of whose rule the Acts hand down that the martyrs Stratonica and Seleucus fell, to about the year of Christ 318, in which peace was restored to the Eastern Church, under the rule of Constantine the Great, there intervene only very few years. Why then should the writer of the Acts not have both committed these things to writing, as had from eyewitnesses, and have seen Constantine the Great building a church at Cyzicus in honor of those same martyrs? Indeed from this it is plainly gathered that our writer was contemporary with the emperors Maximian and Constantine the Great; and so that to these which we have at hand, as genuine and sincere Acts of martyrdom, all credit is to be given Acta SS. mart. Orient. et Occid., part II, p. 66. .
[3] they do not seem primitive, To us, however, both inspecting the Acts themselves and inquiring from all sides for external testimonies, nothing occurs by which that highest authority of the Passion is confirmed. Indeed it may be said both that the times are wrongly indicated (which will soon be made plain), and that another Passion was formerly written in Greek, from which the Syriac Life flowed. For besides that at Cyzicus, which was the wrestling-ground of our martyrs, and whence the first relation of the contest seems to have arisen, almost no other language than Greek was used [Cf. Curtius, Ueber griechische Inschriften aus Kyzikos, Berlin 1874. Böckh, Corpus inscript. græc., vol. II, p. 912 ff.] , a certain Greek synaxary, of which there will be discussion below, displays, unless I am mistaken, traces of a primitive Passion. Although therefore Greek Acts of Stratonica and Seleucus are now sought in vain, it is credible that they formerly existed; and all the more because this is held as ascertained of a good many other Syriac Acts of martyrs. Indeed of the Lives which Assemani found in the Nitrian codices, he put off publishing many for this reason, that nearly the same had already appeared in Greek Cf. Assemani, Acta SS. mart., part II, p. 5. .
[4] nor again altogether corrupt, Yet we are very far from thinking that the Syriac writing, which alone survives, is to be held of small account or to be banished among fables. For those go too far who disdain the history of our martyrs because overlong speeches or other things of the kind are met in them. I indeed would not easily assent to Honoré de Sainte-Marie, judging that all the speeches of the martyrs, as they are related in the Acts, were so delivered word for word Réflexions sur les regles de la critique, vol. II, diss. IV, p. 39 ff. . But even if some things have been changed or adorned, even if the author has attributed to someone speeches which he did not certainly know him to have used, but only supposed by conjecture, yet the whole narrative of the facts is not straightway to be repudiated. Certainly conversations of this kind are written out both in the deeds of martyrs recounted by SS. Basil, Chrysostom and other Fathers, and in the Acts edited by Ruinart, which yet no one has attacked Acta SS., vol. III Sept., p. 210; cf. vol. V Sept., p. 763 f. . Exactly the same is to be thought of the harsh answers and rebukes of our saints Cf. below, Life, nos. 22, 28 ff. . Nor finally is credit altogether taken from the Passion for this reason, that both martyrs, although a little before their contest they were wholly ignorant of the Christian religion, yet discoursed of it accurately and excellently before the judge, and constantly endured horrible tortures for it. For in many saints, both ancient and more recent, such as in the Japanese martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the Tibetan martyrs of the nineteenth century, it has been perceived in what way the Lord, standing by his promises, has given them in that hour what they should speak [Cf. E. Leblant, Mém. sur la préparation au martyre, in Mem. de l'Académie des inscr. et belles-lettres, vol. XXVIII, p. 68 ff., Paris 1874.] . Moreover, of the passages of Holy Scripture which St. Stratonica brings forward Cf. below, Life, no. 15 f., 18, 20, 22, 26, 42, 44. , she could perhaps have learned some from that Christian young man with whom she conversed for quite a long time Ibid., no. 2. , although I judge that these are rather to be attributed to the writer of the Life.
[5] or taken from the Passion of St. Tryphæna. But since the deeds of St. Stratonica do not greatly differ from what is narrated of a certain St. Tryphæna, likewise slain at Cyzicus and in the same period [Cf. Menologium Basilianum, at the 31st day of Jan. Acta SS., vol. II Jan., p. 1081.] , someone may easily suspect that the Acts of the one were derived from those of the other, or indeed perhaps that they are one and the same virgin and martyr. That this view can in no way be defended, Stephen Assemani proves by many reasons. And in very truth, if we follow the Passions of the holy martyrs, St. Tryphæna must be said to be the daughter of Anastasius, a pagan, and Socratia, a Christian; whereas the father of St. Stratonica, Apollonius, and her mother were both pagans. Moreover the former virgin had given her name to the Christians long before her martyrdom, whereas the latter, on the day on which she was brought over to Christ, began to be tortured for the religion taken up. Nor is it read that there was a companion in the contest of St. Tryphæna, as is reported of St. Stratonica. This one finally, condemned to death by the governor Julius, gave up her life by the sword; while Tryphæna, on the order of the prefect Cæsarius, was cast into a burning furnace; but, wondrously rescued from there, she is hung on high, … then is cast to the beasts… A bull finally attacking her, it tears her with its horns and lays her low Acta SS., vol. II Jan., p. 1081. . It is clear also that altogether different from our St. Stratonica was that Stratonica who underwent martyrdom in Egypt, together with 6485 companions, and who is known from the metrical Ethiopian Hagiology of the anonymous
Abyssinian [Assemani, Acta SS. mart. orient. etc., vol. II, p. 67. Acta SS., vol. I June, p. 33.] .
[6] St. Stratonica, made a Christian and having gained her betrothed for Christ, The sum of our judgment, then, comes to this, that we judge the Syriac Passion neither plainly primitive, nor again to be held of very little account. But before we edit the narrative and weigh it at its due moment, it is expedient to set it before the reader from the beginning condensed in brief. In the reign of the emperor Maximian Galerius, then, St. Stratonica, daughter of Apollonius, a leading man, then addicted to the worship of false deities and altogether ignorant of Christian doctrine, saw many men slain at Cyzicus for the cause of religion. But when to her question a certain young man had disclosed that those martyrs were disciples of Christ, for whose religion they were pouring out their blood, she too professed herself a Christian. Having abjured the worship of the gods, she saw the martyrs crowned with heavenly glory and did not hesitate to venerate their corpses. Solicited by her father to fall away from the new religion, she not only did not comply, but even gained her betrothed Seleucus for Christ, and with him withstood the governor of the province, her father Apollonius, and many noble youths and matrons, striving in vain to move them from their resolve.
[7] many prodigies being wrought, she suffers martyrdom with Seleucus. The betrothed pair, cast into chains, an angel leads out by night, to the place where the martyrs had fallen. Soon they are ordered to be hung on the rack and beaten with rods; likewise afterward to be tortured and slain with the rack, kindled sulfur, burning plates, hunger and thirst. But Christ refreshes his athletes and visits them in prison. Having learned this, Julius tortures them more vehemently, especially after, led to a shrine, they loaded the false deities with insults. And when they are neither harmed by burning lamps brought near, nor yield to any punishments, nor are moved by the prayers of their parents, the governor orders them to be shut up alive in a sepulcher with fetid corpses. Which sepulcher is suddenly changed into a lovely place. So neither fire nor asps sent in bring any pain to the saints. At last, at the emperor's order, struck by the sword, they gladly laid down their life for Christ. Their bodies were honorably buried, and afterward adorned by a house built over them. These things indeed are narrated at length in the Acts presently to be edited; but since the notation of the times there is not very clear, this must now come under examination. The rest will be more conveniently explained in the Annotata.
§ II. On the time of the martyrdom. The quinquennial festivals of the emperor Maximian Galerius.
SS. Stratonica and Seleucus were slain, as it seems, under the quinquennalia, In what year our saints met death is neither expressly handed down in the Acts, nor have the historians dared to determine. The Passion, as it was rendered in Latin by Assemani, begins thus: The emperor Maximian, in the fifth year after taking up the rule, by letters given to the prefects of the provinces, commanded solemn sacrifices to the gods …. There arose thence an atrocious and savage tempest against the Christians. This indeed is a clear notation of time; but it happens very inconveniently that it is sought in vain in the accompanying Syriac text. For here we read: In the fourth year of Numerian, in his reign, he commanded all the judges who were in his whole domain, that offerings and sacrifices should be multiplied in all the cities of his domain; and when he had commanded this command, a hard persecution lay upon the Christians. Since this discrepancy between the primitive Acts and the Latin translation seemed strange, I asked by letter R. P. Johann Bollig, a presbyter of our Society, most skilled in Oriental languages and living at Rome, to inspect diligently the Syriac codex itself in the Vatican library. He wrote back that in the manuscript copy there is distinctly read: in the fourth year of Numerian, but that in the margin Maximian is written in Syriac. In the London codices also Cf. above, no. 2. the fourth year of Numerian is marked. But that prince Cf. Klein, Fasti consulares, p. 112, Leipzig 1881. , declared Cæsar in the year 283, died as emperor already in the year 284, nor can any vehement persecution against the Christians in any way be attributed to him. Rightly therefore (if only he had advised the reader) did Assemani strike out the name of Numerian, and it remains for us to say with him that the martyrdom probably took place while the quinquennalia of some emperor were being discharged, perhaps of Maximian, and indeed in the fifth year of his rule. In the Syriac Acts, however, they are perhaps referred to the fourth year for this reason, that the solemnities were then promulgated, to be celebrated in the year next following Cf. below, no. 17. .
[9] by the governor Julius, To those seeking other indications of the period in the Passion, there occurs first the name of the governor Julius, on whose order SS. Stratonica and Seleucus are reported to have been slain. He is not recorded in other Acts of the saints, at least that I know, unless perhaps the governor of Bithynia Julius, who slew SS. Patrick and his companions at Prusa Acta SS., vol. III April, p. 576 f. , may be said also to have harassed the Christians at one time in neighboring Mysia. For the rest it matters little, since his period also is unascertained by all. The times might be more strictly determined, if it were permitted to think our Julius the same as C. Julius Volusinna Rogatianus, proconsul of the province of Asia, who has become known to us from an ancient inscription [Th. Mommsen, Inscriptiones Asiæ latinæ, part II, no. 6094, p. 983; cf. p. 1131, Berlin 1873. Cf. Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverwaltung, vol. I, p. 347 f., Leipzig 1881.] . This is read on a column distant a third part of an hour from Tralles. But since it is by no means certain that the governor whom the Acts of St. Stratonica record is signified in the inscription, we shall trace the year of death from other indications.
[10] letters being sent by the emperor This place of the Passion is to be noted before the others: When these things had been reported to the governor by the soldiers and the surrounding multitude, he stuck fast in vehement astonishment; and doubtful what was to be determined in that cause, he reported to the emperor all that had been done in this business, whether he himself had seen it or had received it from others. He wrote back that the accused were to be struck with the sword; which exchange of letters, held, as it seems to be gathered from the Acts, within a few days, indicates that the emperor was not so far from Cyzicus; one of the emperors, I say. For (which also is to be regarded), that several princes jointly held the rule in that period is clearly reported in the Passion. For although the attack on the Christians is attributed chiefly to one Cf. below, Life, nos. 10, 26, 37. , edicts of the emperors are not rarely recorded; the governor Julius swears by the victory of the emperors our lords; the martyrs pay penalties because they curse the unconquered emperors. Many similar things occur in the Acts Cf. ibid., nos. 8 ff., 14, 16, 17, 29 etc. . From these we learn also that SS. Stratonica and Seleucus were tortured in the month of August, since they are said to have been detained among chains and shackles, in close custody for five days, in the midst of the heats of August, no one daring to minister a drop of water to them Ibid., nos. 39. … For it was the month of August and intolerable heat Ibid., no. 20. .
[11] to Maximian Galerius, If we briefly comprise what has been said so far, these appear as signs of the time: the holy martyrs contended for the Christian faith in the month of August, in a general persecution, when there were at least two emperors, and one of them, staying not far from Mysia, was celebrating the quinquennial solemnities of his rule. No traces besides these are detected; indeed I would not wish to call these themselves very certain, since the sole surviving monument of the histories does not seem primitive. But, as all other testimonies are lacking, account must be taken of these notes, that the various opinions about the time may be weighed at least by probable judgment. Now these fit none better, I believe, than the period of Maximian Galerius. For, from Hadrian on, who first took a partner in the rule, all the emperors either did not observe quinquennial festivals, or at the time at which they celebrated them were staying far from the Hellespont and from Mysia, or had no partners in the rule; or if all these things perhaps fall in with someone, he did not harass the Christians in the East as is reported in the Acts. So we come to the years of Galerius; and that the martyrdom is to be ascribed to him, and not to one of his colleagues or predecessors, appears from this, that Licinius, of whom alone there could be thought, showed himself hostile to the Christians only six years after taking up the rule.
[12] not indeed, as Assemani holds, There remains therefore Maximian Galerius. But since he, a partner in the rule from the year 293, presided over public affairs until the year 311, into what part of his reign does the contest of St. Stratonica fall? The year 297 Assemani proposes in this way: I think it is hidden from no one that Diocletian, who according to the unanimous opinion of the chronologers was declared emperor at Chalcedon in the year 284 on the 17th day of the month of September, took to himself in partnership of the rule in A. C. 286 Maximian Herculius, who most savagely harassed the Christians in the Gauls; and in the year 292, according to the computation of Tillemont and others, made Maximian Galerius Armentarius also, most hostile to the Christians, and Constantius Chlorus partakers of the rule; and assigned the East to Maximian, and Britain to Constantius. From this moreover it is clear that the solemn sacrifices to the gods proclaimed by Maximian Galerius, which are designated in these Acts, fit exactly in the fifth year of his rule. For Maximian, in the fifth year after taking up the rule, having won the victory over Narseh, king of the Persians, celebrated the quinquennalia, in which, as also in the decennalia, quindecennalia and vicennalia, vows were discharged to the gods: which also Pagi in his critique of Baronius clearly confirms from the monuments of the ancients. Moreover if to the year of Christ 292, in which, as I was just saying, Maximian was entered in the partnership of the rule, five years are added, you will have the two hundred and ninety-seventh year of Christ; to which accordingly the martyrdom of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus is to be referred. And that on the occasion of the quinquennalia a savage persecution against the Christians was stirred up by Maximian Galerius, not only is plain from our Acts, which describe it at the beginning, but also other most accurate writers assert it: In the year, says Pagi, 297 Maximian Galerius gave the quinquennalia and began a persecution against the Christians from the soldiers. The most learned parent of the Annals had gone before, who refers those words of Eusebius, which are read in the Chronicle: namely Veturius, master of the soldiery, persecutes the Christian soldiers, the persecution against us beginning gradually from that time; and those of the Ecclesiastical History, book VIII, chap. 1: The persecution beginning first from those who were serving as soldiers, etc., both to Maximian Galerius and to the same year of Christ 297; who for that reason is to be judged the first of the persecution stirred up by him, which raged in the East for a whole ten years, with perhaps a few intervals excepted Acta SS. mart. Orient. et Occident., part II, p. 66. . So far Assemani.
