SAINT MARCELLUS I

A.D. 308

 

MARCELLUS, a Roman, of the region called Via Lata, the son of Benedict, was in the chair from the time of Constantius and Galerius to Maxentius; for Diocletian and Maximian, having laid down their authority, Constantius and Galerius undertook the government and divided the provinces between them. Illyricum, Asia, and the East fell to the share of Galerius; but Constantius, being a person of very moderate desires, was contented with only Gallia and Spain, though Italy also was his by lot. Hereupon Galerius created two Caesars, Maximinus, whom he made governor of the East, and Severus, to whom he intrusted Italy, he himself holding Illyricum, as apprehending that the most formidable enemies of the Roman State would attempt their passage that way. Constantius, a man of singular meekness and clemency, soon gained the universal love of the Gauls, and the rather for that now they had escaped the danger they had been in before from the craft of Diocletian, and the cruelty of Maximian. But in the thirteenth year of his reign, he died at York in England, and by general consent of all men was placed in the number of the gods.

Marcellus being intent upon the affairs of the Church, and having persuaded Priscilla, a Roman matron, to build at her own charge a cemetery in the Via Salaria, constituted twenty-five titles or parishes in the city of Rome for the more advantageous and convenient administration of baptism to those Gentiles who daily in great numbers were converted to the faith, having a regard likewise to the better provision which was thereby made for the sepultures of the martyrs. But Maxentius, understanding that Lucina, a Roman lady, had made the Church her heir, was so incensed thereat, that he banished her for a time, and, seizing Marcellus, endeavoured by menaces to prevail with him to lay aside his Episcopal dignity and renounce Christianity; but finding his commands despised and slighted by the good man, he ordered him to be confined to a stable, and made to look after the Emperor's camels and horses. Yet this ignominious usage did not so discourage the good bishop, but that he kept constantly to stated times of prayer and fasting, and though he was now disabled in person yet he neglected not by epistle to take due care for the regulating of the churches. But before he had been there nine months, his clergy by night rescued him from this loathsome restraint; whereupon Maxentius, being yet more enraged, secured him the second time, and condemned him to the same filthy drudgery again, the stench and nastiness of which at length occasioned his death. His body was buried by Lucina in the cemetery of Priscilla in the Via Salaria on the sixteenth of January. In time following when Christianity flourished, a church was built upon the ground where this stable stood, and dedicated to St Marcellus, which is to be seen at this day. We read, moreover, that Mauritius, together with his whole legion of Christian soldiers, suffered themselves to be tamely cut off near the river Rhone; to whom may be added Marcus, Sergius, Cosmas, Damianus, with multitudes more who were slain in all places. Marcellus being in the chair two years, six months, twenty-one days, at several Decembrian ordinations made twenty-six presbyters, two deacons, twenty-one bishops; and by his death the see was vacant twenty days.

Fleury says: "Pope Marcellus died this year, after having held the Holy See one year and nearly eight months. He had been odious to many, because he was for compelling those who had fallen during the persecution to do penance for their crime, and the disputes on that subject led to sedition and murder". Marcellus only did his duty in proposing that penance, and Fleury, to the language we have just quoted, should have added that the conduct of Marcellus in that matter was conformable to the rules of the Church and to the duty of the pontiff, in order to make those rules respected by all Catholics.

 

SAINT EUSEBIUS

A.D. 310

 

EUSEBIUS, a Grecian, son of a physician, entered upon the pontificate
when Constantius and Maxentius were Emperors.

For Constantius (called Chlorus from his paleness) dying, Constantine, his son by Helena, whom he afterwards divorced to marry the daughter of Maximian, was with universal consent made Emperor of the West. But the Praetorian Guards at Rome in a tumultuary manner declared for Maxentius, son to Maximian, and gave him the title of Augustus. Hereupon Maximian himself, being raised to some hopes of recovering the Empire, left his retirement in Lucania and came to Rome, having by letter endeavoured to persuade Diocletian to do the same. To suppress these tumults, Galerius sent Severus with his army, who besieged the city, but being deserted by the treachery of some of his soldiers who favoured Maxentius pretensions, was forced to fly to Ravenna, and there slain. And Maximian himself did very narrowly escape the revenge of his son Maxentius, who eagerly sought his father's life for endeavouring by promises and bribes to gain the good-will of the soldiers for himself. So Maximian went into Gaul to Constantine, and gave him his daughter Fausta in marriage. But afterwards he laid a design to ensnare and circumvent him too, till his plot being discovered by Fausta, who revealed the whole matter to her husband, he betook himself to flight, but was taken and put to death at Marseilles, thereby suffering the just punishment of his villanies; or, as others tell us, he laid violent hands upon himself.

During the pontificate of Eusebius, on the third of May, the Cross of our Saviour was found, and very much adorned, and had in great veneration by Helena, Constantine's mother; Judas also, who found it, was baptized, and his name being thereupon changed, was afterwards called Cyriacus.

Eusebius admitted heretics to the communion of the Church upon their retractation by the imposition of hands only. More over he ordained that no laics should commence a suit against a bishop. In his time lived Lactantius Firmianus, a scholar of Arnobius, who being a Professor of Rhetoric at Nicomedia, and discontented that he had so few scholars in a city of Greece, he thereupon betook himself to writing, wherein he became so excellent that he gained a reputation next to that of Cicero himself. He wrote many things, but his works that are chiefly extant, are those against the heathens, concerning the creation of man, and the anger of God. In his old age he was tutor to Constantine's son, Caesar Crispus, in Gallia. Eusebius also, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, a partner with Pamphilus in the diligent search after divine learning, wrote a vast number of books; particularly those "On the preparation of the Gospel"; an Ecclesiastical History; against Porphyry, a violent opposer of the Christians; six apologies for Origen; and three books of the life of Pamphilus the martyr, whose name he added to his own for a surname, as a testimony of the strict friendship there had been between them. But our Eusebius, the bishop of Rome, having at one Decembrian ordination made thirteen presbyters, three deacons, fourteen bishops, died at Rone, and was buried in the cemetery of Calistus, in the Via Appia, October the 2nd. He sat in the chair six months; and by his death the see was vacant one day.

SAINT MELCHIADES

A.D. 311

 

MELCHIADES, an African, was contemporary with Maxentius, Maximin, and Licinius a Dacian, who for his being an excellent soldier, was admitted by Galerius to a partnership in the empire.

The Emperor Galerius, according to Eusebius, was sinking under the torments of a frightful dropsy, and ordered the execution of several physicians who were unable to cure him. One of them, seeing himself in peril, said to the tyrant : "You mistake, my lord, if you imagine that man can cure the evil that God has sent to you. Your disease is not human, nor amenable to our remedies. Remember what you have done against the servants of God and against his holy religion, and you will see whither you should resort for relief". Galerius began to understand that he was only man. Conquered by disease and urged by pain, he exclaimed that he would re-establish the temple of God and give satisfaction for his crime, and he ordered an edict to be drawn up in his own name and in the name of Constantine and Licinius. The edict was in the following terms :

"Among the cares that we continually take of the public weal, we desired to restore all things into conformity with the ancient laws of Rome, and therefore to cause the Christians, who had quitted or might quit the religion of their ancestors, to return to it; for they were so preoccupied by certain reasonings that they no longer followed the maxims of their fathers, but according to their own fancy made laws for their own observance, and assembled together the people in various places; and finally, as we made an ordinance for bringing them back to the maxims of the ancients, many of them have been put in peril, and many have actually perished".

When a government takes a retrospect, it deems it right to soften the statement of the evils that it has done. It was not many Christians who had been put in peril, but all of them; and it was not merely many Christians who had perished, but tens of thousands of them : in a few days a whole legion had been butchered. But now Galerius confesses himself vanquished. "And as we see that they for the most part remain in their sentiments, worshipping neither the God to whom worship is due, nor the God of the Christians, we, having respect to our clemency and to our custom to have mercy upon all men, have deemed it our duty to extend that mercy also to the Christians, so that they may be Christians as be fore, and re-establish their places of assembly, provided that they do nothing there contrary to rule. Then, according to the mercy that we bestowed upon them, they will be obliged to pray to their God for our health, for the state, and for themselves, so that the States may be prosperous on all sides, and that they may dwell in peace in their own houses."

This edict was drawn up in Latin, at Sardis, where the emperor then was, and thence distributed into all the principal cities, and translated into Greek for the East. It was published throughout Asia and the adjacent provinces, and especially in Nicomedia, which had witnessed so much cruelty of the executioners and so much intrepidity of the victims. The following passage from Fleury shows the effect produced by this edict which Sabinus the prefect subsequently, by special order, interpreted favorably to the Christians :

"The governors and the magistrates of towns and rural districts, believing, in fact, that such was the emperor's in tention, made it known by writing, and even commenced putting it in force. All the confessors of Christianity who were in prison were set at liberty, and those who were condemned to labor in the mines were recalled. It seemed that the bright light suddenly appeared after a dark night. In all the towns, the churches held their assemblies and made their usual collections. The infidels were surprised at so unexpected a change, and loudly confessed that the God of the Christians was great and the only true God. The Christians who had been faithful in the persecution now regained all their former freedom; those who had fallen eagerly endeavored to obtain the healing of their sick souls, begging those who had remained firm to extend the hand to them, and pray ing God to be propitious to them. The professors who were delivered from labor in the mines returned home and traversed the streets, filled with incredible joy. On the high roads and in the public places, numerous companies of them were seen walking in procession and singing psalms and hymns to God, and thus ending their journey and returning into their houses with joyous countenances. The very infidels rejoiced with them".

Yet Maxentius sent his soldiers about with private instructions to massacre all they could secretly meet with; and taking delight in magic, at the performance of the hellish rites belonging to that black art, he would send for great-bellied women, especially Christians, and rip them up for the sake of their unborn infants, whose ashes he made use of in his sorceries, thereby showing that tyranny might be supported and kept up even by villany.

Maximin also exercised the like rage and cruelty in the East, giving rewards and preferments to the professors and teachers of witchcraft and sorcery; and being himself very much inclined to give credit to auguries and divinations, became the more bitterly incensed against the Christians, because they despised such superstitions. He commanded likewise, that the decayed idolatrous temples should be repaired, and sacrifices offered to the gods in them after the ancient manner.

During these calamities, multitudes of Christians were put to death, and particularly Dorothea, a most virtuous and beautiful virgin, who chose rather to die than to yield to the tyrant's lust. Sophronia also having been oftentimes solicited by Maxentius, like the noble Lucretia, slew herself to avoid the danger her chastity was in from him.

But Constantine reflected that the emperors who during his time had been zealous for idolatry and the plurality of gods had perished miserably; and that his father, Constantius, who throughout his whole life had honored the one true God, had received evident marks of his protection. He therefore resolved to attach himself to that God, and earnestly prayed to know and to be protected by him. The Emperor Constantine was thus praying with the utmost fervency, when, towards noon, as the sun tended westwards, as Constantine marched through the country with his troops, he saw in the sky, above the sun, a luminous cross, and an inscription which said, "In hoc signo vinces"-"By this sign you shall conquer". He was strangely surprised by that vision, and the troops that accompanied him, who saw it, were no less astonished. The emperor long afterwards related that marvel, and with the solemnity of an oath attested that his own eyes had witnessed it.

