ON ST. PHILIP, MARTYR,
AT ALEXANDRIA IN EGYPT.
Third century
A COLLECTION
Philip, M., at Alexandria in Egypt (St.)
BY J. P.
The memory of Philip the martyr is illustrious today in some Latin calendars of the first rank, Notable eulogies of the saint in the Latin calendars of which the old Roman Martyrology printed by Rosweyde leads the column, where it is thus read: At Alexandria, of Philip, bishop and martyr, who was first a prefect. The same things, as to substance, Ado of Vienne transferred into his Martyrology; but he also subjoined a summary of the history, drawn from elsewhere. I write out his text entire: In Egypt, in the city of Alexandria, the birthday of blessed Philip, bishop and martyr, who was first a prefect; then, sanctified by the grace of Baptism, he attains the dignity of the episcopate, the Christian people giving their suffrage. And under the emperors Volusian and Gallienus, Perennius the prefect is dispatched to Alexandria, who was commanded to kill Philip. But when he could not fulfill this, because all the people of the city seemed bound to Philip as though by certain bonds of love, he sent into the church certain men who should feign themselves Christians, who entering struck him as he was set in prayer. He is now buried in Nitria, a basilica worthy of the martyr having been built over his body. And he sat in the episcopate one year and three months. He suffered on the Ides of September.
[2] among the Latins at this day; Briefer are the eulogies at the same day, the 13th of September, in Usuard and Notker; but, if you look to the person and dignity of the martyr, to the notes of time and the wrestling-ground of the martyrdom, they are wholly consonant with Ado's text. Briefer likewise is today's Roman one, differing from them, however, in certain points. This is its announcement, in the first place: At Alexandria, the birthday of blessed Philip, father of holy Eugenia the virgin. He, forsaking the prefecture of Egypt, attained the grace of Baptism; whom, being set in prayer, Terentius the prefect, his successor, ordered to be slain with the sword. In other classic calendars — for instance in the Martyrologies of Bede and Florus, of Rabanus and Wandelbert, or in the transcripts attributed to St. Jerome — nothing occurs concerning him, at least at this day; which I add because Rabanus, at the 25th day of December, weaving a eulogy of St. Eugenia, V. and M., says that her father Philip, prefect of Egypt, was converted to the faith of Christ and baptized; yet he is silent concerning his episcopate and martyrdom.
[3] and in the Greek ones Similarly the monuments of the Greek Church record nothing today concerning St. Philip; yet, if he who is today set forth among the Latins was the father of St. Eugenia, as is asserted in the Roman, there is no doubt that the Greeks too venerated him as a martyr, although on another day. In the Basilian Menology he is exhibited with Eugenia and the rest of her fellow martyrs on the 24th day of December. Its words, as they have been rendered into Latin and published by the care of the most eminent Annibale Albani, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, run thus: On the twenty-fourth day. The contest of the holy martyr Eugenia and her companions. Holy Eugenia, in the reign of the emperor Commodus, daughter of Philip the prefect at Rome, when her father was sent by Commodus to Alexandria to be prefect of that city, and took with him his wife and children, went thither also herself, and there learned all the letters of the Greeks and of the Christians. And when she had unrolled the Scriptures, she lighted upon the Epistles of the holy Apostle Paul; by the reading of which, embracing the Christian faith, she gave herself to the practice of all virtues. Then, leaving her father's splendor and taking a man's habit, she withdrew into a monastery, and there, being baptized, took up the monastic institute, having said she was a eunuch. Afterward, being brought before her father Philip and recognized by him, she brought him over, with her mother and kinsfolk, to the faith of Christ. A little after, her father becomes a bishop; and all at last are crowned with martyrdom.
[4] Nearly the same things, but also many others pertaining to Eugenia alone, at the 24th day of December, the Menology which they call Sirletian has; the same things also are read in the Menaea; but in these, after a long eulogy of St. Eugenia composed in iambic verse, there follows a separate announcement of St. Philip, and two little verses; these and that I subjoin here with their interpretation:
Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ ὀ ἅγιος μάρτυς φίλιππος ὁ πατὴρ τῆς ἁγίας Εὐγενίας ξιφει τελειοῦται.
On the same day, the holy martyr Philip, father of holy Eugenia, is consummated by the sword.
Μάχαιραν ὄντως δίστομον κατὰ πλάνης Κτείει Φίλιππον τῆς μαχαίρας τὸ στόμα.
Philip, who was truly a two-edged sword against error, the edge of the sword slays.
[5] but drawn Beautiful are these eulogies, and fitted to instill a notable esteem for the holy martyr, willingly forsaking, for the preservation of the Christian faith, the honors and dignities to whose summit he is written to have been raised; beautiful, I say, if those eulogies be read apart, if neither the circumstances of times nor of persons be considered, nor it be inquired whence they flowed; otherwise they are so entangled, so liable to many difficulties, that you would not know what is contained in them which can safely be admitted. For the proof of this last it is enough to have named the Life of St. Eugenia, V. and M., from which for the greater part the recited eulogies flowed; since that Life is today, for many and just causes, reckoned among fables by the common judgment of the learned — as has been set forth and proved several times in our work, and most lately in tom. III of the month of September, p. 761 and following, on the occasion of SS. Protus and Hyacinth, whose deeds it likewise embraces.