[13] about the year 297, To call that opinion now to reckoning, it must be noted in passing that Maximian Herculius came into the partnership of the rule not in the year 286, but 285 Cf. above, p. 731. ; nor Maximian
Galerius declared Cæsar in the year 292, but 293 [Mommsen, Berichte über die Verhandlungen der k. Sächs. Akademie der Wissench., vol. III, p. 50 f. Cf. Büdinger, Untersuchungen zur Römischen Kaisergeschichte, vol. III, p. 11.] , nor finally did the soldiers begin to be especially harassed in the year 297, but rather 298 Above, p. 278. Cf. Gams, Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, vol. I, p. 296 ff. . Then the persecution employed before the year 303 differs entirely from that which is sketched in the Acts of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus, and which is reported to have raged not against soldiers alone, but against all Christians. Indeed, even if that was general, who would believe that Galerius gave letters about celebrating quinquennalia and pursuing Christians to the city of Cyzicus, at a time when he held no rule in it? For when in the year 293 he was declared Cæsar, he received not Mysia, in which Cyzicus lay, not Bithynia or other regions of that tract, but Illyricum and the adjacent parts Cf. Acta SS., vol. VI Sept., p. 142. . Over Asia he first presided then, when, Diocletian abdicating the purple in the year 305, he was created Augustus [Cf. Eutropius, Breviarium hist. Rom., book X, chap. 1, p. 168, edited by Droysen, Berlin 1878.] . Nor should you say that he often went beyond the boundaries of his domain, and exercised rule in the kingdom of others, because, as Lactantius says De morte persecutorum, chap. XX, in Migne, Patr. lat., vol. VII, col. 227. , he did what he wished, and thought himself alone lord of the whole world; for these things fall in the time when he held the supreme rule, after the abdication of Diocletian.
[14] but much more probably Other reasons against Assemani's view are available. For in the year 297 Galerius could neither rightly be called emperor, nor was he staying on the Hellespont or in the neighboring provinces Cf. Tillemont, Histoire des empereurs, vol. IV, p. 16, Brussels 1732. : yet both are indicated in the Passion. But, even omitting these things, it is sufficiently clear that the martyrdom is to be referred to another time, and to other quinquennalia, if there are any. And in very truth, Galerius celebrated these solemnities twice, in the year 297 or 298, or the fifth from taking up the dignity of Cæsar, and in the year 309 or 310, which was the fifth year of his rule. The former are certain from the coins cited by Eckhel Doctrina numorum, vol. VIII, p. 483. , the latter from the common laws on that matter: For the Augusti, says Pagi Pagi, in Annal. eccl. Baronii, at the year 310, no. II, p. 470, Lucca 1738. , if they had first been declared Cæsars, gave the quinquennalia and festivals of that kind both of the Cæsarean and of the Augustan rule [Ibid. Cf. Pagi, Annalium Baronii apparatus, Dissert. hypatica, chap. II, p. 30, chap. VI, p. 54, chap. XII, p. 87, chap. XIII, p. 90, Lucca 1740.] . They were celebrated at the beginning or at the end of the five years, namely on the first day of the fifth or sixth year of the rule, with sacrifices, solemn vows, circus and theatrical games, and a gladiatorial show [Ibid., chap. II, no. 4. Cf. Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverwaltung, vol. III, p. 257 ff., Leipzig 1878.] ; that is, for Galerius, in the month of May of the year 309 or 310, as he attained supreme power from the 1st day of May of the year 305.
[15] in the year 310 To this period also fit the other signs of time which are detected in the Passion. That there were then several emperors is hidden from no one; and that one of them, namely Maximian Galerius himself, was living not far from Mysia while the Christians of Cyzicus were being savagely treated is very credible. Certainly not much distant from Cyzicus was that Nicomedia, where the princes for the most part stayed, ever since Diocletian had been zealous to make it equal with Rome in splendor and wealth [Cf. Lactantius, De morte persec., chap. VII, in Migne, Patr. lat., vol. VII, col. 206. Cf. Proxagoras, De laudibus Constantini M., in Photius, Bibliotheca, cod 62, in Migne, Patr. græca, vol. CIII, col. 118.] . Nor is there any doubt that Galerius also, who then presided over Bithynia and the rest of Asia Minor, set up his dwelling there. For the rest it is not handed down by the historians that in the year 309 he stayed long in distant provinces. About the same time he was applying savagery against the Christians; for not to his Cæsarean rule (begun in the year 293), but to his Augustan (from the year 305 on) belongs the most atrocious attack on the true religion Cf. below, no. 18. Büdinger. Untersuch. zur Röm. Kaisergesch., vol. II, p. 231. .
[16] or 309, In sum therefore you will not rashly have concluded that Saints Stratonica and Seleucus fell, the quinquennalia being already begun, or after the 1st day of May of the year 309, and Galerius not yet dead, or before the month of May of the year 311; indeed before the end of the year 310, since the martyrdom took place in the month of August Cf. Life, no. 20. . Which year, however, 309 or 310, is to be chosen is not clear. Yet the former may please more, if what is put forward about the death of Galerius is certain. That Anonymous Valesianus narrates that the emperor wasted away at Serdica (today Sofia in Bulgaria) [Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestæ, at the end, p. 712, edited by Gronovius, Leiden 1693.] . From which it comes about that in the month of August of the year 310 he seems to have been detained far from Mysia and the Hellespont. For, before he departed this life about the month of May of the year 311 [Eusebius, Hist. eccl., book VIII, chap. 17, p. 657 f. Lactantius, De mort. persec., chap. XXXV, col. 250 f. Baiter, Fasti cons., p. CXI.] , he is said to have been sick for almost a whole year, probably in that place in which he died: God struck him, says Lactantius, with an incurable blow De mort. persec., chap. XXXIII, col. 246. , … through a continuous year Ibid., col. 248. . But neither do all historians accept this testimony of Lactantius as plainly certain Büdinger, Unters. zur Röm. Kaiserg., vol. II, p. 238 f. , and some authors today suppose that the Anonymous Valesianus wrongly indicated the place of Galerius's death [De Champagny, Les Césars du IIIc siècle, vol. III, p. 419, 421 and 424, Paris 1870.] , although Nepotianus, the epitomator of Valerius Maximus [Cf. Landolf Sagax's additions to Paul's Hist. Rom., book XI, p. 323, edited by Droysen, in Mon. Germ. hist., Auct. antiq., vol. II, Berlin 1878. Cf. Tillemont, Hist. des empereurs, vol. IV, p. 48, Brussels 1732.] , in some measure supports him. Whatever the case, certainly nothing can be established from the edict which Galerius, in the nineteenth year of his Cæsarean rule, promulgated in favor of the Christians [Lactantius, De mort. persec., chap. XXXV, col. 250. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., book VIII, chap. 17, p. 655 ff.] , and which some recent historians [Hunziker, Diocletianus, in Büdinger, Unters. zur Röm. Kaisergesch., vol. II, p. 237 f.] would have given after the 25th day of July and before the 10th day of November of the year 310. Certainly, if the matter stood so, the triumph of the martyrs would more probably be referred to the month of August of the year 309. But no one now, I suppose, will defend that opinion, since Theodor Mommsen has shown that the Cæsarean rule of Galerius began in the year 293, and not, as most assert, in the year 292. His edict was set forth between the 1st day of March and the 1st of May of the year 311 Ibid., vol. III, p. 11 f. .
[17] as the persecution grew fierce again So far we have disputed about the time of the martyrdom, as if it were fully established that Saints Stratonica and Seleucus laid down their life under the quinquennial festivals of Galerius. Which indeed was so undoubted to all authors, that Assemani changed the fourth year of the rule, which is read in the Syriac copy, into the fifth year, and in his footsteps both Pius Zingerle Echte Akten H. Märtyrer des Morgenlandes, part II, p. 54, Innsbruck 1836. and other writers Cf. J. B. Malou, Martyrium SS. Stratonicæ et Seleuci, p. VII. have followed. And in very truth, if anyone should be unwilling to believe that the fourth was put for the fifth by the error of a copyist, it may at least be conjectured that already in the fourth year there appeared letters about solemnities to be celebrated in the following year, and that so much the more probably, as the opening of the Passion better fits the sacred quinquennalia. And what is added: There arose thence an atrocious and savage tempest against the Christians, that also greatly agrees with those times. That is, to one reviewing the harassers of the Church from Nero to Maximian Galerius it will appear, says Pagi, that the persecutions had a connection with the quindecennial vows and others of that kind, either pronounced or discharged, or with the beginning, or with the fifth, tenth and similar years of the rule [Dissertatio hypatica, chap. III, p. 41, in Annalium Baronii apparatu, Lucca 1740.] ; indeed that they were decreed in the years in which such festivals were to be celebrated, and if already decreed, that they blazed up the more Ibid., p. 40. .
[18] and after new edicts against the Christians. But even if anyone should doubt whether in our Acts the quinquennalia of Galerius are indicated, yet there is not lacking a reason why we should persist in preferring about the year 309 to the others. For besides that the name of Maximian Galerius is written in Syriac in the margin of the codex, to the Augustan rule of the same Galerius, as we have already pointed out, is to be referred the most vehement persecution and the contests of very many eastern martyrs [Lactantius, De mort. persec., chap. IX, col. 207 f., chap. XXI f., col. 227 f. Lactantius, Divinæ institutiones, book V, chap. 11, col. 584 f., in Migne, Patr. lat., vol. VI. Cf. Ruinart, Acta martyrum sincera, p. 491, Amsterdam 1713. Acta SS., vol. III March, p. 83; vol. VIII Oct., p. 424 f., etc. Surius, at the 9th day of Nov., p. 230, at the 26th day of Dec., p. 331, Cologne 1618.] . Then also especially were accustomed to be employed the torments which are recorded in the Passion of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus, such as that punishment of which Lactantius says De mort. persec., chap. XXI, col. 229. : And this he Galerius had first permitted against the Christians, laws being given, that those condemned after torments should be burned with slow fires. Moreover lit and extinguished torches were applied to all the limbs. But of much moment in this is that in the year 308 or 309 a new and most harsh edict against the Christians
appeared, and of such a kind that it could seem to be indicated at the beginning of the Passion. For there we read: In the fourth year of the rule, or, as Assemani translates, the fifth, the emperor commanded solemn sacrifices to the gods in all the cities of the Roman domain. There arose thence an atrocious and savage tempest against the Christians: for they were being captured … and were killed with exquisite punishments and the highest savagery. On that occasion a good many men and women and priests were seized… Now after the middle of the sixth year of the persecution, in the year 308 or 309, when the blaze of the persecution, says Eusebius De martyribus Palæstinæ, chap. IX, p. 694 f., edited by Lämmer. , had already begun to diminish and to be as it were quenched by the sacred blood of the martyrs, again he who had obtained the power of persecuting, in I know not what way or by what impulse, was inflamed anew against the Christians. For suddenly the edicts of Maximin against the Christians were sent in every direction through the individual provinces. At the same time the governors and the prefect of the prætorium himself, setting forth edicts and letters and public orders, pressed on … to put into execution the emperor's precept, by which it was ordered that … they should compel all, both men and women, together with slaves and very infants, to sacrifice and pour libations to the immortal gods and to eat of the sacrificed flesh of the victims, and that all things for sale in the market should be defiled with the libations of the sacrifices. That persecution growing fierce again Eusebius attributes indeed to Maximin alone (emperor from the year 307); but in the Acts of St. Theodore of Amasea, Maximian Galerius also is named: The emperors Maximian and Maximin issued a decree over all the earth which obeyed their rule, that all peoples who believed in the pious religion of the Christians, if they tasted the execrable foods, should be safe, but those who gainsaid should be handed over to the courts [Surius, at the 9th day of Nov., p. 230; cf. ibid., p. 228. Cf. Acts of St. Theodotus of Ancyra, in Acta SS., vol. IV May, p. 151 f. Büdinger, Unters. zur Röm. Kaiserg., vol. II, p. 233. Cf. Migne, Patr. lat., vol. VII, col. 187.] . So again we are brought back to about the year 309, and the death of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus can be tied to that time by no improbable conjecture.
§ III. On the relics of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus. Ecclesiastical cult.
That the bodies may not be thrown into the sea, Scarcely had the most brave young people given up their soul, when the governor ordered their bodies to be thrown into the sea Below, in the Life, last no.; cf. no. 5. . This narrative of the Acts is the more credible because the same is fully ascertained of very many other martyrs. At Nicomedia the ashes of SS. Dorotheus and Gorgonius were snatched from the sepulcher and sunk in the waters, lest anyone, regarding those laid in sepulchers as gods, should adore them in time to come [Eusebius, Hist. eccles., book VIII, chap. 6, p. 620 f.; cf. book IV, chap. 23, p. 286, book V, chap. 2, p. 353, edited by Hug. Lämmer. Cf. Ruinart, Acta sincera martyrum, p. 299, 372, 403.] . Likewise at Alexandria the ashes of St. George the bishop were thrown into the sea, lest, says Ammianus Marcellinus Res gestæ, book XXII, chap. 11, p. 354, edited by Gronovius. , the last remains being gathered, shrines should be built for them. To very many this also happened, which is narrated of SS. Tarachus, Probus and Andronicus, namely that their bones were mixed with profane bones, that they could not be recognized [Cf. Acta SS., vol. V Oct., p. 583. Cf. St. Gregory Naz., vol. I, Orat. V, col. 702. Cf. Prudentius, Hymn., in Migne, Patrol. lat., vol. LX, col. 400. Sozomen, Hist. eccles., book V, chap. 9, p. 606, Mainz 1677.] . In a word, many of the persecutors spared no labor to prevent the Christians from venerating the relics of the martyrs [Mamachi, Origines et antiquit. christ., vol. III, book III, p. 242 ff. Cf. J. Ortlob and G. Hentschel, Martyres furori gentilium ultra mortem expositi, Leipzig 1699.] .
[20] the people resist. Yet at Cyzicus the piety of the faithful prevailed. For not they alone, but all the citizens took it ill that the most noble pair of martyrs should lack burial, which not even enemies grudge Tacitus, Annal., vol. I, book I, no. 22, p. 43, edited by Jacob, 1875. , and which, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus says, is due even to impious and sacrilegious men [Orat. XXV, in praise of Hero, no. 10, vol. I, col. 1211, edited by Migne. Cf. Edm. Leblant, in Mém. de l'Académie des inscr., vol. XXVIII, part II, p. 78 ff.] . So, the whole city condemning the sentence with public mourning, Theoctista intervened,.. a most distinguished woman … related to the governor, … and accordingly strong in great authority with him, who had lately been made a Christian Below, in the Life, no. 52 and last. , and she persuaded the governor to revoke the sentence. Then the people again poured around the bodies of the blessed martyrs, with such stirring of souls, that they drenched the ground on which they had lain with most precious ointments, and also with tears Ibid., last no. . In the Acts also the sacred remains are said to have been laid with spices and wrapped in silk cloth; which in that age was so frequent, that judges even threatened the martyrs that they would prevent women from wrapping their relics in linen, and adorning them with ointments and fragrances Acta SS., vol. V Oct., p. 577. . By this rite indeed very many martyrs and confessors are read to have been laid [Acta SS., vol. III May, p. 283; vol. II June, p. 154; vol. II Jul., p. 547; vol. II Aug., p, 722; vol. IX Oct., p. 7; vol. X Oct., p. 16. St. Paulinus of Nola, in Migne, Patrol. lat., vol. LI, col. 491.] ; but (of which we wish the reader advised), not only to martyrs, but to all venerable men this service was rendered by the ancient custom of the pious [Aringhi, Roma subterranea, book I, chap. 23, no. 20. Cf. Boldetti, Cimiter. de' S. Martiri, vol. I, chap. 59, p. 307.] , nor can that honor, accorded to our saints, be held an indication of ecclesiastical cult.