"During the remainder of the day the emperor was occupied in meditating what might be the meaning of that marvel. At night, as he slept, Christ appeared to him with the same sign that he had seen in the sky, and commanded him to have an image of it made, and to make use of it in battle against his enemies".

Such was the origin of Constantine's standard, the Labarum.

The battle against Maxentius was gained on the 28th of October, A.D. 312, near the Milvian bridge. The antiquary Fea, who had long studied the history of that period, affirms that the Milvian bridge here alluded to is not that which at the present time is still known as the Ponte Molle, but was a wooden bridge farther up, but still on the Tiber.

Satisfied at first with granting liberty of worship to all, Constantine ere long showed himself the venerator and the indefatigable promoter of Christianity, and he bestowed upon the hierarchy of the Church so many favors, privileges, and gifts, that the name of Christian, which among many Romans was still a mere byword of hatred or contempt, became a proud and coveted title.

As for Maximin, he became manifestly the object of Divine vengeance; his bowels and entrails being on a sudden so swollen and putrefied, that there appeared no difference between him and a putrid carcase; worms in great abundance breeding in his flesh, and rottenness with intolerable stench overspreading his body. This dreadful punishment had been long called for by his wicked practices; for he had forbidden the Christians to assemble at the sepulchres of the martyrs, and had given out that at Antioch an image had spoke and proclaimed aloud, that the Christians must be banished out of the cities, when indeed they were certain knavish priests whom himself had suborned, who from their adjoining private recesses had uttered these words; and moreover, he had distributed rewards through the several provinces to the idol priests who were active against the Christians. But at length the physician plainly telling him the danger of his condition, the tyrant began to relent, and by a public edict forbade all persons to molest or injure the Christians, and suffered them to enjoy their liberty. But this forced repentance stood him in no stead; for having been a long time afflicted with grievous pain and disease, at last died this cruel and inconstant man, who had been sometimes an encourager, some times a persecutor of the Christians.

Unhappily, the Church was wounded by her own hands. The perversities of the Donatists ravaged Africa. We have already described the traditori, or traitors. That name was now reciprocally bestowed by both parties. A council of the bishops of Italy and Gaul was assembled at Rome. It consisted of eighteen bishops, and was opened on the 2d of October, 313, in the palace of the Lateran, and condemned the Numidian bishop, Donatus. The Donatists, besides denying the validity of baptism when administered by heretics, rejected the infallibility of the Catholic Church, to which they gave insulting names, to prove its easy kindness. In the same council, Cicilian, Bishop of Carthage, who had falsely been declared a traditor, was declared lawful Bishop of Carthage, and the Africans were ordered to consider his previous deposition as not having taken place. Melchiades pronounced the final sentence, which evidenced his justice, prudence, and charity.

This same palace of Saint John of Lateran had been bestowed on the Church. It formerly belonged to Plautius Lateranus, who was despoiled of it by Nero for the benefit of his treasury. To the gift of the palace itself Constantine added a fitting income for the proper maintenance of the dignity of the head of the Church. This statement is affirmed by Sangallo.

Melchiades ordained, that no Christian should keep a fast upon a Sunday or a Thursday, because those days were so observed and kept by the pagans; and the Manichaean heresy being at that time very prevalent in the city of Rome, he made several constitutions concerning oblations. These things being settled, he was by Maximin's order crowned with martyrdom; as were also Peter, bishop of Alexandria; Lucianus, a presbyter of Antioch, a man eminent for piety and learning; Timothy, a presbyter of Rome, and divers others both bishops and priests. Melchiades was buried in the cemetery of Calistus, in the Via Appia, December the 10th. During his pontificate, he did at one ordination make seven presbyters, six deacons, twelve bishops. He sat in the chair four years, seven months, nine days; and by his death the see was vacant seventeen days.

The Holy See was vacant one month and twenty days.

 

SAINT SYLVESTER I

A.D. 314-336

 

SYLVESTER, a Roman priest, ordained by Pope Saint Marcellinus, was the son of Rufinus and Saint Justina, and was created pontiff on the 31st of January, Constantine, anno dom. 314.

Under this prince the Christians, who had been continually harassed by tyrants, began to have some respite. For Constantine was equal to the best of princes in all endowments of body and mind, very desirous of military glory, successful in war, and yet freely granting peace to them who asked it. When his other great affairs permitted, he took very much delight in the study of the arts : by his bounty and goodness he gained the love of all men; many good laws he enacted, repealed those that were superfluous, and moderated those that were too rigorous. Upon the ruins of Byzantium he built a city of his own name, and endeavouring to make it equal in stateliness of buildings to Rome herself, he ordered it to be called New Rome, as appears from the inscription under his statue on horseback.

This great prince, well weighing and considering all things, when he came to understand the excellence of the Christian religion, how it obliges men to be moderate in their enjoyments, to rejoice in poverty, to be gentle and peaceable, sincere and constant, &c., he thereupon heartily embraced it; and when he undertook any war, bore no other figure on his standard but that of the cross, the form of which he had seen in the air as he was advancing with his forces against Maxentius, and had heard the angels near it saying to him, "by this do thou overcome"; which accordingly he did, freeing the necks of the people of Rome and the Christians from the yoke of tyranny, and particularly defeating Licinius, who had expelled the Christians from city and camp, and persecuted them with banishment, imprisonment, and death itself; exposing some of them to the lions, and causing others to be hung up and cut to pieces limb by limb like dead swine.

Sylvester, having so potent and propitious a prince on his side, left the mountain Soracte, whither he had been banished by the tyrants, or, as some say, had voluntarily retired, and came to Rome, where he soon prevailed with Constantine, who was before well inclined towards the Christians, to be now very zealous in deserving well of the Church. For as a particular testimony of the honour he had for the clergy, he allowed to the bishops of Rome the use of a diadem of gold set with precious stones. But this Sylvester declined, as not suiting a person devoted to religion, and therefore contented himself with a white Phrygian mitre. Constantine being highly affected with Sylvester's sanctity, built a church in the city of Rome, in the gardens of Equitius, not far from Domitian's baths, which bore the name of Equitius till the time of Damasus. Upon this church the munificent emperor conferred several donations of vessels, both of gold and silver, and likewise very plentifully endowed it.

While these things were transacting at Rome, at Alexandria a certain presbyter, named Arius (a poet, and musician, who composed spiritual songs for pious persons and work-people, he put his erroneous doctrine into verse, and thus got it into circulation among the people man more remarkable for his person, than the inward qualifications of his mind, and who sought more eagerly after fame and vainglory than after truth), began to sow dissension in the Church.

For he endeavoured to separate the Son from the eternal and ineffable substance of God the Father, by affirming that there was a time when He was not; not understanding that the Son was co-eternal with the Father, and of the same substance with Him, according to that assertion of His in the gospel, "I and My Father are one". Now, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, having in vain attempted to reclaim Arius from this his error, by Constantine's appointment, and at his great charge, a general Council was called at Nicaea, a city of Bithynia, at which three hundred and eighteen bishops were present. The debates on either side were long and warm. For divers persons subtle at arguing, were favourers of Arius, and opposers of the simplicity of the Gospel; though one of these, a very learned philosopher, being inwardly touched by the Divine Spirit, all on a sudden changed his opinion, and immediately embraced the sound and orthodox doctrine which before he had pleaded against. At length the matter being thoroughly discussed in the Council, it was concluded that the Son should be styled omooúsios, i.e., acknowledged to be of the same substance with the Father. Of those who were of Arius's opinion, affirming the Son of God to be created, not begotten of the very Divinity of the Father, there were seventeen. But Constantine, coming to understand the truth of the controversy, confirmed the decree of the Council, and denounced the punishment of exile to those who contradicted it Hereupon Arius with only six more were banished, the rest of his party coming over to the orthodox opinion.

Arianism, after having spread through out all the provinces, faded by degrees, so that by the end of the fourth century the Arians had not in the Roman Empire either bishops or churches. If there were still some Arians, they no longer formed a body. That heresy took shelter among the Goths, who had embraced it even during the reign of Constantine; among the Vandals, who seized on Africa; and among the Burgundians, to whom it had been communicated by the Goths. The Franks embraced it when they ceased to be idolaters, and did not abandon it until after the conversion of Clovis. Arianism reappeared in Europe in the train of Luther's Reformation; an Anabaptist preacher affirmed that he was the grandson of God, son of the divinity of Jesus Christ. This fanatic found followers, so that in a short time his doctrine spread in Germany and Poland, and produced various sects; passed into Holland, and was imported into England by Orchin and Bucer, who was engaged by the Protector Somerset, guardian of Edward VI, to teach the doctrine of Zwinglius. Though Madame Meyer founded a chair, with an endowment for lectures against Arianism, the heresy has still its defenders and believers in England.

In this Council it was settled, against the Quartodecimans, that the 21st of March would end the winter equinox, and that the Sunday after the fourteenth moon, which would be at full on the 21st, or after that day, should be the day for the celebration of Easter. It was ordered that the Patriarch of Alexandria should especially make public the day for the celebration of Easter, because in that city, more than elsewhere, astronomy was carefully studied. Thence has come to us the use of the Paschal Cycle, of the Golden Number, and of the Indictions.

The Paschal Cycle is a cycle of five hundred and thirty-two years. At the end of that period the feast of Easter returns on the same Sunday. That cycle brings the new moons on the same days of the Julian year. It is the product of the nineteen years of the lunar cycle multiplied by the twenty-eight years of the solar cycle.

The Indiction is a period or cycle of fifteen years, thus named from a tribute which the Romans levied annually in the provinces to provide pay for those soldiers who had served fifteen years. That period, according to some authors, commenced in 312; according to others, in 313. Those countries that still observe it reckon it from the first of January. To find the year of the Indiction, add 3 to a thousandth of the Gregorian year, and divide by 15. The remainder indicates the Indiction, unless it be a cipher; in that case the Indiction is 15.

The Golden Number is a number which indicates the year of the lunar cycle to which any given year belongs, and the method of finding the Golden Number of any given year since Jesus Christ is as follows : Add 1 to the number of years that have elapsed since Jesus Christ, and divide by 19. The remainder will be the Golden Number sought for; but if there be no remainder, then the Golden Number will be 19.

In this council it was decreed that Meletius should remain without any jurisdiction at Sicopolis, and that those who had been ordained by him should be subject to the Patriarch of Alexandria. Twenty canons were formed for the reform of the ecclesiastical discipline.

In this Council the Photinians were condemned, who had their name from Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, who, taking up the heresy of the Ebionites, held that Christ was conceived of Mary by the ordinary way of generation; as were like wise the Sabellians, who affirmed that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were but one Person. In this Council also, the bishops, according to custom, gave in bills of complaint to Constantine, wherein they accused each other, and desired justice from him; but the good emperor burnt all their accusations, and told them, that they must stand or fall by the judgment of God only, and not of men.

In this Council moreover it was decreed, that no person who, upon pretence of allaying the heat of his lust, had castrated himself, should be admitted into holy orders; that no new proselyte, without a very strict examination, should be ordained, and being so, that it should not be lawful for him to associate with any other women than his mother, or sister, or aunt; that none should be promoted to the order of a bishop, unless by all, or at least by three, bishops of the province; and that one bishop should not receive any person, whether clerk or laic, who stood excommunicated by another.