[6] Further, that the eulogies of St. Philip produced flowed from the Life of St. Eugenia appears manifest to me, from fabulous Acts and the same will appear to the studious reader, if he shall think it worth the labor to examine this more attentively. Let him take his beginning from the Greeks; let him compare the Basilian and Sirletian Menologies with the said Acts in Lipomanus and Surius, written before in Greek by Metaphrastes, and he will recognize that those are nothing but a summary of these, drawn either from the same source from which Metaphrastes had it, or rather from the Greek lucubration of Metaphrastes himself. And this he will besides persuade himself the more willingly if he weigh that the Basilian Menology, which is older than the Sirletian and the Menaea, was drawn up — as writers now everywhere judge — in the times and by the order of Basil Porphyrogenitus, that is, some years after Metaphrastes (who flourished under the reign of Leo the Wise and of some of his successors) had composed the often-named Life; which therefore the author of the Menology could use.
[7] of St. Eugenia, and therefore That Ado likewise, and Usuard and Notker, used the Latin Acts, which are very ancient, is clear from the whole arrangement of the eulogies at the 11th and 13th days of the month of September, and at the 25th day of December; nevertheless they differ from those same Acts in this, that in them Philip is said to have been put to martyrdom under the emperors Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, that is, at the beginning of the third century, whereas they write that it happened under the emperors Volusian (probably Valerian) and Gallienus — therefore after the middle of the same third century; perhaps this was done from error or inadvertence, because in the Acts Eugenia is read to have suffered with her fellow martyrs under the last-named emperors. In the Roman Martyrology of the edition of the year 1583, says Domenico Giorgi in his note to the 13th day of September of Ado's Martyrology, there was read in the eulogy of Philip that he suffered in the time of the emperors Gallus and Volusian, which words Baronius notes must be deleted, in his manuscript Notations on the margin of that edition which is kept in the Casanatense library. For there he thus noted: "Unless these words be taken away, the whole history concerning him plainly falls to pieces, and many other things are repugnant, so that these things cannot be said."
[8] very uncertain. He was not bishop of Alexandria, The same Baronius in today's Roman, as we have seen, expresses no emperors; yet in the notes he warns that those erred who prolonged Philip's martyrdom to the times of Valerian and Gallienus, because that plainly conflicts with the Acts of St. Eugenia, where he is read to have obtained the prefecture of Egypt from the emperor Commodus, and ten years later the laurel of martyrdom by the order of Severus and Antoninus. But since the Acts themselves are such that nothing can be established on their credit, most things here remain suspect to me. I would not indeed go so far as to deny that there was some Philip in Egypt a martyr, and perhaps a bishop, whose memory recurs today; but whether he was the parent of St. Eugenia, whether prefect of Egypt, whether crowned at Alexandria under the emperors named and in the manner in which it is reported in the Acts and in the ecclesiastical calendars recited, is not sufficiently clear. But that he was bishop of Alexandria is by no means likely. Baronius himself, although Ado and the rest of the martyrologists report it in the same way, does not hesitate to assert it to be false, both in the Annals and in the notes on the Roman Martyrology; in these, at the 25th day of December, he pronounces thus: They (the Acts) have, however, some things which need censure — as, for instance, what is there read of Philip, Eugenia's father, being made (as the author says) bishop of Alexandria; which that it is plainly a fabrication the tables of the bishops of Alexandria, which are described by Eusebius in the Chronicle and in the History, and by Nicephorus bishop of Constantinople and others, manifestly declare. With Baronius in this matter agree Papebroch, Tillemont, and whoever else have called the Acts of St. Eugenia back to criticism.
[9] but perhaps of another place, and at Alexandria Wherefore, if it must absolutely be held that Philip,
who is commemorated today in the little Roman and in others, was a bishop, this will have to be understood in such a way that he — whether he was the father of St. Eugenia or another than he — occupied a see elsewhere, but either fell at Alexandria for the Christian faith, or, after he had fallen elsewhere, had his cultus at Alexandria. Would that it had been granted to find anything, either in the martyrologies or in other monuments of the Church, which could certainly be said not to have flowed from the fabulous Acts! Some hope shone upon me when I first read through the words with which Ado concludes his eulogy, saying, He is now buried in Nitria (which is a desert of Egypt) a basilica worthy of the martyr having been built over his body — chiefly because the words he is now buried seemed to indicate that the basilica existed even at the time when Ado was writing. But that hope vanished after I had consulted the chief copies of the Acts.
[10] For what is read in Surius and Lipomanus concerning Philip, Eugenia's father, in this manner: either suffered, or buried and honored as a saint. But he is buried within the city, in the place which is called Isium, where he himself, while he yet lived, built a sacred house, is expressed in Rosweyde in the Lives of the Fathers, p. 346, thus: And so beside the courts, where St. Eugenia his daughter had established a monastery for virgins of Christ, there he (Philip) ordered his poor body to be laid; so in Vincent of Beauvais in the Speculum, book 11, chapter 3: Beside Nitria, where St. Eugenia his daughter had established a monastery of virgins, he commanded his poor body to be laid; so finally in the manuscript transcript of Rouge-Cloître, which is in my keeping: But blessed Eugenia made his burial beside Nitria, where his brethren built a most worthy basilica, in which God is blessed to this day; and when they had dedicated it, all alike returned to Rome. Whence you may gather that the word atria, or perhaps Isium, was little by little changed in the transcripts, and passed at last into Nitria — which reading Ado retained, having probably a copy of the Life agreeing with our Rouge-Cloître manuscript. Whoever desires to know more of the saint, let him go to tom. 3 of September, p. 761 and following; for there, on the occasion which I mentioned above, we brought forward the judgments of the learned upon the Acts of St. Eugenia, in which St. Philip plays no lowly part, and, a synopsis of them being exhibited, we assigned the authors in whom they exist entire.