[21] [The martyrs, venerated at once from their death, are rarely commemorated in the sacred calendars.] Yet their cult, if we give credit to the Passion, cannot be called in doubt. For the sacred bodies, restored after the peace of the Church and the removal of the persecution, the pious care of the Christian emperor honored with a house built over them Below, in the Life, last no. ; or if you wish the Syriac writing rendered word for word: And after there was quiet in the Church, and persecution passed away from the Christians, then there was built over them a holy house by the solicitude of the faithful king Cf. Benedict XIV, De beatif., book 1, chap. 3, no. 8. . We vehemently wonder, therefore, that the holy martyrs, whose contest was most glorious, and whose memory was consecrated by a church built, are commemorated in almost no sacred calendars. Papebroch found them, at the 31st day of October, in the menæa of the Greeks which he designated by the siglum Agan Cf. manuscript cod. of the royal library of Brussels 11322, fol. 30, r°. , and for that reason we bring forward their Acts on this day, at which also our Johann Martinov inscribed the holy fighters in the Greco-Slavic Ecclesiastical Year. Moreover in the Sirmond menæa, whose apograph exists in codex 11322 of the royal library of Brussels Fol. 134, r°. , we read this: Ἄθλησις Στρατονίκου καὶ Σελευκίας τοῦ συζύγου, οἵ τὸ γένος εἶλκον ἐξ Ἀντιοχείας, καὶ ἄθλησις τοῦ ἁγίου Νικομήδου, that is: The contest of Stratonicus and Seleucia, spouse, who drew their race from Antioch, and the contest of St. Nicomedes. In the said apograph these things are not referred to a certain day; but, so far as may be gathered from other saints celebrated there, they belong to about the 9th day of October. Moreover that our martyrs originated from Antioch is not handed down in the Syriac Acts, and therefore either those saints are not the same as those illustrated by Assemani, or (and this opinion seems much nearer to credibility,) the mention of Antioch was taken from a certain primitive Greek Passion, which it is probable once existed. In other menæa of the Greeks there are indeed celebrated at the 9th or 10th day of October Andronicus and Athanasia, spouses, of whom Andronicus was from the great city of Antioch Canisius, Thesaurus monum., vol. III, p. 477, Antwerp, 1725. , although elsewhere they are called Nicomedians Cf. Anecd. Ughelliana. in Italia sac., vol. X, part II, col. 272. . But nowhere do Stratonica and Seleucus occur. On the other hand they are expressly named in the Melchite calendar of the British Museum 14489, on the 9th day of October: Of James the Apostle, son of Alphæus, and of St. Stratonica and Seleucus; likewise, unless I am mistaken, in codex 12179 of the same library, at the 9th day of October: Eustratus and Seleucus. Finally in the Ethiopian calendar, which Ludolf published, at the 15th day of the month Barmahat (March), are recorded Selaphicus and Stratonica his betrothed Commentarius ad Historiam Æthiopicam, p. 411. , and at the 19th day of the same month Stratonica.
PASSION OF SS. STRATONICA AND SELEUCUS
from the Acts of the Martyrs edited by Assemani.
Stratonica, martyr, at Cyzicus on the Propontis. (S.)
Seleucus, martyr, at Cyzicus on the Propontis. (S.)
aFROM THE PRINTED TEXT.
CHAPTER ONE.
The persecution raging at Cyzicus. The conversion of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus. They are solicited in vain to abjure Christ.
Stratonica, seeing many men meeting death The emperor Maximian b, in the fifth year after taking up the rule, by letters given to the prefects of the provinces, commanded solemn sacrifices to the gods in all the cities of the Roman domain. There arose thence an atrocious and savage tempest against the Christians: for men of the Christian profession were being captured, and were killed with exquisite punishments and the highest savagery. On that occasion a good many men and women and priests, seized and carried to Cyzicus, after most bitter interrogations were being dragged to punishment. The rumor of this being scattered through the city, the whole people, to watch the end of the blessed martyrs, poured out after them: for the place lay under the walls of the city; for that reason a good many, drawn to that spectacle, had filled the highest tops of the walls. There was in the same city Apollonius c, a patrician of great name, and for many years prefect of public affairs; and he had a daughter, Stratonica by name, betrothed to Seleucus, a most honorable young man d, who followed the crowd poured out to the spectacle, a great troop of slaves and maidservants accompanying her: and when from the walls of the city she was watching the Christians hastening to death e and offering their necks to the axes with most glad spirit, she vehemently marveled at so great a magnitude of soul. For she saw them, through all the time of the punishment, now raising their eyes to heaven, now cheerfully congratulating one another on a happy end, soon against instant death the cross's
sign fortifying themselves f, and with pious tears and frequent groaning often naming Jesus. For the thing seemed to her next to a miracle; wherefore like one astonished, turning to her company, she said: "What is this that we have now come to see? For we see other men tremble at the announcement of death, and strive with sail and oar to escape it: but these, whom we call Christians, seized by the attendants, show no other countenance than if they had escaped death, and even torn by torments, among the punishments display the look of those laughing. Not so assuredly do the hungry gape after food and drink, as these after death. And to what end, gazing into heaven, do they repeat again and again that cry: Be with us, we beseech you, Lord? Trusting in whom, then, do they bear all these tribulations with an even mind? Who is that one, whom toward the hour of their end they are accustomed to call on with many prayers, Jesus Christ?" And the virgin pressed on, seeking a person by whom she might be instructed in things of this kind.
[2] for the faith of Christ, There happened to be near the place a certain Christian young man, who through fear of the persecution was dissembling his religion. He, hearing Stratonica speaking these words and inquiring, Christ doubtless putting this mind in him, approaches her, onlookers being removed; and then, following up the speech begun by the virgin, discoursed of the Christian religion in this manner: "After our departure from this world there is laid up for us another immortal life, and in it a heavenly and everlasting kingdom: and they know that they will attain this who, as is now being done, bear with an even mind for virtue the tribulations of time. For such constant souls, when they are deprived of the enjoyment of the present light, fly up to heaven, and possess there things that will remain for ever." At these words the blessed virgin blazed up in soul, and again addressing the young man said: "Who will place before my eyes that most blessed life which you were just proclaiming, to be led above the heavens themselves?" The young man said to her: "If you believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, fixed to the cross for the salvation of men, he will illumine your mind with his divine light, and, the darkness inborn in our condition being scattered, he will set before your eyes for viewing the array of that heavenly glory." Then the virgin said: "If I shall profess what the Christians, when about to meet death, are accustomed to proclaim, tell me, I beg, will that heavenly felicity shine on me?" He said to her: "Whatever I have said to you so far is so true that nothing is truer. And certainly, if, abjuring the superstition of idols, you believe from the soul in God, the maker of the world, he will at once disclose to you the secret glory of that hidden age."
[3] and she herself becomes a Christian These and such things both were discussing between themselves, the household meanwhile marveling that the virgin, who because of her parent's highest dignity did not deem even the leading men of the city worthy of address, was yet talking at such length with that unknown young man. But she, turning over in her soul the words of the Christian youth, was resolving to approach Christ: for she was held imbued with the superstition of idols, the errors of her parents. But Christ, who sent Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch, that by him he might be taught the truth and believe in God, likewise destined this youth to instruct the virgin, that with him as interpreter she might learn the path of truth, and soon also, having run the course of virtue, might come to the lot of the saints, namely to the shining seats of the blessed. Turning over, then, the new counsels which that Christian young man had suggested, Stratonica suddenly leaps up from her chair, and gazing into heaven, taught by the example of the martyrs, fortifies her forehead with the sign of the cross and with raised voice says: "Lord Jesus Christ, true God of the Christians, open my eyes, that I may drink in the divine light of the invisible world, and by sure experience may learn that whatever I have learned from this youth is true. Rescue, I beg, my life now from destruction, and in your pity on me illumine my mind with the light of truth."
[4] and she beholds the martyrs adorned with heavenly glory. Then heaven seemed to be opened, and from it a conspicuous light formed in the appearance of a column to be sent forth, and to rest on the corpses of the martyrs thrown before the governor's chair; and also the souls of the Christians, who were being killed one after another following the first, to ascend to heaven. Struck in no moderate degree by that admirable vision, Stratonica was at first terrified; soon, leaving her company, she came down from the walls on which she had been sitting, and through the nearest gate of the city rushed in haste to the place in which the Christians were being slaughtered, and breaking through the densely packed crowd, setting aside all care of her condition and dignity, cast herself upon the bodies of the slaughtered martyrs, and with raised voice, weeping and groaning, said: "Lord Jesus Christ, grant me, I beg, an end of life equal with these, who have been destroyed for your name, and join my limbs to their limbs."
[5] Back at home and refreshed by a wondrous vision, When these things had been at once reported by the servants standing around to her father Apollonius, he was affected with incredible grief, so that he could not command himself not to tear his garments, and wretchedly wailing in the manner of women, to run to the place, where, beholding his daughter lying on the corpses of the Christians and most foully sprinkled with their blood, he snatches her from the midst of the multitude, in the presence of the prefect, and says: "What fury, daughter, has seized you, that you should stir up this tumult today with so great a disgrace to our family, in the sight of all the people of Cyzicus?" The virgin said to him: "I have not dared such things to sprinkle any stain of infamy on our name, but to free both you and me from eternal ignominy. Which indeed I hope I shall attain, if you yourself agree with me, and cast off the useless and foolish superstition of empty gods." These words stirred still more abundant tears in the old man. The governor, pitying Apollonius, oppressed with most grievous mourning and weeping, at once ordered the corpses of the Christians to be removed far off, and to be thrown into the sea; and he sharply rebuked Stratonica. Soon he betook himself with his staff into the city, disturbed in no moderate degree in mind by the girl's deed. She, with her garments stained with blood and her eyes swollen from excessive weeping, was compelled, as night was now coming on, to return home together with her father. Here moreover, entering a chamber, far from the conversation and table of the household, she spent the whole night sleepless and fasting in prayer, frequently and piously repeating this: "Lord Jesus Christ, do not, I beg, desert me, since I have believed in you." And behold, in the midst of the darkness she sees the bedroom gleaming with an unusual light, which far surpassed the radiance of the sun, and standing behind her a young man with countenance flashing like lightning, who gently addressing her said: "See, Stratonica, that you despise the punishments threatened to you by the enemies of Christ, as you are to fight in no doubtful hope of victory, which a most blessed lot with the saints will most certainly follow." Having said this, he withdrew from her eyes; and she wondrously blazed up to defend the faith of Christ.
[6] she is solicited by her father in vain as to the faith, It had scarcely dawned when her father runs weeping to the virgin's chamber; and he finds her praying, kneeling on the ground. Then he says: "I beg you, daughter, do not suffer me, an old man now worn out with age, to depart from life sad and consumed with mourning, but at least comfort me with your speech, especially since you are the greatest cause of my grief." Stratonica said to him: "If you hearken to me, and, casting off the superstition of empty gods, resolve hereafter to worship God, the maker of the world, I will willingly do whatever you order." Then he said: "Do you think then that it befits a wise person, despising the gods whom the emperors revere, to adore a man afflicted at Jerusalem by the Jews with the foulest punishment of the cross?" His daughter said to him: "I indeed think it most just to render divine honors to Christ, who for my salvation and that common to the human race laid down his life on the cross at Jerusalem, and it is fixed for me to follow him through weapons, and through fires and through all the most bitter torments: for I do not doubt that my salvation is his care." These things, being said assertively by the virgin, vehemently and more than can be said troubled the wretched old man. Wherefore, tearing his garments again, boiling with sadness and anger at the same time, he goes at once to the governor Julius g, to impart his grief to him.
[7] and she brings over her betrothed Seleucus to the true religion. Meanwhile Stratonica, having gained an opportune occasion from her father's absence, goes back to the place in which the corpses of the Christians had fallen. And behold, outside the city gate there meets the girl Seleucus, her betrothed, who by chance at that time, surrounded by a circle of noble youths, had turned aside there. Here Stratonica, impelled by the divine love with which she was drunk, and therefore forgetful of her condition, freely addresses the young man, and says: "Come then, brother Seleucus, let us now strive together for a new life and one removed from the contagion of the body. Let us hasten to him who alone has restored the lost affairs of men. Let us seek the day of truth, and, spurning the delights of the perishable marriage-chamber, let us think hereafter of the seats of everlasting light." By these and other such words of Stratonica Seleucus seemed to be moved in no small degree in soul, drinking in her words, as they say, with thirsty ears and attentively turning them over with himself: for he greatly loved the virgin. Finally he asks whether Stratonica believed that some deity superior to the ancestral gods presides over human affairs. She answered him: "The gods whom our city has hitherto worshiped, you must think to be mute and lifeless statues. But Jesus, in whom I have believed, and by whose pious light I have lately been illumined, by whose death also the human race, long lost, has been repaired, he is God and the Son of God, who for the salvation of mortals by no means hesitated to put on flesh and to undergo the punishment of the cross." While Seleucus vehemently marveled at these things, Stratonica prayed to God for the young man's salvation thus: "Lord Jesus Christ, illumine, I beg, the mind of this youth with your divine light: let the brightness of your grace, I pray, shine on his heart, that he may believe in you and understand that you are the true God, lord of heaven and earth." Soon, confidently taking the hand of Seleucus, both together go on to the place where the bodies of the holy martyrs had lain. Here Stratonica again flings herself prone, and embraces the earth sprinkled with the blood of the martyrs, with frequent sobs and poured-out tears adjuring God to be favorable to her.
[8] When the governor wishes to torture them, When the household of each standing around took these things most indignantly, they had them at once reported to Apollonius, who then happened to be with the governor. Straightway both hasten to the place, each with his company. There they find Seleucus and Stratonica praying, kneeling on the ground. Then the governor, turning to Apollonius, said: "It is a matter, Apollonius, truly by no means to be passed over by me in silence, that contrary to the edicts of the emperors you suffer your daughter, leaving the gods of the Roman princes, to be entangled in the superstition of the Christians." Apollonius said to him: "There is no reason, excellent governor, why you should rightly be angry with me in this business; for I neither resist the public laws nor despise the ancestral gods." Then the governor said: "Why then does your daughter deny that those are gods whom the whole city worships?" Apollonius said to him: "By the victory of the emperors our lords, I swear that until now I did not know this deed. Moreover when lately punishment was being taken on those who are called Christians, my daughter without my counsel followed the crowd, by the pleasure of seeing a novelty thither
drawn. They reported that the girl, while those men were being slaughtered, sat on the walls. From that day moreover this most stubborn error has clung to her mind; and in what way this was done is, as I was saying, wholly unknown to me." But the governor said: "You sow words, Apollonius. I have said that it is a matter which I cannot dissemble with impunity; and you who permit the sacred rites of the gods to be violated by your own and public laws to be trampled, see meanwhile in what way you may clear yourself." Apollonius answered him: "Am I then to be made guilty, if by chance one of my own, against my will, has sinned at all against the laws? I call all the gods to witness that I have been affected with such mourning from that matter, that I could scarcely restrain my soul from casting myself headlong at once into the sea."