It was decreed likewise, and that very sacredly, to prevent all oppression, that there should be a Provincial Synod held every year, whither any who thought themselves injured by the bishop might appeal; and I cannot see why this wholesome institution should be abolished by the prelates of our age, unless it be because they dread the censures of the pious and orthodox. It was decreed also, that they who in time of persecution fell away before they were brought to the torture, should from thenceforward continue five years among the catechumens. Finally, it was decreed, that no bishop should upon the account of ambition or covetousness leave a smaller church for a greater a canon which is quite laid aside in our days, wherein with eager appetites, like hungry wolves, they all gape after fatter bishoprics, using all importunities, promises, and bribes to get them.

The constitutions of Sylvester himself were reckoned these that follow, viz. : That the holy oil should be consecrated by the bishop only; that none but bishops should have the power of confirmation, but a presbyter might anoint any person baptized upon the occasion of imminent death. That no laic should commence a suit against a clergyman; that a deacon, while he is doing his office in the church, should use a cope with sleeves; that no clergyman should plead for others or for himself before a secular judge. That a presbyter should not consecrate the elements upon a pall of silk or dyed cloth, but only upon white linen, for the nearer resemblance of the fine white linen in which the body of Christ was buried. He also fixed the several degrees in the orders of the Church, that every one might act in his own sphere, and be the husband of one wife.

But Constantine being desirous to promote the Christian religion, built the Constantinian church (called the Lateran), which he beautified and enriched with several great donations, the ornaments and endowments which he conferred upon it being of a vast value. Among other things, he set up in it a font of porphyry stone, that part of it which contains the water being all silver; in the middle of the font was placed a pillar of porphyry, on the top of which stood a golden lamp, full of the most precious oil, which was wont to burn in the night during the Easter solemnities. On the edge or brink of it stood a lamb of pure gold, through which the water was conveyed into it; not far from the lamb was the statue of our Saviour, of most pure silver. On the other side stood the image of John Baptist, of silver likewise, with an inscription of these words, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world". There were, besides, seven hearts placed round about it, and pouring water into it. For the maintenance of this font he gave several estates in land and houses. Moreover, Constantine, at the motion of Sylvester, built and dedicated a church to St Peter, the chief of the apostles, in the Vatican, not far from the temple of Apollo, where he very splendidly deposited the body of that apostle, and covered his tomb over with brass and copper. This church, likewise, he magnificently adorned, and very largely endowed. The same emperor, also at the instance of Sylvester, built a church, which he enriched and endowed as he had done the former, in the Via Ostiensis, in honour to St Paul, whose body he entombed after the same manner with that of St Peter; by his order also, a church was built in the Sessorian Atrium, by the name of St Cross of Jerusalem, wherein he deposited a part of the holy cross, which was found out by his mother, Helena, a lady of in comparable piety and devotion, who, being prompted thereto partly by the greatness of her own mind and partly by visions in the night, went to Jerusalem to seek after the cross upon which Christ was crucified. To find it was a very difficult task, because the ancient persecutors had set up the image of Venus in the same place, that so the Christians might by mistake worship her instead of their Saviour. But Helena, being animated with zeal, proceeded on to dig and remove the rubbish, till at last she found three crosses lying confusedly one among another; on one of which was this in scription, in three languages, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews". Macarius, the bishop of that city, was at first mistaken in his opinion as to which was the right; but at length all doubt concerning it was removed by an experiment upon the body of a dead woman, who was raised to life at the application of the true one. From the sense of so great a miracle, Constantine published an edict, forbidding any malefactor to be from thenceforward punished by crucifixion.

Helena, having first built a church upon the ground where this cross was found, returned, and brought the nails with which our Saviour's body was fastened to it, as a present to her son. Of one of those nails he caused to be made the bit of the bridle with which he managed the horse he used in war, the other he wore on the crest of his helmet, and the third he threw into the Adriatic Sea, to suppress the rage and tempestuousness of it.

That part of the cross which the devout lady brought along with her in a silver case, set with gold and precious stones, was placed in this Sessorian Church, to which Constantine was very liberal and munificent.

Some tell us that the Church of St Agnes was built at Constantine's command, upon the request of his daughter Constantia, and a font set up in it, where both his daughter and his sister of the same name were baptized, and which in like manner he largely presented and endowed. The same emperor built also the Church of St Laurence without the walls, towards which he was not wanting to express his usual beneficence. Moreover, in the Via Lavicana he built a church to the two martyrs, Marcellinus the presbyter, and Peter the exorcist; not far from which he built a stately monument in honour to his mother, whom he buried in a sepulchre of porphyry. This church also received signal testimonies of his exemplary bounty.

Besides these churches in the city of Rome, he built several others also elsewhere. At Ostia, not far from the port, he built a church in honour to St Peter and Paul the blessed apostles, and John Baptist; near Alba he built a church peculiarly dedicated to John Baptist; at Capua, also, he built in honour to the apostles, that which they called the Constantinian Church, all which he enriched as he had done the former. At Naples he built another, as Damasus tells us, but it is uncertain to whom he dedicated it. And that the clergy of New Rome also might be sharers in the emperor's munificence, he built likewise two churches at Constantinople, one dedicated to Irene, the other to the apostles, having first quite destroyed the Delphic Tripods, which had been the occasion of a great deal of mischief to superstitious people, and either demolished the pagan temples or else transferred them to the use and benefit of the Christians.

Besides all the foregoing instances of Constantine's munificence, he distributed moreover, among the provincial churches and the clergy, a certain tribute or custom due to him from the several cities, which donation he made valid, and perpetuated by an imperial edict. And that virgins and those who continued in celibacy, might be enabled to make wills, and so to bequeath by testament something to the clergy (from whence I believe the patrimony of the church to have received a great increase), he repealed a law which had been made for the propagating of mankind, by which any person was rendered incapable of entering upon an estate who had lived unmarried till five-and-twenty years of age a law upon which the princes had founded their jus trium liberorum, the right or privilege of having three children, of which they often took advantage against those who had no issue. All these things are exactly and fully delivered to us by Socrates and Sozomen, the historians.

In the time of Sylvester flourished several persons of extraordinary note, by whose labour and industry many countries and nations were converted to Christianity, and particularly by the preaching of Julianus, Frumentius, and Edisius, whom certain philosophers of Alexandria had carried thither. The Iberi also, a remote people, were brought to the knowledge and belief of Christianity by a certain captive woman, through the assistance and persuasion of their king Bacurius.

At this time likewise, the authority of Antony, the holy hermit, did much towards the reformation of mankind; Helena did oftentimes, both by letter and messengers, recommend herself and her sons to his prayers. He was by country an Egyptian; his manner of living, severe and abstemious, eating only bread and drinking nothing but water, and never making any meal but about sunset; a man wholly rapt up in contemplation. His life was written at large by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria.

It is not certain that it was Saint Sylvester who ordered that the altars should be of stone.

It was in his time that the custom commenced of consecrating the pontiff on a Sunday or feast-day. Novaes thinks that that ceremony had taken place on a ferial day, except in the cases of Paul III, Clement VII, and Leo X. Sylvester is the first who is represented as crowned with the tiara. That which he wore was taken to Avignon, thence back again to Rome, and then placed in the Church of Saints Sylvester and Martin a' i Monti.

In six ordinations, in December, the Holy Father created sixty-two or sixty-three bishops, forty-two priests, and twenty-six deacons. He governed the Church twenty-one years and eleven months. He died 31st December, 335, and was interred in the cemetery of Priscilla, on the Salarian Way.

There is no longer any controversy about the pretended donation of Constantine. One of the oldest authors who has spoken of it is Eneas, of Paris, who lived A.D. 854. The Abbé Fea treated the question with great ability and good faith. How many useless arguments do not the enemies of the Church still revive upon that subject! Dante has repeated the error in his beautiful verse; but even the greatest of modern poets may, in this, as in many other inspirations, be anything rather than a trustworthy historian.

 

MARCUS I

A.D. 336-337

 

MARCUS, a Roman, son of Priscus, was named successor of Saint Sylvester in the year 336. He had previously been made by Constantine one of the judges of Donatus, whence it may be inferred that that priest was already renowned for his spirit of piety and justice. Novaes maintains that, previous to reaching the tiara, Saint Mark bore the title of cardinal, and that that title was then in use.

Some affirm that Constantine, towards the latter end of his reign, recalled Arius from banishment, and became a favourer of his heresy through the persuasion of his sister, who always insisted that it was nothing but envy that had caused his condemnation. These I believe to be deceived by the nearness of their names, and so to ascribe that to the father which was the act of the son. For it is not probable that that wise prince, who had all along before disapproved of the Arian opinion, should now begin to incline to it in that part of his age wherein men are usually most judicious and discerning. They write moreover, that Constantine was baptized by Eusebius, an Arian, Bishop of Nicomedia. But that this is a mistake appears both from the Emperor's great bounty towards the orthodox, and also from that stately font upon that occasion erected with wonderful magnificence at Rome; at which, after he had been successful in expelling the tyrants, he, with his son Crispus, were instructed in the faith, and baptized by Sylvester. They who are of the other opinion tell us that Constantine deferred so great an affair till the time that he might come to the river Jordan, in which he had a great desire to be baptized, in imitation of our Saviour; but that in an expedition against the Parthians, making inroads upon Mesopotamia, in the thirty-first year of his reign, and of his age the sixty-sixth, he died on the way at Nicomedia, before he could reach the river Jordan for the purpose he designed, and was there baptized at the point of death. But let these men confound and perplex the matter as they please, we have reason to believe, according to the general opinion, that Constantine, who had so often overcome his enemies under the standard of the Cross, who had built so many churches to the honour of God, who had been present at holy councils, and who had so often joined in devotion with the holy fathers, would desire to be fortified against the enemy of mankind by the character of baptism as soon as ever he came to understand the excellence of our religion.

I am not ignorant what Socrates and Sozomen and most other writers say concerning it, but I follow the truth, and that which is most agreeable to the religion and piety of this excellent prince. The vulgar story of his having been overspread with leprosy, and cured of it by baptism, with a previous fiction concerning a bath of the blood of infants before prescribed for his cure, I can by no means give credit to, having herein the authority of Socrates on my side, who affirms that Constantine, being now sixty-five years of age, fell sick, and left the city of Constantinople to go to the hot baths for the recovery of his health, but speaks not a word concerning any leprosy. Besides, there is no mention made of it by any writer, either heathen or Christian, and certainly, had there been any such thing, Orosius, Eutropius, and others who have most accurately written the memoirs of Constantine, would not have omitted it. One thing more concerning this great prince is certain, viz., that a blazing star or comet of extraordinary magnitude appeared some time before his death.

Marcus, applying himself to the care of religion, ordained that the Bishop of Ostia, whose place it is to consecrate the Bishop of Rome, might use a pall. He appointed likewise that upon solemn days, immediately after the Gospel, the Nicene creed should be rehearsed with a loud voice both by the clergy and people. He built also two churches at Rome, one in the Via Ardeatina, in which he was buried, the other within the city: these churches Constantine presented and endowed very liberally.

In the time of this Emperor and Bishop lived Juvencus, a Spaniard of noble birth and a presbyter, who in four books translated almost verbatim into hexameter verse the four Gospels; he wrote also something concerning the sacraments in the same kind of metre.