[9] Apollonius obtains a truce Then the governor said: "Since by the favor of the emperors you hold the first place in the senate h, I think it unworthy that anyone should create trouble for you in this business before the prince; but your daughter, unless, laying aside that stubbornness, she consents willingly to resume the former religion, I shall compel by torments, and, you being dismissed, she alone shall pay the penalties established for this crime." Then Apollonius begs the governor to put off the examination for seven days: "In which interval," he adds, "I trust that I shall bring back my daughter to a saner mind, employing also for that business the labor of matrons familiar to the girl. But if this should turn out less according to my wish, you will hereafter be free to use the power granted by the emperors, and to recall the stubborn woman to her duty by exquisite tortures." Then the governor, having said first that he assented to Apollonius's prayers, added: "But if she goes on thereafter resisting the laws, by all the gods together and by the victory of our lords I swear that she will be killed by all the most bitter punishments, to be a terrible example to the women of Cyzicus, that they may not hereafter dare to hold the gods of small account." By these threats Stratonica was so little terrified that she was thereby the more confirmed in her purpose.
[10] and in vain tries to bend his daughter; Afterward the governor, gently addressing the virgin, said: "What madness at last, O Stratonica, has driven you into this error unworthy of a noble woman, that, leaving the gods, rulers of the universe, you should follow the empty invention of the Christian religion?" — "Would," she answered, "that this error had clung to your mind, or to the most cruel emperor, who ordered you to undertake this most iniquitous war against Christ, the savior of the world." Then the governor, taking most ill the emperor being affected with such an insult, blazed up, and raging said: "Did you hear, Apollonius, your daughter insulting the unconquered emperors?" Having said this, he went back to the city, turning over all savage plans against the virgin. Meanwhile Apollonius, trusting that his daughter would be drawn from her purpose by prayers and tears, approached her in this manner: "I beg you, daughter, let pity at last seize you for your parent and your whole house, especially since by this your evil-speaking against the emperor you have brought us all into the highest danger." Stratonica said to him: "Once I have admonished you, father, and again you must now be admonished by me, that unless, renouncing the superstition of empty gods, you adore God, whom we Christians worship, I now refuse and deny you as my father, and I cast off all your people together, nor shall I hereafter say that you are my parent, nor I your daughter; hereafter in the place of father and mother, brothers and sisters, and also kinship and race will be for me the one in whom I have believed, and who has freed me from error and destruction, Jesus Christ. Wherefore, I beg, do not go on wasting your labor with me, nor trust that by your words or those of any mortal I shall be drawn from my purpose." At this answer of the girl her father, more angry than can be said, said: "I call all the gods to witness, that you shall have me, as avenger of our despised ancestral religion, more severe than the governor, nor shall I ever cease until you abjure Christ. And whether he can snatch you from my hands or not, must now be tested." But Stratonica, caring not a straw for the man's mad threats, said: "Whatever angers you hide in your breast, father, pour out on me alone. Jesus, in whom I have believed, will supply me with patience and strength for this fight. Aided by his divinity, moreover, I trust that I shall overcome all the arts of your wickedness."
[11] likewise many youths and noble matrons. Straightway Apollonius orders Stratonica and Seleucus to be led by slaves into the city, and to be shut up in a dark chamber enclosed by a triple room. Meanwhile he calls together noble matrons, and asks them to busy themselves in drawing his daughter from her resolve. On which occasion there came also youths of the first nobility, to admonish Seleucus, their old companion, likewise about the present danger. Entering the chamber therefore all together, they exhort the athletes of Christ, ask, adjure them that at length they come to their senses, and be willing to consult their own safety. But they, their eyes fixed on heaven, were meanwhile supplicating our Lord Jesus Christ in these words: "Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, be with us." Soon Stratonica, turning from prayers to the pagans standing around, sharply rebukes them: "Hence," she says, "take your steps quickly, most wicked attendants of Satan. Known are the frauds which you arrange against the Christians, persuading us to set light after darkness: which you yourselves do in blind error, adoring blind, deaf and mute images. But we, who have drunk in the true light through faith, if we should hereafter adore such empty gods, would be plainly mad. You moreover who are blind, worship lifeless statues, as you please, only go from here far away from our sight." This speech of Stratonica dissolved the assembly. For, informed by this that it would never be that those companions, who had once come to the Christian religion, would allow themselves to be moved from their purpose, they departed, not without most grievous grief of soul, which the danger and mournful fate of their dearest ones aroused.
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER TWO.
SS. Stratonica and Seleucus comforted by an angel. They are tortured with the rack, rods, sulfur and plates. They are visited by Christ.
By night an angel leads them from prison Toward evening, as happens, dinner is prepared within the same chamber; but the blessed martyrs of Christ, setting aside the feast, passed what remained of the night-time sleepless and fasting, in suspense of fixed thought on divine things. And behold, when the night was far gone, they suddenly see the house illumined with heavenly light, and standing behind them a young man of august appearance and with countenance gleaming like lightning, who, gently addressing the holy athletes of Christ, says: "Be of strong and great soul, friends, nor
let the torments threatened by the governor terrify you: for I myself will be your companion in this contest, nor will I desert you in any place, until, the war happily finished, I lead you to the crown." Having said this, the young man withdrew from their eyes. But they, wondrously inflamed, and raised to a sure hope of victory, say: "We adore you, Christ, who bring sure salvation and safety to all who piously call on you." They rise therefore, and in the silence of the night try the doors of the prison; and when they found them unlocked and open by a hidden force, and saw the young man standing in the vestibule and showing the way, they straightway follow him as he went before, ignorant meanwhile where he was leading, until they came to the city gate, which, opening of itself, they arrived at the place where the martyrs of Christ had fallen. At first light it was discovered that Stratonica and Seleucus had fled, and when they appeared nowhere, all whom the matter concerned being in tumult, a huge storm was stirred up against the doorkeepers.
[13] to the place in which the martyrs had fallen. It happened meanwhile that certain of Apollonius's household came to that place, and found there Seleucus and Stratonica kneeling and praying. When they at once reported this to Apollonius and to the governor of the city, Apollonius, thinking this was done by the fraud of slaves, vehemently blazed up, and with drawn sword rushes on the guards of the prison. They on the contrary affirmed on oath, a surety being established, that the manner of that flight was altogether unknown to them. A like inquiry also was held by the governor against the guards of the city gate, and was repelled by a like answer from them. Wherefore the governor together with Apollonius hasten quickly to the place where they had learned that Stratonica and Seleucus were staying, and they find them praying as before. Then the governor, looking at Stratonica with fierce countenance, says: "Now at last it has been shown, most shameless Stratonica, that you have long since begun to be mad: for you wretches roll upon the corpses of slaughtered men, nor are you ashamed to defile your garments with unclean blood, when there is no sane person who does not vehemently shudder at it." The blessed martyrs said to him: "To you, as people ignorant of God, that blood causes nausea: but to us, imbued with divine light, it offers a most delightful sight, and raises us to the hope of heavenly help, since through this blood of the martyrs of Christ God is reconciled to mortals. But we vehemently grieve for your blindness and stupidity, since how very many are carried by your labor to the heavenly kingdom, having merited the crown by the savage tortures by which they are killed by you. But you shortly are to be snatched away to a most severe judgment, to plead your cause, with those very ones whom you have condemned presiding."
[14] where they are questioned by the governor To these things the governor said: "You rave, Stratonica, and, what by no means befits a chaste woman, you are excessive in chattering: for you were just now affecting the unconquered emperors with reproaches, you were besides insulting the gods, whom it was surely fitting to revere; and now moreover you wantonly assail me with insult. But I, thinking that some deference was due to your father, have resolved to deal patiently with you." Stratonica said to him: "You are deceived, governor; for I do not think that I have on earth father or mother or kin, since my parents, brothers and sisters now hold heaven; for from there I have received that after various errors I have at last at some time come to my senses." Then the governor said: "I want you for a few words, Stratonica; wherefore letting go these trifles, tell clearly whether you suborned any of the slaves, that the doors might be open to you as you strove to come here." To this Stratonica said: "I swear by Christ both that no one was suborned by us, and that the doors were unlocked for us by no mortal, as we were meditating flight from that prison. For there is nothing not easy to Christ, and whatever has pleased him both in heaven and on earth is ready at hand for him to carry out and accomplish. So formerly, when he was buried by the impious Jews, like you, guards being added at the sepulcher and the stone sealed, nevertheless when it pleased him, he escaped from the tomb and ascended to heaven, to sit at the right hand of him by whom he had been sent. For he is God, Son of God, and he governs heaven and earth by his power and judgment. Which matter vehemently troubled the guards of the sepulcher, as also now you are troubled by our flight from that prison. Take this, then, as a most certain fact, that not by any mortal, but by Christ the doors were opened to us as we purposed to come here; but also if you cease for a while from inflicting slaughter on us, I trust that you will see greater miracles than these, to be wrought surely by the power of Christ, that thereby his divine power may become known to mortals through his servants."
[15] and they are reproved. Then the governor said: "Now indeed many sophists will be necessary to us to speak against you. I indeed vehemently wonder how it has come about that, although you have never turned over the books of the Christians, you so confidently bring forth and interpret so many things from them." Stratonica said to him: "Rather I am more vehemently astonished at your blindness, who do not grasp the miracles set before your eyes. For this also is read foretold in the sacred codices of the Christians in these words: In the last days, says God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." Here the governor, turning his eyes on Apollonius and his familiars standing around, says: "Do you see your daughter's shamelessness? Assuredly the customs of well-born men do not allow this, which order men indeed to speak, but women to be silent, especially virgins. But now the contrary is done; for Seleucus is silent, while Stratonica makes no end of contradicting." Apollonius said to him: "By your head I swear that my daughter was never heard by anyone speaking in a raised voice, and that it was not even permitted to anyone to look at her face. From where she has drunk in this garrulity and petulance I altogether do not know."
[16] Threats of torments being applied in vain, Then the governor, rebuking Stratonica again, says: "Ho, you there, put away this boldness, which will bring you sure destruction." Stratonica said to him: "What you think boldness, that prepares for me the safest salvation: for he acts far more excellently who, setting aside shame, fights for his salvation, than he who is silent, too anxiously concerned about decorum; which also the sacred letters teach us in these words: There is a shame that brings sin." Then the governor said: "Since you refuse to cast off that worst sect, which you have lately embraced, I shall have to deal with you hereafter with the severity prescribed by the laws of the unconquered princes. For I see that with words not even the sophists themselves can contend with you." The blessed martyrs said to him: "Truly this was almost in our prayers, that whatever you have threatened so far you should more quickly carry out on us, that, the power of Christ working in us, your boldness may confess itself at last overcome." Then the governor said: "With scourges and manifold blows I shall cut up your bodies, for the terror of your fellows." The martyrs said to him: "Come then, perform this, lest you seem to have poured out words rashly. Whatever punishments occur to your mind, carry them out on us. And the body indeed you have in your power; but the soul we have already handed over to God." Then the governor, addressing Apollonius, said: "I indeed had resolved to deal more mildly with this most petulant and impious woman as a favor to you; but now I fear lest, the case seeping through to the emperors, I myself may bear the penalty of the insults hurled against them and of their despised majesty. For you know that this has been provided by the unconquered princes, that whoever are convicted of worshiping Jesus, afflicted by the Jews at Jerusalem with the punishment of the cross, should be tortured with every kind of torture and killed; indeed even that a like penalty should involve also relatives who had dissembled such a crime, when they ought to have reported it at once to the judges."
[17] Apollonius approving, Apollonius said to him: "By the victory of our lords, I swear that until that very day on which punishment was inflicted on the Christians, no mark of that rebellious sect in my daughter was detected by me. Indeed, so far as I could understand, she always seemed to me to surpass all in piety and religion in adoring the gods and burning incense. Of what then am I myself guilty, especially since she denies that I am her father? So I do not refuse that you have her in your power; let her forthwith pay the penalties established by the edict of the princes." Then the governor, turning to Stratonica, said: "You now, what do you resolve? Whether, laying aside that stubbornness, to worship the gods in time to come, and to burn incense to them according to custom?" Stratonica said to him: "Do not, I beg you, allow the anger once conceived against us now to cool down, but whatever punishments you have long been threatening on oath, carry out at once; nor flatter yourself perhaps with the empty hope that any of us will be so foolish as to prefer to follow your counsels in this business. So set out scourges, clubs, fires, prisons, and as many punishments as shall come to your mind: you will find us forewarned and prepared for all the attempts of your wickedness."
[18] Stratonica is beaten with rods Then the governor vehemently blazed up, and ordered both to be stretched on the rack and to be beaten with rough staffs of pomegranate bristling with thorns a. When therefore Stratonica was being most sharply beaten by the most ferocious lictors, and along with her garments her very flesh was dissolving, with her eyes fixed on heaven she prayed in this manner: "Lord Jesus Christ, be with me in this contest." Meanwhile blood was flowing, her body failing from the continual beating, when the governor, thinking the virgin broken by the most bitter pain, trying her again, said: "Are you at last persuaded to do what is commanded, you who see with your eyes that the shreds of your flesh, cut by the blows from your torn limbs, have covered the pavement?" Stratonica said to him: "Nor does it grieve me to suffer these things, since one of the apostles has taught us that wounded bodies also are at some time to be restored to their former wholeness."
[19] and Seleucus, Straightway the governor commands Seleucus to be brought forth for examination. First, then, gently addressing the young man, he says: "Think, O Seleucus, what most befits this flower of age, this appearance of most beautiful countenance; whether, hearkening to my admonitions, you should worship the gods and burn incense to them, as you used to do, and so depart from the emperors increased by new honors according to your merit, or on the contrary persist obstinately in the sacrilegious opinion of Stratonica? By her, I am well enough aware, you have been shamefully seduced, to take up the vain superstition of the Christians. For it does not befit a wise young man to follow the trifles of a mad woman." Seleucus said to him: "I indeed, if after I have pledged my faith to the true and living God I should cast him off, and should take up again the religion of images that will profit me nothing, should be mad. For what indeed should I say that such gods are, but certain marbles skillfully fashioned into statues? It is therefore certain and fixed to persevere constantly in the resolve of Stratonica, my dearest sister. In vain, governor, you threaten punishments; for we do not judge that you or the most iniquitous emperor is to be hearkened to in this." To these things the governor said: "So then, most wicked head and worthy of the foulest punishment, you call the gods, rulers of the universe, images? I truly regret having spoken with you on this matter: for I thought that you were wise as one who knew how to be silent, and I had not yet persuaded myself that of the wicked
Stratonica's opinion was clinging in your marrow." Straightway he orders him to be beaten with clubs, until, his blood drained, his body should collapse on the ground. But Stratonica succors Seleucus as he trembled among the hands of the lictors, and taking his hand she says: "Come, brother, trust in our Lord Jesus Christ, and relying on his help, shake off all fear. Come now, with your eyes raised to heaven, call confidently on Jesus, ask him to be favorably present to you." Then the blessed Seleucus, lifting his eyes to heaven, says in a loud voice to the Lord Jesus Christ: "Be with me." Straightway, as if his strength of soul had been entirely restored, that fear, struck by the sight of the present punishment, vanished, especially after he beheld an angel fallen from heaven standing by him and exhorting him to perseverance.
[20] and then they are thrust into prison; So after that most bitter clubbing the governor ordered both athletes of Christ to be thrust into a solitary prison. He himself meanwhile returns to the city, embittered in no moderate degree that he had uselessly spent labor on the blessed martyrs, as the outcome of the matter declared, since they openly insulted him and laughed at his empty zeal; and he most severely provided that no one should bring them water: for it was the month of August and intolerable heat. So the athletes of Christ lay like bloodless corpses and, with numbed limbs, immovable trunks, with corruption flowing together with blood, the flesh gaping on all sides, so that the governor himself marveled at their endurance and magnitude of soul. On the next day, sitting on the tribunal b, he orders the holy martyrs of Christ to be brought forth again for examination, in which they were so far from fear, that in their countenance and the whole bearing of the body the inmost joy of their exulting soul betrayed itself of its own accord. Then the governor questions the accused: "What judgment," he says, "remains with you after this bitterness of examinations?" The holy martyrs said to him: "Truly no other than has been until now, that we believe that neither you nor your impious emperor, cruelest of all men, is to be hearkened to." — "There remains to me likewise the judgment," the governor answered, "to exercise you with the most bitter punishments, unless you obey the emperor forthwith." — "If such are your threats," they reply, "assuredly you are most weak." — "So then," the governor resumes, "do you persist in the same purpose even so far, most wicked heads?" Then Stratonica said: "Indeed, it is certain to hold it even to the end of life, on account of the oracle of our Lord, promising to those who persevere in good purpose life and an everlasting kingdom."
[21] the next day ordered to be suffocated with sulfur, Incensed by these words, the governor orders the servants of Christ to be hung up, then a mass of sulfur piled there to be set alight, and the accused to be overwhelmed by the smoke leaping up from it, until, their breath shut off, they should expire. When the lictors had carried this out quicker than a word, and now, the sulfur being inflamed, the pestilent fume was invading the mouths of the martyrs, with their eyes raised to heaven they prayed thus to God: "Christ, Son of God, we beseech you, have mercy on us." Immediately the stench of the sulfur was turned into a most sweet fragrance. And while the governor hoped that the athletes of Christ would shortly be suffocated by that vapor, on the contrary it happened that they were greatly the more refreshed by it, the punishment being turned to delights. Such a punishment therefore having been prolonged for no moderate time, the governor at length, addressing the martyrs, said: "Now you have perished, O sacrilegious and impious despisers of the gods. Where has that Christ of yours gone, whom you were just proclaiming? Let him come now, and snatch you from this trouble, if he is so great; for you were testifying that he is God."
[22] they are in no way harmed; Then Stratonica, looking sternly at the governor and laughing, says: "O head plainly devoid of mind and most foolish of all mortals! Do you not notice that this smoke of sulfur, by which you had hoped we would soon be suffocated, has turned rather to our pleasure, than which assuredly we could never have drawn a more delightful from any most precious fragrances? That God, namely, who sent his angel to Hananiah and his companions, sent into the furnace at Babylon, and changed the nature of fire and bathed them with sweet dew, he himself has now turned that stench for us into the fragrance of sweet-smelling spices. And you, unless the ice of a sacrilegious superstition had blinded your mind and eyes, would surely see very admirable things, which in your presence are being done by this same God of ours, to the ignominy indeed and confusion of your impiety, but to the glory and praise of his name." But the governor, hearing Stratonica insulting him, and at the same time noticing that she had received plainly no detriment from that sulfurous vapor, was terrified indeed and, turning to the lictors, said: "How at last shall I say it could have happened that these Christians, exposed so long to the smoke of sulfur, have by no means perished? See that you have not perhaps set fire to some other substance by mistake." The lictors said to him: "By your head, lord, we swear that a burning mass of sulfur was placed by us under the mouth of these Christians, as you yourself commanded; but how it was turned into fragrant spices altogether escapes us."
[23] indeed the burning plates grow cold. Yet the governor, made in no way milder by that portent, orders the martyrs at once to be stripped, and at the same time to be scorched with red-hot plates. And already the attendants had made the plates white-hot, when the people began to riot against the governor, and raising a shout contended that the martyrs should be killed not by fire but by steel: for they thought that they would at once be killed among the white-hot plates. But the governor, rebuking the multitude, orders the lictors to pursue the interrupted examination, and the accused, with hands bound behind their backs, to be rolled upon the burning plates c. When the executioners forthwith carried this out, the holy martyrs, with eyes fixed on heaven, turning to prayers, said: "Lord Jesus Christ, succor us now by your unconquered clemency." Straightway the white-hot plates, as if covered over with ice, grew plainly cold, so that the servants of Christ, modulating that verse from the psalms: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man may do to me, and other hymns of praise to God, seemed to leap and dance upon them for joy. And while the crowd was astonished and proclaiming a miracle, the governor on the contrary affirmed that these were delusions of the magic art. Stratonica said to him: "We Christians have nowhere learned the incantations of a nefarious art; but Christ, in whom we have believed, himself overturns your schemes, and confounds Satan dwelling in you and in your emperor, who does not cease to suggest to you iniquitous plans against his servants."
[24] Again they are beaten with clubs, Wherefore the governor blazed up into such anger that he seemed plainly to rage. Straightway he presses on, and orders the blessed martyrs, bound with cords d, to be hung on the rack, and again most savagely beaten with clubs; which at once was done, until, their breath failing, they collapsed half-dead on the ground. To the governor insulting them amid the most bitter butchery, and asking: "Where now has that God in whom you have believed turned aside, worst of enchanters? Let him come now and help you;" Stratonica answered: "Truly Jesus Christ is with us, nor has he ever departed from our side; but he puts off for a while snatching us from your hands, that he may test our constancy and manifest his power through our endurance. And you, the more hostile you are to us, the more ample a reward you unwittingly pile up, to be rendered to us on the last day of the common resurrection."
[25] and in prison deprived of all food. Straightway the governor commands both to be thrust into prison, all provisions being forbidden, threatening capital punishment if anyone should bring them even a drop of water. In this manner they lay in closest custody for three days, like trunks unmoved with numbed limbs. In which interval they were without drink and food, in the extreme distress of all things, no one daring to offer them even a drop of water. And now night had come on, when a divine light from heaven suddenly seemed to shine, and an angel of the Lord to be present, at whose presence they at once felt their strength restored and renewed, and all pains of soul and body wholly taken away, and moreover their thirst plainly quenched. Then the angel, addressing both, says: "Put away fear, and take up a spirit worthy of strong men: for many evils await you from the impious; yet all things will be safe for you: for the adversaries will depart from the battle line with such ignominy, that this fight will at last turn to glory for you, but to disgrace for them." At that spectacle and most auspicious news the servants of God seemed to be poured out into such pleasure, that they restrained neither voice nor applause, giving the greatest thanks they could to God, whom they understood to be so favorable and present to them.
[26] on the fourth day they are found sound. After four days the attendants are ordered by the governor to set the accused again for examination: "If however," he adds, "they still breathe in safety; for I believe that they have died." And behold, the lictors, entering the prison, find them fully recovered, see them standing, and hear them harmoniously modulating the psalm: Heal the contritions of my heart; and again: You who heal the contrite of heart and bind up their wounds. Knowing this, the lictors at once hasten to the governor, and say: "Know that the Christians, whom you lately consigned to public custody and supposed dead, have now recovered, and are going about the prison free from all sickness and fear." At that news the governor was disturbed in no moderate degree, thinking that the guard of the prison, corrupted by money, had let physicians into the prison, and that by their labor the accused had been cured. Wherefore he orders him at once to come to plead his cause; and when he had come, he sharply rebukes him, and says: "Had I not provided under capital penalty, that no one should go in to those Christian enchanters, hostile to the gods and the emperor? But you on the contrary, perhaps suborned by money accepted from them, have brought physicians into the prison, to cure their wounds. Consider now that this crime is to be paid for with your head." But the guard of the prison answered: "By your head, lord, I swear, and by the victory of our lords, that no one has gone in to those Christians, and I have as witnesses of my words as many as have been continually with me during this time:" At once he produces suitable witnesses, who affirmed that they had indeed kept continuous watch at the same time at the doors of the prison, and that it was therefore sufficiently ascertained by them that no one had entered to the Christians shut up there.
[27] after they have been visited by Christ. There came also certain of the nobles of the city, to intercede for the guard of the prison with the governor, asserting that nothing worthy of that punishment had been committed by him, that accordingly what he affirmed was true, that the man was otherwise upright and pious toward the gods, and also most compliant to the emperor. To these things the guard of the prison, narrating a vision presented to him in the prison, said: "On the past night an unknown voice struck my ears; trembling, I at once hasten to the doors of the prison, and while I listened attentively, I found that a voice was coming forth from that part of the prison in which those Christians were, and it seemed to be that of a man discoursing much back and forth; then through the bolt of the door I explore the matter more accurately with my eyes; here moreover I see a light brighter than noon, and a man sitting beside those Christians, of august appearance, and with a countenance gleaming in the likeness of lightning, and I hear him conversing with them in friendly fashion. Vehemently terrified by that apparition, I call together my household to the spectacle, who coming near both saw what I have told, and now testify. I relate therefore a matter most fully attested and altogether most certain to me."
ANNOTATA.
CHAPTER THREE.
The holy martyrs are tortured with one torture after another. They load the false deities with insults.
Informed of the prodigy, the governor, These things the guard of the prison was narrating, when the governor, disturbed in no moderate degree that the thing happened against his wish, and at the same time wonderingly turning over with himself the miracle confirmed by so many testimonies, resolved to examine the matter himself by himself, and orders the accused to come in haste into his sight. When he beheld them sound and far from all fear and sadness, nor having any indicating mark of the past clubbing, he says: "Tell by the art of what physicians you have recovered." Then Stratonica, looking at the governor, laughed. The governor said to her: "Why do you laugh, mad woman?" Then she said: "I laugh at you, so stupid and dull * do you seem to me. But, if I should indicate the physician by whose labor we have recovered, what trouble at last do you judge that you can bring upon him?" Then the governor said: "By the victory of our lords I swear a that the one guilty of this crime shall pay me most bitter penalties, and shall be burned without delay in the flames." Stratonica said to him: "You are all assuredly like beasts of burden, lacking mind and sense, as those who by no means see the prodigies wrought before your eyes. What man, I pray you, could bring about what you see done in us? But you, after you have most savagely torn our bodies and cast us into prison far from the company of all mortals, all provisions being moreover forbidden under capital penalty, yet still press on and ask by whose labor we have recovered. Acknowledge then, governor, that Christ, in whom we have believed, was the author of this miracle, and understand that by his power and divinity our limbs cut by the clubs have been renewed, that you may at last be ashamed of your cruelty. If therefore you have any strength, rise up against him, most feeble little man." Then the governor said: "Oh most criminal ones, who trusting in your delusions despise the gods! So then what physicians have supplied to you, you contend on the contrary is to be ascribed to Christ?" — "Since you were just threatening," Seleucus then took up, "that you would burn the physicians who had lent us their labor, learn now that no mortal has mixed himself in this cure, but that by the help of Jesus Christ alone health has been restored to us, who will punish your body and soul with just judgment on the last day of the world, when he shall be present from heaven, and shall exact penalties from you and that impious emperor of yours, and with vast fires shall scorch and burn all things."
[29] he orders them to be beaten again Then the governor said: "I indeed, thinking that patience was to be used with you, have until now put off punishment, trusting that you would depart from that contumacy; but on the contrary I have at length noticed that you are the more mad, and that you assail me with curses more insolently than ever. I call Jupiter, the great god, to witness, that you shall hereafter be afflicted with most atrocious punishments, until I destroy you, most bold heads. So it is certain to pursue the injuries to the gods and princes." Stratonica said to him: "Since you have sworn by a mute and lifeless image, which accordingly feels neither those who worship it nor those who revile it, from this it is plainly gathered that an oath of this kind is empty and void; and since you yourself, blind, have taken to yourself a blind leader, it follows that both will fall into the pit." The governor, indignant beyond what can be said at that freedom of speech, at once orders the virgin to be beaten long and most sharply; which the attendants carried out with such savagery, that, her strength failing and her blood drained, she collapsed to the ground. But soon, her breath recovered for a little, addressing the governor she says: "O wretched you, most wicked man! What penalties you are to pay before the most just God, for these evils with which you exercise us!" The governor said to her: "Many and indeed most criminal men like you I have killed, nor have I so far found shamelessness equal to yours." — "Many governors likewise have we seen," Seleucus took up, "yet we have found no stupidity and impiety to compare with yours."
[30] and to be torn with iron combs; At these words the governor, greatly the more inflamed, forthwith orders both to be hung on the rack and to be so torn with iron combs for as long as possible over the whole body, that, the skin being burst, shreds of flesh also were shaken down to the ground. But the martyrs of Christ, through all the time of the punishment directing soul and eyes to heaven, frequently repeated that cry: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, be with our weakness in this savage butchery." And that punishment was prolonged for three hours and more, in which space they gave forth no groan or word indicating a broken soul, but repeated this alone: "Lord, favorably succor us." In this manner they were torn with iron combs, until, the flesh being consumed, the bones lay open, the governor himself and the lictors marveling at so great a patience. Then the governor, addressing the blessed martyrs still hung on the rack, says: "Where is Christ straying? Why does he not hasten, to bring help to you who endure these things for him? For you were just calling on him." Seleucus said to him: "Indeed he has assuredly brought us help, and in time to come he will bring it. Wherefore there is no reason why you should exalt yourself so proudly and insult us, like a snake and a most cruel wolf not yet sated with blood." Then the governor said to Stratonica: "But now, I believe, you are grieving not a little, Stratonica." She said to him: "By no means, and I call as witness of my word Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who sits at the right hand of him by whom he was sent. For I do not complain of my body torn and the shreds of my flesh shaken down to the ground, the most certain hope of most ample reward restraining pain, which, our bodies being restored to new life, we believe will be rendered to us, for the punishments which you undeservedly exact from us, you who will yourself one day pay far heavier ones, soon to be consigned to everlasting fires. Wherefore if it is lawful, we even give you thanks, that by the torments with which you torture us, you in a manner carry us to the heavenly kingdom, so that as much as you have increased the punishment, so much you increase the crown." — "Because you notice," the governor took up, "that you are exposed to the hisses of all, you devise those fine things, by which you may cover your foolishness as best you can."