Our Marcus having at two Decembrian ordinations made twenty-five presbyters, six deacons, twenty-eight bishops, died, and was buried in the cemetery of Balbina, in the Via Ardeatina, October the 5th. He was in the chair one year, eight months, twenty days; and by his death the see was vacant twenty days.

 

SAINT JULIUS I

A.D. 337

 

JULIUS, a Roman, the son of Rusticus, was created pontiff in 337. At the commencement of this pontificate Constantine died, after having been baptized.

The emperor was then about sixty-five years of age, and till then he had enjoyed such perfect health that he easily performed all the military exercises. Preparing to lead his troops against the Persians, he had named the bishops who were to accompany him, and had a tent prepared, and richly decorated, as a portable church, in which he might pray with them. The feast of Easter having arrived, he passed the evening in prayer with the faithful, as was his custom, for he was the first emperor to celebrate that feast; and to render the celebration the more brilliant, he ordered that during the whole night not only all the churches, but the whole city of Constantinople, should be illuminated; and even appointed for that purpose lighted torches, and tapers, or rather columns of wax.

When day appeared, he gave liberally to the people, in humble imitation of the benefits which our Saviour conferred. Having thus, in the year 337, celebrated as usual the Easter feast, he fell sick, and went to the hot baths of Constantinople, and then to those of Helenopolis, where he spent some time in prayer in the church of the martyr Saint Lucian. It was then, feeling that his end approached, that he determined to receive baptism. Having maturely considered the necessity of that sacrament and its marvellous virtues, he threw himself upon the ground in that oratory and confessed his sins; then he received the laying on of hands with the first prayers, and was thus placed in the rank of catechumens. Thence he had himself removed to Achiron, near Nicomedia, and having sent for the bishops, he thus addressed them :

"The time has arrived which I have so much wished for, when I hope to obtain from God the grace of salvation, and that holy sign which gives immortality. I intended to receive baptism in the river Jordan, where our Saviour himself received it, to give us an example; but God, who knows what is best for us, wills that I shall receive that favor here; make, therefore, no difficulty in granting it to me. If I be permitted still to remain some time upon earth, I am resolved to mingle with all the faithful in the assemblies of the Church, and to lead a holy life in obedience to the laws of God."

It was a common devotion in those primitive times to be baptized in the Jordan, or at least to bathe in it, as pilgrims still do.

When the emperor had thus spoken, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the bishops who accompanied him, baptized the emperor, observing all the usual ceremonies. Then they took the purple from him and clothed him in white garments, but of a richness becoming his dignity. His bed also was covered with white. Then, raising his voice, he returned thanks to God for the grace bestowed upon him, and ended with these words:

"Now I am truly happy; I can believe myself worthy of eternal life and of sharing the divine light. What misery it would be to be deprived of such blessings!"

His captains, having entered his chamber, lamented his state, and prayed that God would prolong his days; but he said that he, better than any one, knew the great blessings that he was about to receive, and that he did not wish to delay in going to his God. All this occurred on the feast of Pentecost.

Constantine had made his will, by which he confirmed the division of the empire which he had made during his life among his three sons and his two nephews. He also ordered that Saint Athanasius should be recalled from exile, although Eusebius of Nicomedia tried to prevent him from giving that order.

The Emperor Constantine, having thus set all things in order, died at noon on the day of Pentecost, the 2oth of May, A.D. 337, having reigned thirty-one years, the longest reign since Augustus. The body, shrouded in gold, was conveyed to Constantinople. Constantius was the only one of his sons who was in time to be present at the burial. He had the body conveyed with great pomp into the Church of the Apostles, being in the procession himself; then he retired with the soldiers, as he was only a catechumen. But the clergy and the people remained to pray and to offer the sacrifice. The body of the emperor was raised on a lofty catafalque during the prayers, and interred in the vestibule of the basilica, near the door.

Julius lived in the time of Constantius, who, sharing the Empire with his two brethren, Constantine and Constans, reigned twenty-four years.

Among the successors of Constantine the Great is sometimes reckoned Delmatius Caesar his nephew, who was certainly a very hopeful young gentleman, but was soon cut off in a tumult of the soldiers, though by the permission, rather than at the command of Constantius. In the meantime the Arian heresy mightily prevailed, being abetted by Constantius, who compelled the orthodox to receive Arius. In the second year of his reign, therefore, a council was called at Laodicea, a city of Syria, or, as others have it, at Tyre. Thither resorted both the Catholics and Arians, and their daily debate was, Whether Christ should be styled omooúsios, of the same substance with the Father, or no. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, asserted it, and pressed hard upon them with his reasons and arguments for it; which when Arius found himself not able to answer, he betook himself to reproach and calumny, accusing the holy man of sorcery, and to procure credit to his charge, producing out of a box the pretended arm of Arsenius, whom he falsely asserted that Athanasius had killed, and was wont to make use of that dead arm in his incantations. Hereupon Athanasius was violently run down and condemned by the Emperor, but making his escape he lay concealed in a dry cistern for six years together without seeing the sun; but being at length discovered by a certain servant maid, when his enemies were ready to seize him, by Divine admonition he fled to the Emperor Constans, who by menaces compelled his brother Constantius to receive him again. In the meantime, Arius, as he was going along in the streets, attended with several bishops and multitudes of people, stepping aside to a place of easement, he voided his entrails into the privy, and immediately died, undergoing a death agreeable to the filthiness of his life.

The pontificate of Liberius was almost entirely occupied by the consequences of the persecution raised against Saint Athanasius by Arius. That heresiarch died in 336. Athanasius went to Rome to defend himself against the Eusebians, the partisans of the Arian doctrines. Pope Julius received him with honor. He sent legates to the Eusebians to invite them to the council which was to be held at Rome. Their reply not arriving in time, the council was held in 342, and Saint Athanasius was reinstated in the see of Alexandria. The Eusebians complained. Saint Julius replied to them in a letter which Tillemont affirms to be one of the finest monuments of antiquity. He reproached them with abandoning the doctrine of the Council of Nice to embrace condemned heresies. Those subjects of division between the Eastern and the Western Christians made it desirable that a council should be held near the frontier of the two countries, with a view to reuniting the two churches. It was held in 344, at Sardis (now Sophia), the capital of Bulgaria. There were present about three hundred bishops, besides the pontifical legates.

Athanasius there obtained a new triumph: the judgment of the pope was publicly read to the Council of Rome, and loudly praised by the Fathers. Twenty canons were at the same time formed for the discipline of the Church, and are an appendix to those of Nice. Some time after, Saint Athanasius was definitively restored to the see of Alexandria. Saint Julius renewed the order to the notaries to collect and arrange all wills, donations, and other documents concerning the Holy See. Cluni believes that this is the formal and initial principle of the foundation of a pontifical library.

Our bishop, Julius, having been very uneasy amidst this confusion of things, at length, after ten months banishment, returns to Rome; especially having received the news of the death of Constantine the younger, who, making war upon his brother Constans, and fighting unwarily near Aquileia, was there slain. But notwithstanding the present face of things, Julius desisted not from censuring the Oriental bishops, and especially the Arians, for calling a council at Antioch without the command of the Bishop of Rome, pretending it ought not to have been done without his authority, for the pre-eminence of the Roman above all other churches. To which they of the east returned this ironical answer : "That since the Christian princes came from them to the west, for this reason their Church ought to have the preference, as being the fountain and spring from whence so great a blessing flowed". But Julius, laying aside that controversy, built two churches, one near the Forum Romanum, the other in that part of the city beyond Tiber. He erected also three cemeteries one in the Via Flaminia, another in the Via Aurelia, the third in the Via Portuensis. He constituted likewise, that no clergyman should plead before any but an ecclesiastical judge. He appointed likewise, that all matters belonging to the Church should be penned by the notaries or the protonotary, whose office it was to commit to writing all memorable occurrences. But in our age most of them (not to say all) are so ignorant, that they are scarce able to write their own names in Latin, much less to transmit the actions of others. Concerning their morals, I am ashamed to say anything, since panders and parasites have been sometimes preferred to that office.

During the reign of Constantine and Constantius, Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, was a man of considerable note, and wrote several things, particularly against the Arians. Asterius and Apollinarius wrote against him, and accused him of the Sabellian heresy, as did likewise Hilarius, whom while Marcellus is confuting, his very defence shows him to be of a different opinion from Julius and Athanasius. He was opposed likewise by Basilius, Bishop of Ancyra, in his book "De Virginitate"; which Basilius, together with Eustathius, Bishop of Sebastia, were the principal men of the Macedonian party.

About this time also, Theodorus, Bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, a person of terse and copious eloquence, was a considerable writer, as particularly appears by his commentaries upon St Matthew, St John, the Psalms, and Epistles.

It is said that Julius I ordered the feast of Christmas to be kept on the 25th of December. Pagi is of that opinion; but in the very ample Collection of the Councils it is shown that the institution of the celebration of that great feast is of later date than the pontificate of Julius.

In three ordinations this pope, so eminent for his piety and for his firm and constant nature, created nine or ten bishops, eighteen or nineteen priests, and four or five deacons.

He died on the 12th of April, A.D. 352, after governing the Church fifteen years, two months, and fifteen days. He was interred in the cemetery of Calepodius, on the Via Aureliana, and afterwards removed to the Church of Saint Mary in Trastevere. The Holy See was vacant twenty-five days.

 

LIBERIUS

A.D. 352-366

 

LIBERIUS, a Roman, the son of Augustus, lived in the times of Constantius and Constans. For Constantine, as I said before, engaging unadvisedly in a war against his brother Constans, was therein slain. And Constans himself, having fought with various success against the Persians, being forced by a tumult in the army to join battle at midnight, was at last routed, and designing after wards to make an example of his seditious soldiers, was by the fraud and treachery of Magnentius slain at a town called Helena, in the seventeenth year of his reign, and the thirtieth of his age.

Constans being dead, the old firebrands of the Arian heresy began afresh to make head against Athanasius. For in a council held at Milan, all those that favoured Athanasius were banished. Moreover, at the council of Ariminum, because the subtle, crafty eastern prelates were too hard at argument and disputation for the honest well-meaning bishops of the west, it was thought good to let fall the debate for a time; the Orientalist denied Christ to be of the same substance with the Father.

Liberius was frequently invited to condemn Athanasius, the energetic partisan of the doctrines of Nice; but Liberius, no less courageous, showed the true rock of the Church. Bold against all threats, insensible to all promises, he had to be torn from his flock. Carried to Milan, before the Emperor Constantius, he dared to refuse the condemnation of the holy doctor, because he knew his innocence and the malignity against him of the Arians, and also because such a condemnation would have aimed a mortal blow at the Council of Nice, of which Athanasius was the most zealous defender. Constantius threatened the pope with exile. Liberius replied: "We have already given our last farewell to our brethren at Rome; and we attach more value to the ecclesiastical laws than to our continued residence in that city". The emperor instantly ordered that Liberius should be taken to Berea, in Thrace. Before his departure he was visited by an officer of the prince, who offered him a sum sufficient for the journey. Liberius replied : "Tell the emperor to keep the money to pay his soldiers and to gratify the greed of his ministers". He also refused another sum which was offered to him by the empress, and another sent to him by the eunuch Eusebius, one of the principal officers of the imperial court.

This because Bishop Liberius did at first oppose, and because he refused to condemn Athanasius at the Emperor's command, he was banished by the Arians, and forced to absent from the city for the space of three years. In which time the clergy, being assembled in a synod, in the place of Liberius made choice of Felix, a presbyter, an excellent person, and who, immediately after his choice, did in a convention of forty-eight bishops excommunicate Ursatius and Valens, two presbyters, for being of the Emperor's opinion in religion. Hereupon, at their request and importunity, Constans recalls Liberius from exile : who being wrought upon by the kindness of the Emperor, though he became, as some tell us, in all other things heretical, yet in this particular tenet was on the orthodox side, that heretics returning to the Church ought not to be rebaptized.

It is said that Liberius did for some time live in the cemetery of St Agnes with Constantia, the Emperor's sister, that so through her assistance and intercession he might procure a safe return to the city; but she being a Catholic, and apprehending he might have some ill design, utterly refused to engage in it. At length Constantius, at the instance of Ursatius and Valens, deposed Felix, and restored Liberius. Upon which there arose so fierce a persecution, that the presbyters and other clergy were in many places murdered in their very churches.

When the pontiff was in exile, a council was held at Sirmium, a city of Lower Hungary, of more than three hundred bishops, for the condemnation of Photinus, bishop of that city, who, with his master, Paul of Samosata, maintained that Jesus was not God, but only a man. In this council the Arians drew up a formula of the faith. Some authors say that Liberius, depressed by threats of death, consented to the condemnation of Athanasius, and was reduced to enter into communion with the Arians. Novaes relates, but with a kind of regret, what Baronius says about that "fall" : "No truer history can be found". Natalis Alexander and Tillemont manifest the same feeling. Novaes adds that many modern criticisms go to show that this is false and very false. He quotes the critical dissertation on Pope Liberius written by the Abbé Corgne, who maintains the non-authenticity of the "fall" of Liberius. However, those who believe in the possibility of such fall endeavor to show that the pope did not directly offend the Catholic faith. Sangallo, especially, takes that view. However, if this asserted weakness on the part of Liberius was true (which cannot be admitted), the pope subsequently effaced it by his exemplary conduct, since he has merited the title of saint in several martyrologies. Moreover, it is ascertained that the most distinguished among the Roman matrons demanded from the emperor the recall of Liberius from exile, which Constantius could not refuse.

Some tell us that they were the Roman ladies at a circus show, who by their entreaties obtained of the Emperor this restoration of Liberius, who, though he were of the Arian opinion, yet was very diligent in beautifying consecrated places, and particularly the cemetery of St Agnes, and the church which he built and called by his own name, near the market-place of Livia.

When Liberius returned to Rome, a council was assembled at Rimini, in 359, at which there were present four hundred bishops, eighty of whom were Arians. In that council, which commenced favorably but terminated disastrously, the bishops, who at first had confirmed the profession of faith of the Council of Nice, and condemned and excommunicated Arsacius and Valens and their Arian accomplices, allowed themselves to be ill-treated by Constantius; and, deceived by the intrigues of the Arian bishops, they subscribed the false formula of the Council of Sirmium, which concealed the culpable intention. These bishops thus consented to the omission of the words substance and consubstantial, as the monks of St. Maur observe.

Liberius, who doubtless was no longer in those circumstances in which the most upright intentions are sometimes misjudged, because ordinary men are inclined to believe that one must always submit when unfortunate, Liberius, urged by Constantine to ratify that fraudulent consent of the bishops, not only gave a flat refusal, but actually excommunicated the signing bishops, which at that time could not but make a great impression. Driven forth again from Rome, he concealed himself in the hallowed cemeteries, and remained there till the close of his life.

This pontiff, and John, a Roman patrician, it is said, had a vision, afterwards confirmed by a miraculous fall of snow on the Esquiline Mount, on the 5th of August, which made known the site and the form of the church which the Mother of God desired to be built in her honor. Liberius traced the foundations upon which John built that church, which was consecrated in 353 and called the Liberian. It is also known as Saint Mary Major, to show that among all the churches dedicated to Our Lady it holds the first rank. It is also named Mary al Praesepio, on account of the relic of the manger in which lay the infant Jesus, which is preserved in that same church.

During these calamitous times lived Eusebius, Bishop of Emissa, who wrote very learnedly and elegantly against the Jews, Gentiles, and Novatians. Triphyllius, also bishop of Ledra or Leutheon, in Cyprus, wrote a large and exact commentary upon the Canticles. Moreover, Donatus an African (from whom the sect of the Donatists are denominated) was so industrious in writing against the Catholic doctrine, that he infected almost all Africa and Judaea with his false opinions. He affirmed the Son to be inferior to the Father, and the Holy Spirit inferior to the Son, and rebaptized all those whom he could pervert to his own sect. Several of his heretical writings were extant in the time of St Hierom, and particularly one book on the Holy Spirit, agreeing exactly with the Arian doctrine. And that the Arians might neglect no ill arts of promoting their opinions, Asterius, a philosopher of that faction, at the command of Constantius, compiled divers commentaries upon the Epistle to the Romans, the gospels, and the psalms, which were diligently read by those of that party to confirm them in their persuasion. Moreover, Lucifer, Bishop of Cagliari, together with Pancratius the presbyter, and Hilarius the deacon, were sent in an embassy from the bishop to the emperor; and being by him banished for refusing to renounce the Nicene, under the name of the Athanasian faith, he wrote a book against Constantius, and sent it to him to read. But, notwithstanding this provocation, he lived till the time of Valentinian. It is said also, that Fortunatus, Bishop of Aquileia, had been tampering with Liberius just before his banishment, and endeavouring to bring him over to the Arian heresy.

Serapion likewise, who for his great parts had deservedly given him the surname of Scholasticus, compiled an excellent book against Manichaeus, nor could all the menaces of the emperor make him desist from the open confession of the truth; but on the contrary, hoping to have rendered Constantius more favourable to Athanasius the Great (so called from the constant and unwearied opposition which he always kept up against pagans and heretics), into his presence he boldly goes, nor did the threats of so great a prince cause him to stir one step backward from his constancy and resolution.

It is affirmed that he ordered that, during fast-days, litigation should cease, and that he reprimanded those of the faithful who, during Lent, enforced their claims upon their debtors. It is to one of his precepts that the custom is owing of abstaining from marriage during Lent.

In two ordinations Liberius created nineteen bishops, eighteen priests, and five deacons. He governed the Church fourteen years, four months, and two days, and died on the 9th of December, A.D. 366, and was interred in the cemetery of Priscilla, on the Salarian Way. The Holy See was vacant ten days.

Though we have quite correctly given the date of 366 in the previous paragraph, it will be noticed that in the next heading we go back to the year 359, the date of the accession of Felix, who probably had some intermediate authority during the troubles of Liberius.

 

SAINT FELIX II

A.D. 356

 

FELIX the Second, a Roman, the son of Anastasius, was Bishop of Rome in the reign of Constantius, who by the death of Constans, slain by Magnentius, becoming now sole emperor, sent into Gallia to suppress a sedition arisen there, his cousin-german Julian, whom he had created Caesar; who in a short time, by his great valour and conduct, reduced both the Gauls and Germans; whereby he gained so much the affections of the army, that by universal consent they made him emperor. At the news of this, Constantius, who was engaged in a war with the Parthians, suddenly strikes up a truce with them, and forthwith marches forward to oppose Julian; but in his march being seized with an apoplexy, he died between Cilicia and Cappadocia, at a town called Mopsocrene, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, and of his age the forty-fifth. The physicians were of opinion that the excessive grief and anxiety of mind which the rebellion of Julian had brought upon him, was the occasion of that fatal distemper to him. He was (excepting always the case of the Christians, against whom he was unjust and cruel) a person of so great moderation and clemency, that, according to the ancient custom, he deserved an apotheosis. Upon his first undertaking the government, at his entering triumphantly by the Via Flaminia into the city of Rome in his golden chariot, he did with wonderful condescension take notice of and salute the citizens that went out to meet him, affirming that of Cyneas, the ambassador of Pyrrhus, to be true, that he saw at Rome as many kings as there were citizens. In one thing only he was the occasion of laughter to the people, viz., that as he passed through the lofty gates of the city, and the stately triumphal arches, though he were a man of very little stature, yet as though he feared to hit his head against the tops of them, he bowed it down low, like a goose stooping as she goes in at a barn door. Being conducted to view the rarities of the city, and beholding with admiration the Campus Martius, the sepulchre of Augustus Caesar, adorned with so many statues of marble and brass, the Forum Romanum, the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the baths, the porticoes, enlarged like so many provinces, the amphitheatre, built with Tiburtine stone of so vast a height that a man's eye could scarce reach to the top of it, the Pantheon, built with stately arches, of a wonderful altitude, the temple of peace, Pompey's theatre, the great cirque, the Septizonium of Severus, so many triumphal arches, so many aqueducts, so many statues erected here and there throughout the city for ornament; beholding all this, I say, he at first stood astonished, and at length declared, that certainly Nature had laid out all her stock upon one city. At the sight of the famous horse of brass set up by Trajan, he desired of Hormisda, an excellent workman whom he had brought along with him, that he would make such another for him at Constantinople, to whom Hormisda replied that the emperor ought then to build such another stable (meaning the city of Rome). The same Hormisda being asked by Constantius what he thought of the city of Rome, returned an answer becoming a philosopher, that all which pleased him in it was, that he understood that there also men were wont to die.

Felix, who, as we have said, was put into the place of Liberius by the orthodox (though Eusebius and St Hierom, which I much wonder at, affirm it to have been done by the heretics), presently after his entrance upon the pontificate pronounces Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, a heretic, and rebaptized by Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, in a little town called Aquilo, not far from Nicomedia. And hereby may be discovered the error of those who accuse Constantine the Great himself of this heresy an imputation which certainly, as appears by history, neither ought nor can be fastened upon that great prince and great favourer of the Christian religion. While this great contention which we have spoken of between Liberius and Felix lasted, the Arian heresy branched itself into two factions. For on the one side Eunomis (from whom they were called Eunomians), a man leprous both in body and mind, and who had a falling sickness as well within as without, affirmed that in all things the Son was unequal to the Father, and that the Holy Spirit had no community of essence with the Father or the Son.

Authors differ as to the exact circumstances under which Felix thus acted. Did he act as the absent pope's vicar? Did he usurp authority? Or was he, with the absent pope's consent, actually, though privately and only temporarily, elected pope, with the understanding that on the return of Liberius, should that ever take place, Felix would retire? Be that as it may, it is certain that when Liberius did return, Felix laid down his authority, and went to practise the Christian virtues in retirement.

On the other side, Macedonius, whom the orthodox had made Bishop of Constantinople before he became erroneous in his opinions, was renounced by the Arians, for holding the Son to be equal with the Father, though he uttered the same blasphemies against the Holy Spirit that themselves did. It is said that Felix held a council of forty-eight bishops, in which it was decreed that all bishops should attend in person at every General Council, or else by letter give a good account why they could not; which decree was afterwards renewed in the Council of Carthage.