[31] then, having solicited them to no purpose, The virgin said to him: "I indeed have no need of inventions, since truth is at hand for me; for I have committed myself wholly to truth, following surely a better leader than you, a man wholly devoid of mind, although you seem wise to yourself." — "But you," the governor replied, "most petulant woman, have you so put off shame that you are by no means ashamed to have your hands bound and your body worn by clubs, after the manner of parricides and bandits, and that with all the illustrious women of Cyzicus looking on? As if indeed you were not she who, from tender years enclosed in the women's quarters, were accustomed to chaste morals and modesty." Stratonica said to him: "I indeed should be mad, if I were ashamed of my salvation. Be you rather ashamed of yourself, most wretched man, on whom disgrace and infamy press on every side, to be abolished by no length of time, although you by no means notice these things; for you are not in possession of your mind. But I am not ashamed of ignominy of this kind: for pious and upright men admit no witness or judge except conscience. Since therefore I am conscious of no crime, I am suffused with no shame. Your case does not stand as mine. For although to the eyes of your attendants you may seem an upright man, yet by your conscience you are oppressed as impious and convicted of being guilty." Then the governor said: "It is plain that you are drunk and raving; for you have not yet noticed in how great an ignominy you are." Stratonica said to him: "Indeed I am drunk, yet not with wine, as you think, by which men profusely gorged slip into madness and dullness, but with the nectar of divine charity toward Jesus Christ. For from the time when a little drop of his goodness sprinkled me, I at once blazed into his love. It stands fixed for me therefore to seek him through all tribulations and tortures, accordingly to care nothing for your threats, but to trust in Jesus Christ alone and to await from him the outcome of this fight." Then the governor said: "I truly grieve that this appearance of most beautiful countenance should again be subjected to torments, and perish among the hands of the lictors." Stratonica said to him: "You drive me to ruin while you spare, and while you flatter you prepare sure destruction." Then the governor said: "By only one little word testify that you will hereafter comply with the emperor, and I will straightway reward you with freedom." The blessed martyrs said to him: "May he be struck dumb who rashly blurts these things. We call Jesus Christ, Son of God, as witness, that you will wring nothing from us either by threats or by blandishments. For indeed, since through the grace of Jesus Christ we trust that we shall shortly migrate from this world, and come to his most longed-for embrace, you on the contrary very preposterously persuade us to go back and fall away from him." Then the governor said: "You judge, do you, that you will be taken away by a sudden death, and so will escape the bitterness of the punishments?" Then Stratonica and Seleucus, looking severely at the governor, say: "So then, impious and criminal head, do you likewise judge that we will at any time yield to you as you threaten these things? No, by him who dwells in heaven and rules over the abysses of the earth, no, I say, you will wring nothing from us, even if you prolong our punishment to seventy years; for we shall nowhere obey one commanding iniquitous things. And you indeed, noticing meanwhile that you and your emperor are despised by us, will be tortured in soul, while unwittingly you yourself will at the same time weave our crown. For indeed as much as you busy yourself in wicked plans against us, so much of usefulness and advantage will come to us, and to you greatly more ignominy and heavier detriment."
[32] he casts them again into chains; Then the governor commands the virgin's tongue to be cut out, that she may cease, he said, to assail the emperor and the gods with curses. But Stratonica said: "Do not think that I speak by myself, but that Christ in
whom I have believed, believe you have heard speaking in me; just as on the contrary the devil dwelling in you does not cease to suggest to you such nefarious plans against the servants of God. But if you should cut out my tongue, as you were just threatening, then indeed words will not be lacking to me against your madness; for a fiery tongue will be given me, to burn the briers of your fury." But while the most cruel attendants were striving to cut off the virgin's tongue, a very great number of the people intervened, addressing the governor and shouting that it was unlawful for the tongue of a prince's daughter b to be cut out. Wherefore he orders the executioners to be removed, and the martyrs, loaded with chains, to be led back to prison.
[33] from there led to the shrine, On the next day the governor calls together the leading men of the city, to deliberate what was finally to be determined in this cause: "I indeed," he said, "do not see what counsel to take in this business. There are here Christians who, once drawn from the worship of the gods, up to now most stubbornly cling to the same resolve. And indeed I have had to test their stubbornness with punishments of every kind; but how badly I have wasted labor the outcome of the matter declares; for they could by no means be torn from Jesus, to whom they have wholly pledged themselves. But meanwhile they are disturbing the whole city; and if we dismiss them free, they will infect very many with their errors. But if this should seep through to the emperor, I fear lest he cast many evils on you and your city, as guilty of injured majesty and of neglected rule, and make peril of the head for me." Thus the governor, to whom the nobles answered that milder counsels should first be applied: "If it pleases you," they said, "we judge that patience should still be used with them; for they are young people and it is credible that they are carried along by a certain blind impetus. Order them to be led to some shrine and to be presented to the gods; perhaps revering the presence of the deities, and admonished about the danger of their country and citizens, they will allow themselves to be brought to testify to their religion toward the gods by burning incense." These things however were less approved by the governor: "For care must be taken," he said, "lest the criminal people, let into the sacred house, setting aside all religion of the gods, rise up against them with curses and insults; than which assuredly nothing more mournful or more odious to you has happened so far." But as the patricians on the contrary pressed on and affirmed that those persons would dare nothing against the religion of the gods, the governor assented.
[34] they afflict the gods with insults. Straightway the martyrs, bound with chains, are led to the most celebrated shrine of the whole city c. They came to the threshold of the shrine; straightway the nobles press them to obey the governor. Then Stratonica said: "We have not yet entered the temple; but when we have come into the sight of the gods, we shall do what is honorable." And when they urged that if they refused to adore the gods at any rate they should abstain from insults, for that a great danger would be created to the city from that insolence and that the emperor would surely take it most ill; to these things St. Stratonica said: "When we have entered the shrine, if the gods shall deign to declare anything to us, we shall surely not refuse to answer them." Led into the temple, therefore, both, and ordered to adore the gods, Stratonica, beholding the adorned and standing images, raised her voice in these words: "Be present now, gods; I call on you by name, Jupiter, mute image; Berecynthia d, carved wood; Belus e, blind, tongueless, and vehicle of the devil; Artemis f, empty figment. Declare, now I pray, whether you ought to be worshiped by us or despised. So then none of you hears one who asks, or sees, or speaks? May those who fashioned you become like you, and those who trust in you be confounded by the idols which they themselves have made!"
[35] Taking this ill, the governor, When these things were said in the presence of the governor, he blazed up exceedingly against the authors of such counsel, and said: "Is this to adore the gods, which yet you were just promising that those Christians would do? And now you have outwitted me, and exposed the religion of the gods to the mockery of the Christians. As to what remains, think how you may excuse the deed before the emperor; for I do not think it lawful for me to keep silent or to dissemble it." At these words of the governor all trembled, pressed, begged the servants of God at least to be silent, and since they held it a matter of religion for them not to adore the gods, at least to cease insulting them: "Lest perhaps," they said, "you cast the whole city into the highest danger. And would that you had never set foot here!" And there were some who even reproached Apollonius with his daughter's deed. Hence the governor, turning to the priests, asks whether they had ever noticed those Christians sacrificing to the gods. They said to him: "By your head we swear that these worshiped the gods before others everywhere with the highest religion; for Seleucus and Stratonica are children of most noble leaders. But who has drawn them into this error altogether escapes us."
[36] he beseeches them to worship the idols, Then the governor, addressing the martyrs, says: "O bold souls and most hostile to yourselves, why, pressed now by so many troubles, are you unwilling to adore the gods, whom before, when you had the power of doing what pleased you, you greatly worshiped?" Both with one mind said to him: "There was a time when we were led by blind error; but now we hold nothing to be preferable for us than to seek the truth and hold it when found." Then the governor said: "Drop these things, and burn incense to Jupiter, the greatest god." The martyrs said to him: "We judge it a crime to offer incense to mute stones." — "A stone," said the governor, "you call Jupiter, the greatest god, O men surely most worthy of the foulest punishment!" Stratonica said to him: "Assuredly your conscience compels you, convicted, to confess that he is a mute and lifeless rock." Then the governor said: "Now moreover it has been decided by me to be bent hereafter by no prayers, nor to cease until I drag you to the pyre, and disfigure your faces in foul manner, which will make for fear and disgust in those looking on, especially yours, O Stratonica, and so at last I shall send you down to Tartarus."
[37] and when they do not comply, She said to him: "It is wonderful how you are nowhere consistent with yourself: words indeed grand and threats heavy, but deeds light and scurrilous. For the rest, you who pile up these empty bugbears, teach me what advantage you believe will come to me from this appearance of countenance, such as it is, which, whether you will or not, must yield to two most powerful enemies, namely old age and death. I indeed shall not be so foolish as to court the perishable and mortal form of the body, when it is possible to desire and have ready at hand the immortal beauty of the soul, nourisher of justice. For indeed he who has an ugly soul in a beautiful body, I think this one worthy not of envy, but of pity, who, abusing beauty, surely a fleeting thing, heaps up for himself everlasting punishments, to be rendered to God, the avenger of crimes. But he who, spurning the perishable grace of countenance, busies himself solely to restore his mind pure and whole from crime to his Lord, this one assuredly, having obtained from the deformity of the body an occasion and material for exercising and increasing virtue, has deserved the praises of all mortals. For comeliness of countenance not only does not adorn the mind, indeed at times even depraves it; but beauty of soul delights even nations barbarous in savagery. Loveliness of countenance has corrupted many and given them headlong to vices; for those who are fastidious in the care and adornment of the body suffer perpetual losses of salvation; while those who busy themselves for inner beauty * continually pile up for themselves wealth that will not perish. Since these things are so, of what concern is grace of countenance to me, who court solely the inmost beauty of the mind? The former, then, it lies in your power to extinguish; but this, which stands by the grace of Christ, is subject to no one. For neither you, nor your gods, neither heaven nor earth, nor the things which are enclosed in the immense circuit of both, can wear away the comeliness of my mind, or tear my soul from the love of Christ. What? Will you not now confess yourself utterly confounded? For what greater ignominy can be imagined than this which presses on you in our cause? For you were thinking to storm our faith in Christ by force and diabolical cunning, doing a thing surely most pleasing to the emperor, who ordered you to undertake such a war against us; but I, an unwarlike and lone woman, have withstood you as you strove at this, and have broken your assault and routed your ferocity. What will you now reply hereafter to your master, who committed such business to your faith and diligence, when both of you have been overcome and confounded by the just judgment of Jesus Christ, at whose nod all things stand?" Then the governor said: "Drop these things. How long will you dull my mind with these trifles, most petulant woman?" The virgin said to him: "Truly God teaches us through the sacred letters, that he will destroy the wisdom of the wise."
[38] he orders lamps to be applied; which are extinguished. But the governor, taking most ill that before the nobles of the city he had been overcome and confounded by an unwarlike woman, orders burning lamps to be got ready straightway, and to be applied to the bared ribs of the martyrs; and he commands that Stratonica's face also be scorched with them. As the lictors then briskly attended to this, Stratonica, with eyes raised to heaven, said: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I beg you, show to the impious who repel your faith the force and divinity of your justice, that deceived in their hope, they may be confounded in soul." Immediately the lamps are extinguished. And as the governor rebuked the lictors' inertia and pressed them to light them a second and a third time, nothing was effected by them in trying this, Seleucus and Stratonica laughing at the tyrant's madness and exulting with greater pleasure, the more he blazed up and was distressed. Moreover while all *, who had flocked in numbers to that spectacle, marveled at the thing, the governor affirmed that these were delusions of a nefarious art.
ANNOTATA.
origines de l'histoire, vol. III, part I, p. 34, Paris 1882.] . It is no wonder that Cybele is addressed by name by Stratonica; for that she was honored at Cyzicus with special veneration has been ascertained from inscriptions, coins, ruins of temples and other monuments [Marquardt, Cyzicus, p. 96 ff., 137. Böckh, Corpus inscript. græc., vol. II, p. 181 and 920.] . There flourished in the same place the cult of Jupiter, who is so often recorded in the Acts [Cf. Marquardt, Cyzicus, p. 133, 148, 154. Preller, Griech. Myth., vol. I, p. 121 and 510.] .
* pardusque in edit.
* pulchritudinis in edit.
* omnes in edit.
CHAPTER FOUR.
The beating repeated. The fetid sepulcher is changed into a lovely chamber.
Having tortured them with thongs, But when the blessed martyrs constantly reproached him with his void and empty attempts, the governor, moved by greater anger, commands them again to be hung on the rack, and to be most vehemently beaten with fresh bull-hide thongs, until, the skin gaping everywhere and the limbs cut, there was no place left for stripes. Soon they are led back to prison, where they were detained among chains and shackles in close custody for five days, in the midst of the heats of the month of August, no one daring to minister a drop of water to them. Meanwhile the governor, calling together the nobles, sought a way of settling this cause: "What do you think," he said, "should be determined by me against those criminals, or with what kind of punishment should they be chastised, that they may cease to assail the gods and the emperor? For I fear lest the whole city be infected with their errors, and most be captured by their sorceries. But if this should once be learned by the emperor, as guilty of attempted revolt, he will punish us indeed with death, and will afflict your city and citizens with many evils. Declare therefore by what kind of death, and that most bitter, they are to be removed, that fear of a like penalty may restrain the fury of those same Christian companions." There were some who declared that the accused should be struck with the sword, others that they should be overwhelmed with stones or sunk in the sea. When all had given their opinion, the governor said: "But these kinds of death are open to anyone: for they are commonplace; I want an unknown, unheard-of and likewise most bitter kind of punishment." Soon he orders the parents of the blessed martyrs to be summoned.
[40] the governor resolves to torture with the stench of corpses, When therefore Apollonius, the father of Stratonica, and together with him the mother of Seleucus had arrived, the governor asks whether those rebellious despisers of the gods and princes belonged to them by any kinship. They said to him: "Until now we could call them our children; but hereafter, since they refuse to obey the emperor, we disown, refuse, abjure them: they are not ours." — "Now therefore," the governor adds, "since you deny that they are yours, declare what you have detected from familiar use that they most loathe. For what is most troublesome to them is to be turned to their punishment." To this Apollonius answered: "My daughter shudders at the stench of corpses so much, that she cannot bear even the breath of another body." Almost similar things the mother narrated of Seleucus: "Seleucus my son," she said, "loathes this same thing almost most, so that many times he keeps away from the market, taking ill the foul smell of the things that are accustomed to be brought there." — "The matter falls out very conveniently," said the governor; "by this very punishment at which both shudder, I shall attack them. Kill ten dogs at once, expose the flesh heaped in a mass to the sun for seven days; then, the hands of those rebels being tied behind their backs, hang the flesh, placed in baskets, from their necks in the heat of the most burning sun, until their souls are overcome by the stench. Which kind of punishment I hope will be most pleasing to the gods; for I think that they themselves devised this torment, namely that they might not leave unavenged the injuries with which they have been afflicted by them."
[41] in a most pestilent sepulcher. While the others praised the governor's sentence, a certain man of Cyzicus added: "Indeed, excellent governor, you have decreed that the accused be tortured with such a stench; but we have no need of dogs. We have a sepulcher outside the south gate of the city, beside the road a, into which within two days fifteen corpses have been brought, and it exhales far and wide a most foul stench, so that those passing that way are compelled to turn aside from the road: for they could not bear that most pestilent breath, massing upward in that place like a pitchy cloud sent forth from a burning furnace. If it pleases you, command that they be sent there; for I trust that they will at once be killed by that most heavy odor." The governor said to him: "You advise well and wisely. It pleases me that they be laid in that sepulcher forthwith." Attendants were straightway sent to examine the place, who, kept from coming closer by the intolerable stench, after they had viewed the place from afar, reported to the governor that the matter was indeed as it had been related, but that the place could not be approached without most certain danger to life, on account of the pestiferous stench continually bursting out from it and growing like a black cloud. The governor therefore ordered four bearers of corpses to be chosen from the market, who, protected by sponges soaked with fragrance, and with kerchiefs applied to their nostrils, should carry the blessed martyrs into the crypt.
[42] Therefore after the martyrs in vain Things being so arranged, the lictors preparing everything at the governor's nod, the next day in the morning the accused are brought forth from prison, like not men but corpses. For from the thirst long endured in the extreme heats and from the past clubbing, the cut limbs and the wasting flesh gaping in pieces had disfigured the bearing of the whole body in foul manner, so that that sight moved in no moderate degree the crowd looking on, and the governor himself. And after the rumor had spread that the Christian martyrs would be laid in the aforesaid sepulcher, the whole city poured out to the spectacle. Then the governor, addressing the servants of God, says: "See, you have perished, wretches. It has at last been found how this stubbornness of yours may be broken; for you have been condemned to a most foul punishment unheard of among mortals, which neither you can beg off by your delusions, nor can that Christ in whom you have believed avert. Nevertheless, if you sacrifice to Jupiter, the greatest god, I shall dismiss you free today, and shall at once inform the emperor that you have complied with his edicts. Why, wretches, do you flee the delightful enjoyment of this light?" Stratonica said to him: "Those oracles of our Lord make us ready for all tribulations: He who loses his soul in this world keeps it for eternal life. And again: He who has persevered to the end shall live in the kingdom of heaven." — "As I see," said the governor, "you have not yet put off your stubbornness, nor do you spare yourselves, whom I had decided to spare." Then Seleucus said: "We spare ourselves, while we perish that we may not perish, but, claimed for another life soon to come, may live for ever." Stratonica adds: "If we hated ourselves, we should surely comply with you; but since we love ourselves, we keep ourselves for the heavenly kingdom and future felicity." Then the governor said: "Who would believe that there will be another age after ours?" The blessed Stratonica said to him: "Already I have said a third time that you have your mind blinded by deep darkness; for that reason it is no wonder if you cannot perceive the truth of Christ. And now by your will you have been made like the sea, which prepares huge wealth for those sailing, but for itself keeps only its saltness and perpetual tide. And you indeed carry very many mortals, exercised by most bitter punishments, to the heavenly kingdom. But since you put compliance with the emperor before your salvation, you have been made blind, so that you cannot look into yourself. For indeed if you believed in Christ and had a foretaste of the delights of the future life, no one assuredly would be readier than you for enduring punishments heavier even than those which you have inflicted on us for our salvation. Nevertheless black night has long been spread over you and your emperor; wherefore, ignorant of your lot, you persecute Christ in his servants. But when he comes, he will repay penalties equal to your crimes."
[43] have been solicited to abjure Christ, Here the governor, interrupting her as she spoke, says: "Not I, but your own stubbornness has inflicted on you the penalties which you have borne so far." Stratonica said to him: "Go on further, think out, get ready, arrange all the most bitter tortures. I indeed trust that, as you departed overcome and confounded from the former conflict, so also from the remaining ones you and your emperor will carry away equal ignominy in time to come." Then the governor said: "But the penalties which you have paid so far, if they are compared with that which you are soon to pay, are light and nothing: think that you must now contend with a most pestilent stench, which kind of punishment you most shudder at." — "God," both answered, "in whom we have believed, and who has hitherto broken your machinations, will doubtless rout this one also, and will make us unconquered against your wickedness. For you strive at impious things, but Christ, pitying us, will forestall your counsels." Then the governor said: "Sentence has now been passed by me, that as you have deserved by your stubbornness, you be banished among rotting corpses. It pleases me to try whether perhaps Christ, in whom you trust, will snatch you from there:" Stratonica said to him: "We indeed by no means doubt that he who has been with us hitherto will be with us also in time to come. Indeed we trust that the same Jesus Christ will change that most foul stench which you were just threatening into a most sweet fragrance, so that many will be astonished at the deed, and the power of our God will thus become more known, and men will marvel more at it, while you on the contrary will carry away the disgrace and ignominy of your criminal counsel. And the sepulcher to which you have condemned us we hope will be turned into a splendid chamber for us, as I was just saying, of which matter very many will be present as spectators and witnesses; and thence it will come about that the praises of our God will be carried around through the mouths of all men, while your stupidity and that of your most iniquitous emperor will be laid open to all mortals."
[44] with a huge multitude accompanying, Here moreover the governor, boiling with anger, says: "I call the great gods to witness, that I shall at once carry out what I have until now threatened against you; for indeed it pleases me to learn from the outcome which of us has foretold the truth." Then, turning to the lictors, he orders four corpse-bearers to be summoned at once from the market, then sponges treated with sweet-smelling spices and reed of most sharp odor to be brought. Fortified with these fragrances the corpse-bearers completed the matter with that speed with which they had been ordered, and in this manner Seleucus and Stratonica were cast into that crypt. Straightway the governor seals the door with the emperor's seal b, fearing lest anyone, allured by the hope of gain, should draw them out from there. But while the blessed martyrs were being dragged to the new and unheard-of prison, the whole city, noble men
and women, troops of slaves and of the needy from the lowest common people met them, bewailing their punishment as a public calamity. "May Christ," they said, "in whom you have believed, by that power of his by which he has long since supplied other miracles for your safety, now also restore you to us safe and unharmed from this most atrocious punishment." There was present among others Apollonius, who, following his daughter more closely, said: "I beg you, daughter, have pity on yourself; so then does it not grieve you to die, especially by this most bitter and foul punishment?" Stratonica answered him: "Would, father, that you would at some time have pity on yourself, and be zealous to forestall by saner counsels the destruction into which you are unwittingly rushing!" But he, displaying his hair, torn out, to his daughter and casting it before her, repeated again and again that cry: "I pray you, daughter, do not be willing to perish by this horrible death." She said to him: "Already I have said that you are not mine, and I have renounced you and your race, as my Lord has admonished me in those words: He who does not deny his father and his mother, and all that he possesses, cannot be my disciple." But the more sharply she understood that her father's grief was growing, the more fully her mind was inflamed with the love of Christ.
[45] they are cast into the sepulcher. And when the place of the sepulcher appeared, a huge and pitiable wailing of the mixed common people followed from all sides, all weeping abundantly at the most bitter fate. Not a few also, following the servants of Christ, were saying a last farewell to them, and wishing them well: "We pray that Christ," they said, "in whom you have believed, may be favorably present to you." But the multitude not daring to proceed further, the Holy Martyrs, going on a little from there, stood at the door of the monument. Here moreover, with eyes raised to heaven, they prayed in this manner: "Lord God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who sent by you came to us, let your mercies go before us, we beseech you, and show the power of your clemency toward your servants, that all who have not known you may know that you are the true God." And after both had poured out these and such prayers with tears, the trembling and hastening corpse-bearers seized each one, and threw them into the sepulcher; straightway, according to the governor's mandate, they sealed the door with the public seal. This was the end of that examination, and the people, thinking that they had at once perished, overcome by the intolerable stench, having attended them with bitter wailing as if dead, soon returned to the city.
[46] Meanwhile heaven seemed to be opened, and a flame in the appearance of a column to rest on the sepulcher, From which, made suddenly most sweet, and moreover a shining cloud to cover the whole place round about. Thereupon the stench was suddenly changed into a most sweet fragrance, and like a mist began to be spread in every direction, so that the odor emitted from that tomb pervaded the whole city and went on even beyond, all testifying to the miracle and praising God. Roused by that novelty, the neighboring inhabitants ran together to the sepulcher, proclaiming the manifest power of God, so that those whom the most foul odor of that place had been wont to drive far off now flowed there in troops, and pushed one another forward, to take in with full nostrils the fragrance spread from the tomb. There was a most delightful light, which refreshed all with a certain heavenly pleasure. On which occasion as many sick as came there and were breathed on by that admirable odor immediately recovered, and those who saw gave testimony and their testimony is true. So the sepulcher stuffed with rotting corpses was turned into a most splendid chamber. Those who were permitted to come nearer to its door heard a harmony of hymns as of a choir singing psalms; and those who heard these things have testified and believed, and their testimony is true. In this place the blessed martyrs remained for seven days with the highest pleasure of soul, as among the delights of a most lovely garden. When these things had been reported to the governor by the magistrates and soldiers, he was terrified and vehemently astonished: "Now," he said, "I cast off enemies: now no arms are left to me with which to attack those criminals."
[47] after a week drawn out whole, The week having passed in the manner I have told, the governor commanded the accused to be drawn out from there. When this had been made known through the city, there was again a running together to the place of punishment with the highest expectation, so that the lictors were compelled to draw their swords, and to open a way for themselves with steel among the densely packed crowd. So they arrived at the door of the sepulcher, where they find the public seal whole; which being unsealed, each of the attendants strove to be first to occupy the door and to get ahead of the others. And when, drawn out of the sepulcher, the holy martyrs came forth into the sight of the multitude, all who had flocked to the spectacle came together massed and pressed around them. Here, since they saw that they had received no detriment to health from the pestiferous prison, indeed that they had in a manner been made like angels, a certain divine light gleaming out from the whole bearing of the body and the countenance, most, raising a shout, testified that the God of the Christians is great. Not a few on that occasion took up the faith of Christ. And after the martyrs of Christ had withdrawn a little from that place, at the same time also that most brilliant cloud, which had hitherto covered the place, disappeared. And the people, receiving them in their midst, honorably conducted them as in a solemn procession into the city, where again a huge crowd of men met them.
[48] with flames On the next day, calling together the magistrates of the city, the governor held this speech to them: "I indeed do not deny that what we have just seen done is admirable and beyond the force and order of nature. But shall we say for that reason that those accused are to be acquitted, whom the emperor has provided by edict are to be slaughtered with every kind of punishment? And to write to him and set forth the prodigies seen concerning them is assuredly a matter doubtful and full of danger. What of the fact that if we allow such Christians to live and to stay in the city, it is to be feared lest they split the people into factions and disturb the public peace, and, the matter being carried to the emperor, we ourselves pay with our head for another's crime. It pleases me therefore to adjudge the accused to the flames; which kind of death certainly they will by no means be able to escape, not even if their god apply himself wholly to it." The governor's speech was received with the approval of all, and they said that the accused were to be punished according to the prescription of the laws. The governor therefore orders three pyres to be built, and on the following day fire to be set under them and they to be inflamed, and the accused, bound, to be cast on the burning pyres: "For so," he said, "they themselves will go to ashes in a moment, and they will free us from care of this kind. It pleases me to examine whether Christ can snatch his own from the flames, which yet these believe will be done by him."
[49] ordered by the governor Straightway he commands a huge heap of wood to be brought together outside the walls of the city and three pyres c to be raised, whose top nearly equaled the walls of the city; then the martyrs of Christ to be led to punishment. When the governor saw them exulting with unusual joy, although he greatly marveled at their constancy, yet he did not cease testing it to the end. Wherefore he says likewise: "The other torments you have eluded by your incantations; but now do you think that you will escape the fire, or that you are to be freed by Christ, in whom you trust? Why then, offering a victim to Jupiter, the greatest god, do you not beg off such a punishment?" The holy martyrs said to him: "We truly marvel that you have a forehead, and yet are suffused with no shame from such deeds or words. Truly you are shown to be some mute animal and lacking reason, since you by no means perceive these things which are being done before your eyes." Provoked by these words, the governor said: "By all the gods I swear that you will be consumed by flames today." Stratonica said to him: "Relying on the aid of Christ, in whom we have believed, we trust that, as he has freed us from all the torments with which we have been exercised by you so far, and has confounded you and your master, equal to you in impiety, so also among the fires, whose force you so greatly extol, he will keep us unharmed, as once he kept Hananiah and his companions, condemned to the flames at Babylon, their accusers being consumed in the same fire. He, I say, among the most burning pyres, by which you think we shall be burned, will protect us untouched and whole, so much do we trust in Jesus Christ, who is the holy Son of the holy parent."
[50] to be handed over, but they are preserved immune by God. Then the governor orders the accused to be snatched without delay to the pyre. Immediately the lictors laid hands on the servants of God, to lead them to the place of punishment. A great number of the people from the city followed them as they went away with great signification of grief. And when they came to the place of punishment, and they beheld the piled heap of wood, and the governor anxiously urging the punishment, and the people murmuring, with eyes raised to heaven they besought God thus: "Lord Jesus Christ, who for the salvation of men willed to undergo the punishment of the cross, nature mourning at the sight of your most bitter death, manifest, we pray, your name, according to the custom of your goodness, in your servants, that all may celebrate your power, seeing your servants wondrously snatched from the flames of the persecutors. Let there appear, I beg, today the power of your divinity from heaven, to avenge the wickedness of the impious." The governor meanwhile was pressing on the work, and the lictors, after they had cast the blessed martyrs of Christ, loaded with chains, on the prepared heaps of wood, were preparing to set fire to the material, when suddenly heaven began to flash and the earth to leap with a vehement shaking; soon a fiery rain, like swift lightning, rushed on the pyres below, and, consuming them in a moment of time, quicker than a word destroyed the lictors pressing on the work and the crowd poured around d. The others who were present far from that burning saw harmless flames massed above the heads of the martyrs and around their sides and dashing against one another like a boiling sea; and the martyrs, with that freedom with which fish play in the waters, exulting among the burning pyres, their chains being broken and leaping apart by the force of the fire. For indeed Seleucus and Stratonica, snatched from destruction by so great a benefit of God, were singing hymns with gladness to their deliverer: "Love the Lord," they said, "his saints, for the Lord keeps the faithful." Meanwhile the flame massed together, and rose above the heads of the martyrs, and from there spreading itself out in the appearance of a dome, seemed to have formed a chamber for them. Straightway there appeared two Seraphim in fiery appearance, who stretched flaming robes over them. These things were watched by a huge number of men who had settled on the walls of the city, and moved by the prodigy they cried out: "Great is the God of the Christians." A good many also, beholding these miracles, embraced the faith of Christ. For from the third hour until the ninth that portent was conspicuous to the whole city. After the ninth it ceased to be seen, the martyrs remaining in the same place, with countenance gleaming like the sun, illumined by a light poured over them in the manner of a storm.