In his time lived Acacius, for his having but one eye called Monophthalmus, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, who wrote largely upon Ecclesiastes, and who by his fair speech and swimming carriage had gained such an ascendant over Constantius that he himself undertook to appoint Felix, an Arian, to be bishop in room of Liberius. This St Hierom tells us, though I much marvel at it, since, as we have already said, it is evident that Felix was a Catholic, and a constant opposer of the Arians. At length, after Felix had done all that in him lay for the propagation and defence of the true faith, he was seized by his enemies, and together with many orthodox believers, was slain and buried in a church which he himself had built in the Via Aurelia, two miles from the city, November the 20th. He was in the chair only one year, four months, two days, through the means of a sedition raised by Liberius (whom I have in serted into the number of bishops, more upon the authority of Damasus, than for any deserts of his own).

In a single ordination he created nineteen bishops, twenty-seven priests, and five deacons. While he held the supreme authority in the Church he had the courage to condemn Constantius as an Arian; and on the return of Liberius, the emperor in revenge condemned Felix II to exile in the little town of Cori, on the Aurelian Way, seventeen miles from Rome. There he suffered martyrdom with great courage. It may not be superfluous to add that even after the triumph of the Church great cruelties were inflicted upon the Christians. As the chief of the state was himself a Christian, there was no longer even the wretched excuse of a mistaken religious zeal; but heretics pursued those whom they deemed enemies as fiercely as any pagans could.

The body of Felix, being brought to Rome, was interred at the baths of Trajan, and subsequently placed by Saint Damasus in the basilica which Felix himself had caused to be constructed on the Aurelian Way, two miles from Rome. From this the body was removed into the Church of Saints Cosmo and Damian. In the reign of Pope Gregory XIII there arose a question between the Cardinals Baronius and Santorio as to whether the name of Felix should be retained in the Roman Martyrology as pontiff and as martyr. Santorio maintained that it was clearly right, and on the 22d of July, 1582, the evening of the feast of Saint Felix, that saint's body was found in the above-mentioned Church of Saint Cosmo and Saint Damian, and the inscription described him as having been pontiff and martyr. Many modern critics erase him from the list of pontiffs, on the ground that that inscription is not authentic.

Some writers maintain that the body is preserved at Padua, in the Church of the Cordeliers, and that the coffin bears an inscription with the title of saint, placed on it in 1503.

Even in our own day there are different opinions as to the legitimacy of the papacy of Felix II. Various authors consider him a legitimate pope, and Bellarmine even wrote an apologetical dissertation in support of that view. On the other hand, there are not wanting some who deny that he was either saint, or pope, or martyr, and consider that he was an antipope, and even erroneous in his doctrines; of this opinion are Natalis Alexander, Sangallo, Fleury, and Christianus Lupus. The celebrated Monsignor Borgia, afterwards cardinal, said upon this subject: "The legitimacy of Felix is demonstrated to those who believe in the fall of Liberius."

Shortly after the pontificate of Damasus I, the successor of Liberius and Felix II, we must place the reign of the Emperor Julian, surnamed the Apostate, son of Julius Constantius, brother of the great Constantine. He was near perishing with his brother Gallus in a terrible massacre of his family by the sons of Constantine, and was only saved by the care of Mark, Bishop of Aristus, who concealed him in the sanctuary of his church, a circumstance which subsequently added to the horror of his apostasy. Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was charged with the education of Julian and Gallus, gave them a tutor named Mardonius, who endeavored to inspire them with gravity, modesty, and contempt for sensual pleasures.

These young princes entered into the order of the clergy, and performed the duty of readers, but with very different sentiments upon religion. Gallus had much piety, while Julian had a secret leaning to the worship of false gods, and his inclinations broke forth when, at the age of twenty-four, he was sent to Athens, where he was addicted to astrology, magic, and all the vain illusions of paganism. It is chiefly to that sacrilegious curiosity about the future that we must attribute the apostasy of that young prince, who gave no reason for suspicion till after the death of Constantius. Julian, being named Caesar by Constantius, distinguished himself in Gaul, and gained a victory over seven German kings near Strasburg. Subsequently his soldiers declared him emperor. He was then at Paris, where he had built a palace, of which the remains are still visible. Subsequently Julian was recognized as emperor in the East, as he already had been in the West. The pagan philosophers by whom he was surrounded persuaded him to annihilate Christianity and to revive idolatry. At first he employed only mild means, but he afterwards ordered cruelty and bloodshed. Iondot says of this emperor that "his character presents one of the most embarrassing problems of history. He was humane and sanguinary, disinterested and prodigal, harsh to himself, and too indulgent to the sophists, his favorites; he combined the contraries, and was at the same time an Alexander and a Diogenes". The Cardinal Gerdil, in his Considerations upon Julian, has well described him. The edict of that em- peror against the Christians is a tissue of false reasonings, of which Voltaire has reproduced the principal traits in his Essay on Morals, with the same logic and the same honesty. With the death of this emperor, the family of Constantine became extinct. In that family Christianity found alike its most generous friend and its most cruel enemy. One sentence, borrowed from Lebeau's Histoire de l'Empire, will complete one's knowledge of Julian: "He is the model of those persecuting princes who try to avoid the reproach of persecution by an appearance of gentleness and equity". Julian died on the 26th June, 363, at the age of about thirty-two years.

 

SAINT DAMASUS

A.D. 366-3846

 

DAMASUS, was born at Guimaraens, in Portugal. Sent to Rome at an early age, he at first was writer and reader, then deacon, and at length cardinal-priest. Damasus has been called a Spaniard, because Portugal was then a part of Spain.

It has been affirmed that, during the exile of Liberius, Damasus was his vicar. While still young, he wrote the acts of the holy martyrs, Peter and Marcellinus, which he had learned from the lips of their executioner, Dorotheus. Subsequently he won the friendship of Athanasius, when the latter came to Rome, under the pontificate of Julius, and perhaps he was ordained deacon by that pontiff. Certainly he was deacon when Liberius was sent into exile. The schismatical author of the prefaces to the Memorial of Faustinus and Marcellinus, after Father Zaccaria, adds that Damasus did not follow Liberius into exile, but only feigned to do so, and then hastened back to Rome and usurped the pontifical authority. But the author of those prefaces, besides being a schismatic, showed himself the partisan of an antipope, named Ursicinus, who then tormented the Church. And therefore we need give no credence to what this opponent says against Damasus.

This cardinal-priest was elected pope at the age of sixty-two, on the 15th of September, 366. He began by using all the means in his power to put an end to the schism of Ursicinus. In 369 he assembled at Rome a synod of ninety-three bishops, confirmed the faith of Nice, rebuked the Council of Rimini, and condemned the Bishop Auxentius, the disseminator of heresy in the diocese of Milan and in the neighboring churches. Saint Basil having sent letters to Rome by Dorotheus, deacon of Antioch, the Holy Father, to show himself favorable to the entreaties of the pious bishop, sent to the East Sabinus, deacon of the Milanese church. The latter returned to Rome with letters from Basil, which were not satisfactory to the pontiff. He thought fit to send them back to Basil by Evagrius. Basil then sent again to Rome Dorotheus, recently consecrated priest.

On that occasion the Holy Father, in 374, assembled an other council, of whose acts only a single fragment remains.

Several letters from the pontiff to Paulinus of Antioch then caused some rumors in the East. Those letters contained a tacit but clear protestation by which the Holy Father recognized the said Paulinus as Bishop of Antioch, to the prejudice of Meletius. Basil, the friend of the latter, sent Dorotheus for the third time to Rome, with the view, in concert with other bishops, to procure a retraction of that decision. At that time Damasus assembled a synod, in which he declared that he maintained his decree in favor of Paulinus, but without cutting off Meletius from the communion of the Church. In 377 Saint Jerome consulted Damasus on these questions: 1. May we say that in God there are three hypostases? 2. With which of the two parties, the Meletinian or the Paulinian, were the faithful to communicate? The pope replied that Paulinus was to be communicated with, and that in God three persons and one God were to be recognized.

In the following year, Gracchus, prefect of Rome, to whom is applicable Justinian's law that no one shall be a judge in his own cause, obtained baptism on condition that the authorities should destroy the infamous den of Mythra.

Damasus lived in the reign of Julian, who was certainly an extraordinary person, if we regard his fitness either for civil or military affairs. He had his education under Eubulus the sophist, and Libanius the philosopher, and made such proficiency in the liberal arts, that no prince was his superior in them. He had a capacious memory, and a happy eloquence, was bountiful towards his friends, just to foreigners, and very desirous of fame. But all these qualities were at last sullied by his persecution of the Christians, which yet he managed more craftily than others had done; for he did not persecute at first with force and torture, but by rewards, and honours, and caresses, and persuasions. He seduced greater numbers of them than if he had exercised any manner of cruelties against them. He forbade the Christians the study of heathen authors, and denied access to the public schools to any but those who worshipped the Gentile gods. Indeed, he granted a dispensation to one person, named Prohasresius, a most learned man, to teach the Christians publicly; but he with disdain refused to accept of that indulgence. He prohibited the conferring military offices upon any but heathens, and ordered that no Christians should be admitted to the government or jurisdiction of provinces, upon pretence that the laws of their religion forbade them the use of their own swords. He openly opposed and banished Athanasius, at the instigation of his sorcerers and soothsayers, with whose arts he was wonderfully pleased they complaining to him that Athanasius was the cause why their profession was in no greater esteem. At a certain time, as he was sacrificing to Apollo at Daphne, in the suburbs of Antioch, near the Castalian fountain, and no answers were given him to those things concerning which he enquired; expostulating with the priests about the cause of that silence, the devils replied, that the sepulchre of Babylas the martyr, was too near, and therefore no responses could be given. Hereupon Julian commanded the Galileans, for so he called the Christians, to remove the martyr s tomb further off.

This they applied themselves to with wondrous exultation and cheerfulness, but rehearsing at the same time that of the Psalmist, "Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols". They hereby so heightened the rage of Julian, that he forthwith commanded multitudes of them to be put to death, which he did not before intend. I much wonder that Julian should act after this manner, having had before experience of the vanity of diabolical arts. For entering once into a cave in company with a magician, and being sorely affrighted when he heard the demons howl, in the surprise he used the sign of the cross, at which the demons immediately fled. Upon this, telling his companion that certainly there must needs be something miraculous in the sign of the cross, the sorcerer made him this answer, "That indeed the demons themselves did dread that kind of punishment". By this slight account of the matter Julian became more obstinate than before, so strangely was he addicted to magical allusions, though he had formerly, to decline the displeasure of Constantius, feignedly embraced the Christian religion, publicly read the Holy Scriptures, and built a church in honour to the martyrs. Moreover, this emperor, on purpose to spite the Christians, permitted the Jews to rebuild their temple at Jerusalem, upon their declaring that they could not sacrifice in any other place. By which concession they were so mightily puffed up, that they used all their endeavours to raise it more magnificently than the former. But while they were carrying on the work, the new fabric fell down in an earthquake, by the fall of which multitudes of the Jews were crushed to death, and the prophesy a second time verified, "That there should not be left one stone upon another". On the following day the very iron tools with which the workmen wrought were consumed by fire from heaven; a miracle by which many of the Jews were so wrought upon that they be came proselytes to Christianity. After this Julian undertakes an expedition against the Persians, of whom he had intelligence that they were endeavouring a change in the government; but before he set forth, he spared not to threaten what havoc he would make among the Christians at his return. But having vanquished the enemy, and returning conqueror with his army, though in some disorder, he died of a wound given him near Ctesiphon. Whether he received it from any of his own men or from the enemy, is uncertain; though some tell us, that he was pierced through with an arrow sent no man knew from whence, as also that when he was just expiring, with his hand lifted up to heaven, he cried out, "Thou hast overcome me, O Galilean"; for so in contempt he was wont to call our Saviour, the Galilean, or the carpenter's Son; upon which was grounded that answer of a young man to Libanius, the sophist, asking him by way of derision, "What he thought the carpenter's Son was doing"; to whom the youth replied, "That he was making a coffin for Julian"; a witty and prophetic reply; for soon after his saying so, Julian's dead body was coffined up and brought away.