ANNOTATA.
la Bithynie, vol I, p. 72 and 74; vol. II, pl. 3 f., Paris 1872.] , especially beside the road that leads to the little town of Artaki Cf. Rich. Pococke, Voyages, vol. V, p. 281 ff., Paris 1772. , formerly Artace Marquardt, Cyzicus, p. 15. , now to the Turks Erdek.
CHAPTER FIVE.
The last tortures of SS. Stratonica and Seleucus. Their death and burial.
To be struck with the sword at the emperor's order, When these things had been reported to the governor by the soldiers and the surrounding multitude, he stuck fast in vehement astonishment, and doubtful what was to be determined in that cause, he reported to the emperor a all that had been done in this business, whether he himself had seen it or had received it from others. He wrote back that the accused were to be struck with the sword. To carry out more quickly, therefore, the sentence passed by the emperor against the renowned martyrs of Christ, the governor orders the accused to be carried outside the city, to a hill from which there was an easy and delightful view of the sea below b. At the news of this matter the whole city was stirred. Hence there was a huge concourse of men to the martyrs, bewailing with frequent sobs their most unjust death and saying a last farewell to them, so that, the multitude being packed and pressing one another, the dust raised and massed into a cloud almost took away the day. Noticing this, the governor was offended in no moderate degree, and decreed that if anyone should be caught speaking with the accused, he should be punished with the same penalty as they. Which fell out most troublesome to the people.
[52] many saying farewell, There was present among others Theoctista, a most distinguished woman and most worthy of the memory of posterity, who, having seen the very many miracles which had taken place around the blessed martyrs, had believed in our Lord Jesus Christ. The same was related to the governor, and accordingly was strong in great authority with him. She asked therefore that that edict be repealed as a favor to the people, and when the governor assented to her prayers, an infinite crowd of men poured around after the holy martyrs of Christ, eager to speak to them for the last time and greet them, so that all the places round about far resounded with that confused shout, while all, stretching forth suppliant hands, address the servants of Christ: "You," they cry out, "you again and again we adjure, that you make God, in whom you have believed, favorable to us, until he deign at last to snatch us from the error in which we are entangled. May Christ grant us to behold your glory in the world to come, and may he likewise, for the troubles and tribulations which you have suffered here, reward you with the heavenly kingdom." With these and other such words they were saying a last farewell to them, as to men who were about to set out to their own, placed in a remote region. Scarcely, the governor pressing, not without much labor, could that meeting be broken up, the place in which both had stood being wet with abundantly flowing tears. The martyrs among the hands of the lictors were dancing with incredible joy, the governor marveling at their eagerness and constancy, as if indeed they were hastening not to punishment but to a solemn banquet, especially as they reflected that the hour was at hand at which they were to receive the crown, having happily come through the dangers of this world; which assuredly is a sea most hostile everywhere with whirlwinds and storms.
[53] glad And when the governor had said that the capital sentence against them had been passed by the emperor, Stratonica at once added: "You will have done a thing most pleasing to us, governor, if you carry out the emperor's mandate without delay. For whatever penalties we have paid so far, we have borne them with a most even mind, in the hope of the crown which we trust that we shall attain on this present day, on which our memory will be renewed through the whole world. So at last we shall leave our contest, most renowned for portents, to posterity desiring to imitate it." Then the governor said: "Since you have been condemned to death by the emperor, it is not within our judgment to acquit you now." The blessed martyrs said to him: "We long ago offered our bodies for Christ to any evils whatever, awaiting the life laid up in the other world, for love of which we have cast off the advantages of the present life, that we might merit the blessed enjoyment of that perpetual light. Only the body, then, is subject to your power: the soul we have subject and committed to Christ alone." — "I indeed," the governor took up, "had prepared many punishments against you; but since the emperor's mandate presses, I shall destroy you today: for it is not lawful for impious people to live, who, abjuring the great gods, have sworn to a man, removed by the Jews at Jerusalem by the foulest punishment of the cross." Stratonica said to him: "If the devil had not long since stopped your ears and blinded your mind, I would surely teach you how he came to us, and for what causes he descended, and taking a human body for the salvation of men, bore the punishment of the cross and death. But you are unworthy to hear the hidden sacrament of his coming, especially since the same our Lord forbids us to give what is holy to dogs, or to cast pearls before swine." — "So then to dogs," the governor replied, "and swine do you compare me, most wicked woman, who by your sorceries have eluded fires and the other torments? By Jupiter and Nabu c, great and strong gods, I swear that, although I have been ordered to chastise you with the sword, yet you shall first be afflicted with most atrocious tortures, then at last be struck with the sword." Stratonica said to him: "Often already have I testified to you, as you would surely recall if you had ears, that even if you yourself should live seventy years and should continually harass us through all that interval, yet we would nowhere depart from the truth of our most certain religion, nor comply with you or your impious emperor."
[54] and bold Then the governor said: "Fear compels me to obey the orders of the emperor, which no one would despise without peril of the head; otherwise I would acquit you and permit you to live." Stratonica said to him: "O blind mind! if you fear an impious and mortal prince like you, who today stands and tomorrow is to fall, and understand that transgression of his mandates is to be paid for with capital punishment, how much more ought we Christians to revere the mandates of our Lord, who is God from God, light from light, and holy from holy; especially since he himself has admonished us that no account is to be taken of past right deeds, if anyone afterward departs from the institution of virtue, and has threatened the transgressors of his law with the second death, that is, unquenchable fire and the immortal worm." Then the governor said: "I have no dispute with you now about the law of your God; for there is no leisure to examine these things, with the emperor's mandate pressing, that unless you more quickly resolve to sacrifice to the gods and burn incense, you shall undergo capital punishment." To these things both answered with glad and cheerful brow: "We have long suspected that you falsely pretend obedience to the prince's orders, and that in the manner of a boy playing with some little beast you are joking with us; for neither do the torments which you have so far used seem worthy of that name, nor does that manner of action by which you are led befit a man. Wherefore again and again your ears have had to be dinned, like those of a stupid beast, and it has often to be drummed in that we shall be torn from the love of Christ the Lord by no force, by no art, and that in vain are fire, steel, scourges, clubs threatened against us, that accordingly it is fixed for us to set after him life, Angels, Powers, Virtues, Dominations, all above and below, things to come, things present. The purpose of our soul you yourself have learned by experience, since, tried by you with so many arts, it could never be stormed. But what fouler ignominy can be imagined than that which I see overflowing on you and your impious prince this present day from this deed, when I, an unwarlike girl, have overcome your torments, have shown your threats to be vain, have laid open and eluded your wicked deeds, and have exposed you with your gods to the mockery of all mortals, and have covered you indeed with shame, but have affected the angels with gladness, because I have loved Christ, and have wiped away your impiety, while I constantly withstood your most iniquitous will, and you on the opposite side, trying with all your strength to bend me as I resisted, effected nothing."
[55] they await punishment. Then the governor said: "Because, impudent and mad woman, you have escaped the fire by your sorceries, you now rashly boast of the power of the God by whose superstition you are held." — "O blind mind!" Stratonica answered, "so then, the others passed over, do you mention only the fire, with which you were lately testing our faith in Christ? Give me back the scourges d and clubs, with which seven times you savagely cut up our bodies, until they fell almost bloodless to the ground. Give me back the foulest prison, into which thrice cast, as often the doors opening of themselves, we divinely escaped from there. Give me back the iron combs, with which you bared our bones, our flesh being torn to pieces. Give me back the plates made white-hot with fire, applied to our limbs, which suddenly seemed to pass into ice. Give me back the vapor of burning sulfur, by which you hoped we should be suffocated, and which was turned for us into a most sweet fragrance. Give me back the sepulcher filled with rotting corpses, where, shut up by your order, we felt the tomb yield to a chamber, the foulest stench to fragrant spices. Give me back the burning pyres, which fire sent from heaven changed into a splendid pavilion, the flames spreading themselves out in the appearance of a dome."
[56] The angered governor orders serpents Sharply stung by these and such words of Stratonica, the governor roared and, shouting in the manner of a raging wild beast, and crying out to all the gods, said: "Even if by your delusions you have escaped the past torments, there will assuredly not be lacking to me other kinds of most bitter examinations, which you may strive in vain to elude by the protection of Christ." Both answered him: "Go on further; try, as you please, all the tortures against us, which will surely fall back to your ignominy and disgrace; so much do we trust in Christ, that as he confounded you before by your own arts, so also he will confound you in time to come, and will break your conspiracy against the servants of God." These words spoken by Stratonica and Seleucus inflamed the governor greatly the more, as he thought that the majesty of the emperors was dishonored by them. Straightway he calls enchanters; he orders vipers, asps and other kinds of serpents to be brought. When they had supplied this, the people, who had flocked in very great numbers to the spectacle, rose up against the governor, crying out that the mandates of the emperors were being violated, who had written back that those Christians were to be struck with the sword, no mention of beasts being made: that this punishment was most atrocious, as one in which the flesh, torn from the bones, was rent apart with the highest torture.
[57] to be sent against them; which stiffening, But the governor, caring nothing at all for the contradicting multitude, persisted in his resolve, and Seleucus and Stratonica being brought into the midst, he ordered the little chests to be opened and a swarm of asps and vipers to be sent against them. Noticing this at once, the martyrs of Christ, with eyes suddenly raised to heaven, prayed in this manner: "Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, break the strength of the devil rushing on us, for you, Lord, have said: Behold I give you my power, that you may trample on serpents and scorpions and every power of the devil, and they shall harm you in nothing." At once the beasts, burst from top to bottom, stiffened, all watching and astonished at the deed, and shouting that the God in whom Stratonica and Seleucus had believed is great. The enchanters complained of the governor, that they had borne such detriment to their reputation in his cause, Stratonica and Seleucus meanwhile singing that verse from the psalm: "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man may do to me."
[58] the martyrs tortured with red-hot spits, The governor goes on further, and grieving that he had been overcome in this deed also, commands the nostrils of the martyrs to be pierced with spits made white-hot in the fire for so long, until the reek of the burned flesh spread over those standing round everywhere. Then he orders Stratonica to be drawn up on high, to be bound behind, then her legs to be driven through with burning nails from the sole of the foot to the knees. But she in this kind of punishment gave neither tears nor groan, but gazing repeatedly at heaven cried out: "Be with me, Jesus, Son of God," when the governor insulted her and said: "At last it has been found how you may be grieved, sorceress and little woman, despiser of the gods." Stratonica said to him with even countenance and constant voice: "I indeed give the highest thanks to Christ, who for his benevolence toward me has deemed me worthy of these punishments, which while I suffer them with even mind and gladly for his name, I trust that I shall be absolved from the offences of my former life and at the same time from the punishments of his inexorable judgment."
[59] [finally, their hands being cut off, they are ordered to be finished with the sword.] The governor therefore, taking most ill that he was likewise overcome and confounded in this examination, ordered the hands of both martyrs of Christ to be cut off. And while they beheld their hands cut off and thrown on the ground before them, the governor presses on again and, addressing Stratonica again, says: "So then, mad woman, do you not yet learn shame, seeing your hands cut off and thrown on the ground?" Stratonica said to him: "Now indeed it has been permitted to your stupidity to cut off our hands and to throw them on the ground; but Christ will raise them from there, and will give them rest upon his holy altar." And since the people took that savagery very ill, and even raising a shout openly detested it, the soldiers and magistrates of the city interceded with the governor, that an end might be made of the examinations. After so many tortures, they said, the accused had paid penalties abundantly enough, and since the emperor had judged that they should be chastised with the sword, his sentence should by all means be stood by. So at last the governor was persuaded to assign the accused to the axe. The place appointed for the punishment was a hill, projecting into the neighboring sea. When the martyrs of Christ were being led there, a very great number of the people from every side followed them. There were very many of both sexes who with manifold complaint wept for and lamented their bitter death; others carried away the dust trodden by their feet; others in rivalry snatched the blood flowing, after the cutting off of their hands, from the still fresh wound.
[60] Stratonica, a speech being held to the people Here Stratonica asks Theoctista, whom we have mentioned above, a Christian woman, to obtain from the soldiers an hour's delay for her for pouring forth prayers and for greeting friends; and when she had straightway effected this, Stratonica together with Seleucus, standing among the massed and densely packed multitude, held a speech to the people of this kind: "I judge that you know, men and women of Cyzicus, of what father I am the daughter and in how elegant a house I have lived. But after the saving light of Jesus Christ shone on me from heaven and I believed in him, I preferred nothing to his love: I have hated my race and kin, and have abjured my very parents, and have cast off all that makes the present enjoyment of this light delightful. And now you yourselves have seen how many discomforts and troubles I have swallowed, with how many tortures I have been exercised, how I have not spared even my body, which has been torn and thrown on the ground; so, despising all things, I have fled to Christ, trusting that he will be favorable to me, and will absolve me in that inexorable judgment of the world to come, and will make me worthy to appear confidently to him on that last day of the world, on which he himself is to come and to lay open all the secrets of men."
[61] and prayers being poured forth to God, Then with her eyes raised to heaven, she prayed in this manner: "Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me, I beg, whatever I have sinned against you, and since for your love I have willingly exposed my body to any punishments, let your mercies, I pray, shine on me in the day of judgment; and since I have also despised idols, and have confessed you, do you also confess me before your Father by whom you were sent for our salvation. And because I have hated this perishable world, make me worthy, I beg, of the goods of the world to come. And also, for that I have abominated the corruptible marriage-chamber, most clemently compensating by the punishments which I suffer from the impious enemies of your name for my offences which I have committed in ignorance, join me, I pray, to your servants already holding the blessed seats."
[62] she falls with Seleucus. Thus Stratonica prayed, when the whole people, to say the last farewell to the martyrs of Christ, began to mass and press around them; and indeed with such insistence and straining of souls and voice, that it offered the appearance of a raging sea and of waves dashing against one another. Wherefore the lictors, terrified, drawing their swords, resolved to finish the matter more quickly, and to destroy the accused at once. Then Stratonica, beholding the sword now impending over her neck, understood that her crown was now at hand, and with raised voice calling on Christ with last prayers, said: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And at the same time she received the blow of the executioner and fell. Seleucus likewise, pronouncing the same words in a loud voice, was beheaded. So both fell together, so that the trunk of one body covered the other.
[63] Their bodies are venerated. And when the governor had ordered their bodies to be thrown into the sea, the whole city protesting in vain and condemning the deed with public mourning, Theoctista intervened, and persuaded the governor to revoke the sentence. A little after the governor returned to the city sad, because he was departing overcome from that conflict and with disgrace. And the people, freed from fear of the governor, again poured around the bodies of the blessed martyrs, with such stirring of souls, that they drenched the ground on which they had lain with most precious ointments and also with tears. Soon they deposited the sacred remains, laid with spices and wrapped in silk cloth, both together in one coffin. These, after the peace of the Church had been restored and the persecution removed, the pious care of the Christian emperor honored with a house built over them e.