We are told that this emperor had once been in holy orders, but that afterwards he fell away from the faith, for which reason he is commonly called the Apostate. He died in the twentieth month of his reign, and in the thirty-second year of his age. Him Jovinian succeeded, who being voted emperor by the army, refused to own that title, till they should all with a loud voice confess themselves Christians. This they having done, and he having commended them for it, he took the government upon him, and freed his army out of the hands of the barbarous, with no other composition but that of leaving Nisibis, and part of Mesopotamia, free to Sapor the Persian king. But in the eighth month of his reign, whether from some crudity upon his stomach, as some will have it, or from the faint and suffocating steam of burning coals, as others, or by what means soever, certain it is that he died suddenly.

Damasus being chosen to the pontificate, was soon rivalled in that dignity by Ursicinus a deacon, whose party having assembled themselves in a church, thither also Damasus's friends resorted, where the competition being managed not only by vote, but by force and arms, several persons on both sides were slain in the very church. But not long after the matter was compromised, and by the consent both of the clergy and people, Damasus was confirmed in the bishopric of Rome, and Ursicinus was made Bishop of Naples. But Damasus being afterwards accused of adultery, he made his defence in a public council, wherein he was acquitted and pronounced innocent, and Concordius and Calistus, two deacons, his false accusers, were condemned and excommunicated. Upon which a law was made, "That if any man did bear false witness against another, he was to undergo the same punishment that the person accused should have done if he had been guilty".

In 379 peace was concluded between Paulinus and Meletius. The former held a council, the acts of which he sent to Damasus.

In 380 the pope held a synod, in which he approved and confirmed the transaction of the two bishops of Antioch, and received Meletius into perfect communion, establishing a confession of faith. The same year the Holy Father declared null the ordination, by some Egyptians, of the ambitious Maximus Cinicus, who dared to pretend to be Bishop of Constantinople, to the prejudice of Saint Gregory Nazianzus, and he constituted, as his vicar in the provinces of eastern Illyria, Acolius, Bishop of Thessalonica.

Priscillian, condemned by the Council of Saragossa, then visited Rome for the purpose of justifying himself to Damasus, but the pope would not even admit him to his presence.

At the solicitation of the Emperor Theodosius, Damasus, in 381, assembled at Constantinople the second general council. It was attended by a hundred and fifty or a hundred and eighty bishops, who gave honorable reception to the Tome of the Western Church, that is to say, the confession of Damasus to Paulinus, or the confession of faith established in the Roman council of the preceding year. The bishops in this council confirmed the Nicene Creed against Macedonius, Aetius, and Eunomius, Arians who, among other errors, denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The bishops added to the Nicene Creed the words, "I believe in the Holy Ghost, Lord," etc., to which were added the words "filioque" in Spain, by the Council of Toledo, of 589. It was received by the churches of France and Germany in the eighth century, and by the Roman Church in the ninth.

Maximus Cinicus, usurper of the see of Constantinople, was deposed, and Saint Gregory Nazianzus was restored to his episcopal jurisdiction. But he, from his love of peace, renounced it, and in his place was appointed Nectarius, of the senatorial order, who was only a catechumen. In this council three or four canons were formed, in one of which primacy was given to the Bishop of Constantinople after that of the Roman pontiff. This was disapproved of by Damasus, who was too acute and far-sighted not to perceive the danger which might arise from that probably too hasty declaration. About the same time, when, on every side, measures were being taken to secure the peace of the Church and to destroy heresies, some senators, partisans of the old system of the Gentiles of Rome, attempted to restore paganism by causing the altar of Victory to be re-erected in the senate. In pursuance of that design, they were about to send Simmachus to the Emperor Gratian to obtain his consent. But Saint Ambrose, formally empowered by Damasus, exerted himself so effectively at court that the embassy was not suffered to depart. That same year the Holy Father convoked a numerous council, all the acts of which are lost.

In 383 Damasus wrote a letter to the Eastern bishops against the partisans of Apollinaris, and in 384 another letter to the Emperor Valentinian, in favor of Simmachus, who had been accused of showing his hatred of the Christians, under pretext of obeying the orders of the emperor. Damasus instituted the penalty of retaliation, by which the calumniator was to be subjected to the punishment which the accused would have incurred had he been unable to prove himself innocent. To him also is attributed the custom of chanting the Psalms day and night, but that custom prevailed in the primitive Church in the time of Pope Pontianus. It is possible that it was even earlier. Saint Ambrose introduced into the West the singing of the Psalms by two choirs alternately; it may have been that Damasus, by a decree, confirmed that new custom. On this point Dom Constant refutes those who say that the alternate singing was either invented or confirmed by Pope Damasus. It is not exact to say that Damasus, following the example of the Church of Jerusalem, ordered the Alleluia to be sung at Rome. By the advice of Saint Jerome, he ordered that, as the Alleluia was sung at Easter-time, it should frequently be sung at other times, that is to say, on Sundays. Those who write that the same pontiff ordered that at the end of the Psalms the Gloria Patri should be used, are mistaken, for they base their assertion upon a letter of Saint Jerome, which is now known to be apocryphal. Novaes thinks that the Gloria Patri was in use in the primitive Church. The Council of Nice added to it the words, "Sicut erat in principio," in opposition to the Arians, who said that the Son of God was created in time. In general, the custom of saying it at the end of the Psalms was not usually commanded by the Church as early as is supposed; perhaps it was not ordered previous to the celebration of the Council of Vaison, in the acts of which we, for the first time, meet with a decree that relates to it.

Damasus summoned to Rome Saint Jerome, who served him as secretary, with the duty of replying to the letters which the Holy Father received from the councils and from the churches. By order of the same pontiff, Saint Jerome corrected and translated into Latin the version of the Septuagint, and he did the same for the Hebrew edition, done into Latin. He also most scrupulously corrected the Latin text of the New Testament, carefully comparing it with the Greek text.

In five ordinations Saint Damasus created sixty-two bish ops, thirty-one priests, and eleven deacons. He governed the Church eighteen years and about two months, and died at the age of eighty, in December, 384.

He was a man of brilliant virtue, learned in the Holy Scriptures, illustrious by his writings, and celebrated for the good and constant organization of the acts of his pontificate. This pontiff had also some disposition towards the cultivation of poetry, but excelled less in that kind of study than in all the others to which he devoted himself. Saint Jerome bestows this eulogy upon the continence of Damasus: "He was the virgin doctor of a virgin Church". Tolerant as to offences offered to himself, Damasus would not endure offences against the Church.

The genuine works of Saint Damasus were printed at Paris in 1672. That edition is preceded by the life of the pontiff, which is also to be found in the Bibliotheque des Pères, and in the Ep. Rom. Pont, of Dom Constant. An earlier edition was published in 1639, by Frederick Ubaldini, and there was another Roman edition in 1638. There is also a folio edition by the Canon Antoine Marie Merenda, which was published in 1754.

A host of other authors have spoken of the works of Saint Damasus. The Council of Chalcedon called him "the ornament and the glory of Rome." His intimate union with Saint Jerome is one of the finest acts of this pontiff. To select for his interpreter a writer of such splendid talent and such high renown was to show an admirable modesty. The moral strength of the pontificate was doubled by such a circumstance. So great a head of the Church, learned himself, and endowed with the most eminent literary qualities, still further summoned to his aid the eloquence, the force, the fervor, the calm style, the patience, the erudition that was almost universal, and, finally, the advice of the most eminent doctor of the Latin Church.

It is said that Saint Damasus introduced the use of organs.

We must here say a few words more about the Antipope Ursicinus. At the election of Damasus he did not fear to accept the part of an intrusive pope. Although that election shone with the intervention of the divine judgment, says Saint Ambrose, some priests, seven in number, and three deacons, having placed themselves at the head of the faction opposed to Felix, created Ursicinus pontiff, in the Basilica of Sicinus, situated near the Esquiline, and he was ordained by the Bishop of Tivoli; and then arose a sedition between the two factions, each of which desired the man of its choice to prevail. Juventius, then prefect of Rome, drove Ursicinus and his partisans from the city, but they speedily returned. Again expelled by Pretextatus, successor to Juventius, the Emperor Valentinian confirmed the order of exile, and declared Ursicinus a disturber of the Church, and all the partisans of the intruder schismatics. They attempted a new sedition, still maintaining that in Ursicinus they recognized their legitimate head; but the emperor by a new order sent the partisans to a distance of twenty miles from the metropolis, and banished the false pontiff into Gaul.

On the death of Valentinian, Ursicinus endeavored to return to Rome, and assembled his partisans, with a view to seizing the pontifical authority. He continued his intrigues and his seditious conduct during the whole reign of Damasus, but was unable to expel the noble friend of Saint Jerome. At the moment of the election of Siricius, successor of Damasus, Ursicinus endeavored to oppose it, but he was again repulsed from Rome, to which it seemed he could never return.

Under this reign died Saint Macrina, sister of Saint Basil and of Saint Gregory of Nyssus. Saint Basil, surnamed the Great, was Bishop of Caesarea. The Emperor Valens sent a prefect to Basil to engage him to become an Arian, but he refused with considerable force. The prefect observed that people never spoke to him in that manner, to which Basil cuttingly replied : "Possibly that is because you are never in the habit of speaking to a bishop". The Hexameron of Saint Basil (a work upon the six days of the creation) is looked upon as a masterpiece.

The Basilian religious orders, male and female, take their name from this holy doctor.

Damasus, taking great delight in study, wrote the lives of all the Bishops of Rome that had been before him, and sent them to St Hierom. Notwithstanding which, he neglected not to increase the number of churches, and to add to the ornaments of Divine worship. For he built two churches, one near Pompey's theatre, the other at the tombs in the Via Ardeatina, and in elegant verse wrote the epitaphs of those martyrs whose bodies had been buried, to perpetuate their names to posterity. He also dedicated a marble table with an inscription to the memory of St Peter and St Paul at the place where their bodies had once lain. Moreover, he enriched the church which he had built in honour of St Laurence, not far from Pompey's theatre, with very large donations. He ordained likewise, that the psalms should be sung alternately in the church, and that at the end of every psalm the gloria patri should be added. And whereas formerly the Septuagint only had been in vogue, Damasus first gave authority to Hierom's translation of the Bible, which began to be read publicly, as also his psalter faithfully rendered from the Hebrew, which before, especially among the Gauls, had been very much depraved. He commanded also, that at the beginning of the mass the confession should be used as it is at this day. But having at five ordinations made thirty-one presbyters, eleven deacons, sixty-two bishops, he died and was buried with his mother and sister in the Via Ardeatina, in the church built by himself, December the 11th. He sat in the chair seventeen years, three months, eleven days; and by his death the see was vacant twenty-one days.

 

SAINT SIRICIUS

A.D. 385-398

 

SIRICIUS, a Roman, son of Tiburtius, lived in the time of Valentinian, who, for his being a Christian, had been very unjustly dealt withal, and cashiered from a considerable command in the army by Julian. But upon the death of Jovinian, being by the universal consent of the soldiers elected emperor, he admitted his brother Valens his colleague in the Empire, and assigned to him the government of the east. Afterwards, in the third year of his reign, at the persuasion of his wife and her mother, he created his young son Gratian Augustus. And whereas one Procopius had raised a sedition and set up for himself at Constantinople, him with his adherents the emperor very suddenly overthrew and put to death.

But Valens having been baptized by Eudoxius, an Arian bishop, and becoming a bigoted heretic, presently fell to persecuting and banishing the orthodox, especially after the death of Athanasius, who, while he lived, was a mighty support to the Christian state for forty-six years together. Lucius, also another heretical bishop, was extremely violent and outrageous against the orthodox Christians; nor did he spare so much as the Anchorites and Eremites, but sent parties of soldiers to invade their solitudes, who either put them to death or else sent them into exile. Amongst this sort of men, they who at that time had the greatest esteem and authority were the two Macarii in Syria, the disciples of Anthony, one of which lived in the upper, the other in the lower desert; as also Isidorus, Panucius, Pambus, Moses, Benjamin, Paulus Apheliotes, Paulus Phocensis, and Joseph in Egypt. While Lucius was intent upon the banishment of these men, a certain inspired woman went about crying aloud, that those good men, those men of God, ought by no means to be sent into the islands. Moreover, Mauvia, queen of the Saracens, having by frequent battles very much impaired the Roman forces, and harassed their towns on the borders of Palestine and Arabia, refused to grant the peace which they desired at her hands, unless Moses, a man of most exemplary piety, were consecrated and appointed bishop to her people. This Lucius willingly assented to; but when Moses was brought to him, he plainly told him, that the multitudes of Christians condemned to the mines, banished to the islands, and imprisoned through his cruelty, did cry loud against him, and that therefore he would never endure the imposition of his polluted hands. Hereupon, certain bishops being recalled from exile to consecrate him, he was presented to the queen, and thereby a peace concluded. But Valens and Lucius continued still to wreak their fury against the orthodox, though Valens was rendered somewhat more favourable towards them by the letters of Themistius, the philosopher. Athanaricus also, king of the Goths, exercised very great cruelty against those of his people who were Christians, many of whom suffered martyrdom for their religion.

In the meantime, Valentinian, by his valour and conduct, subdued the Saxons and Burgundians. But while he was making preparations for war against the Sarmatians, who had spread themselves through the two Hungaries, he died at a little town called Brigio, through a sudden effusion of blood. At this time the Goths, being driven out of their own country, had possessed themselves of all Thrace; against them Valens marches with his army (having first, though now too late, recalled from exile the bishops and monks, and forced them to serve in the war with him), but his army was utterly routed, and himself burnt in an obscure cottage, an overthrow which proved very fatal to the Roman Empire and all Italy.

While these things were transacting, Siricius ordained that those monks whose life and manners were approved of, should be capable of admission into any ecclesiastical office, from the lowest to the highest, even the Episcopal dignity itself. That the several degrees of holy orders should not be conferred at once, but at certain distances of time. Moreover, he forbade the Manichees who lurked in the city, the communion of the faithful; but withal provided that upon their repentance and return to the orthodox faith, they should be received into the Church, upon condition they would undertake a monastic course of living, and devote themselves to fasting and prayer all their life; upon which, if it appeared that their conversion were sincere, they might, at the approach of death, receive the blessed sacrament as their viaticum. He ordained likewise, that none but a bishop should have power to ordain a presbyter; that whosoever married a widow, or second wife, should be degraded from his office in the church, and that heretics, upon their repentance, should be received with only the imposition of hands.

In his time lived Hilarius, Bishop of Poitiers, who wrote twelve books against the Arians, and one against Valens and Ursatius; but not long after he died at Poitiers. Victorinus, also an African, who had once been a professor of rhetoric at Rome, but afterwards, being very ancient, was converted to Christianity, wrote several books after the dialectic manner against Arius. Moreover, Gregcrius Baeticus, Bishop of Illiberis, wrote at this time divers tracts, showing the excellence of the Christian religion. But Photinus, a Galatian, the scholar of Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra, endeavoured now to revive the heresy of Ebion, who held Christ to be a mere man, born in the ordinary way of generation. Being banished by the Emperor Valentinian, he wrote divers treatises, and especially against the Gentiles.

Didymus of Alexandria, who had been blind from his very childhood, and thereby utterly ignorant of the first rudiments of learning, became yet afterwards in his old age so great a proficient in those arts which most require the assistance of sight, particularly in logic and geometry, that he wrote some excellent treatises in the mathematics. He published also commentaries on the psalms, and the gospels of Matthew and John, and was a great opposer of the Arians. Moreover, Optatus, an African, Bishop of Mela, compiled six books against the Donatists; and Severus Aquilius, a Spaniard, who was kinsman to that Severus to whom Lactantius penned two books of epistles, wrote one volume, called "Catastrophe".

The Emperor Gratian was a young prince of eminent piety, and so good a soldier, that in an expedition against the Germans, who were now harassing the Roman borders, he did at one battle at Argentaria cut off thirty thousand of them, with very little loss on his own side. Returning from thence to Italy, he expelled all those of the Arian faction, and admitted none but the orthodox to the execution of any ecclesiastical office. But apprehending the public weal to be in great danger from the attempts of the Goths, he associated to himself, as a partner in the government, Theodosius, a Spaniard, a person eminent for his valour and conduct, who, vanquishing the Alans, Huns, and Goths, re-established the Empire of the east, and entered into a league with Athanaricus, king of the Goths, after whose death and magnificent burial at Constantinople, his whole army repaired to Theodosius, and declared they would serve under no other commander but that good emperor. In the meantime, Maximus usurped the empire in Britain, and passing over into Gaul, slew Gratian at Lyons, whose death so terrified his younger brother, Valentinian, that he forthwith fled for refuge to Theodosius in the east. Some are of opinion that those two brethren owed the calamities which befell them to their mother Justina, whose great zeal for the Arian heresy made her a fierce persecutor of the orthodox, and especially of St Ambrose, whom, against his will, the people of Milan had at this time chosen their bishop. For Auxentius, an Arian, their late bishop, being dead, a great sedition arose in the city about choosing his successor. Now Ambrose, who was a man of consular dignity and their governor, endeavouring all he could to quell that disorder, and to that end going into the church, where the people were in a tumultuary manner assembled, he there makes an excellent speech tending to persuade them to peace and unity among themselves, which so wrought upon them, that they all with one consent cried out, that they would have no other bishop but Ambrose himself. And the event answered their desires for being as yet but a catechumen, he was forthwith baptized, and then admitted into holy orders, and constituted Bishop of Milan. That he was a person of great learning and extraordinary sanctity, the account which we have of his life, and the many excellent books which he wrote, do abundantly testify.

Saint Siricius ordained that, except in cases of urgent necessity, baptism should be administered only at Easter and Pentecost.

He condemned the Manichaeans, those obstinate sectaries of Manes, a Persian slave, who propagated his errors in 273. They maintained that the body of Christ was altogether actual; that there are two supreme principles, the Good and the Evil, and that from this latter proceeded the old law. They forbade obedience to princes, as being dangerous. According to Manes, all the prophets were damned souls. The absurd dogma of the Metempsychosis, the prohibition to kill any animal whatever, or to use any kind of animal food, were some of the chief points of the heresy of Manes. He dogmatized publicly, and he sent disciples to preach his doctrines at first in the nearest provinces of Persia, and afterwards in India and Egypt. In imitation of the number of our Saviour's apostles, this man employed twelve emissaries, three of whom are named Thomas, Hermas, and Buldas. ("This name", Buldas, says the celebrated M. de Saint-Martin, "may be merely indicative of the dogmas that these heretics borrowed from the Indian legislator, Buddh or Buddha, whose doctrine at that time predominated in India and was widely spread in the regions which separate that country from China, where it is certain that Manes travelled.")

Saint Siricius also condemned the Priscillianists, followers of Priscillian, Bishop of Avila. That heresiarch adopted some of the errors of the Manichaeans, and added one of his own : that men are subject to the influence of evil stars. Juvenian, a Milanese monk, was also condemned. He denied the virginity of the Mother of God.

Some authors doubt the piety of Saint Siricius, because he did not promptly repel the mischievous errors of Rufinus, a monk of Aquileia, which errors were long kept concealed. They were at length made public by Saint Marcella, a Roman lady, and Pammachius, a Roman senator. The pontiff is defended upon this point by Florentini and Noris. Benedict XIV also excuses the pontiff, especially in a letter to John V, King of Portugal. He, moreover, ordered that the name of Saint Siricius should be placed in the Roman Martyrology. Baronius had previously accused him of having been cold in his relations with Saint Jerome, and of not continuing to him the confidence that Damasus had shown; but these circumstances did not influence the decision of Benedict XIV, which now has the force of a law. What must have especially struck that learned and sagacious Catholic legislator of the eighteenth century is that the works of Saint Siricius indicate great courage. In those letters the pontifical dignity shines forth in all its lustre. We recognize the spirit of the prince of the Church, when he commands that his decrees shall be published in all the provinces, and that the primates of the Church see to their execution, on pain of their immediate deposition. The pontiff expressly declares that whoever shall refuse to obey his injunctions will be cut off from the communion of the faithful, and liable to the pains of hell.

Saint Siricius, in five ordinations, in December, created thirty-two bishops, twenty-seven (some say thirty-one) priests, and sixteen or nineteen deacons. He was the first pontiff who called himself pope. Novaes discusses that question in his introduction to his Lives of the Sovereign Pontiffs of Rome. The following is his opinion upon this important point :

"When the new pontiff has accepted the election, he begins to be called Pope. I will not give here the catalogue of the various interpretations that authors assign to that name.

"This name is derived from the title of Pater Patriae; others derive it from Pater Patrum or Pater Pastorum. Some, again, say that the word is derived from the initial letters of the following words : thus, Petri, Apostoli, Potestatem, Accipiens" that is, Papa, or the Italian for pope. All those interpretations befit a name so mysterious.

"At first," continues Novaes, "this name was applied in common to all priests, whence came the custom of giving the name of father to every regular priest. Then the name was given only to bishops."

Papebrock says that Saint Siricius was the first who called himself Papa, and that he so styles himself in many letters which he wrote to various provinces. Saint Leo the Great, elected in 440, follows that example; in his Epist. 17 he entitles himself "Leo, Papa Universis per Sicilium constitutis, salutem." At the end of the ninth century this name was no longer given to any one but the sovereign pontiffs of Rome. About the end of the tenth century, Arulphus II, Archbishop of Milan, having taken the title of "Pope of the City of Milan," Gregory V, in 988, complained of it, and the Council of Pavia decreed that Arulphus must desist from that pretension of being pope.

"The schismatics, however, usurped the name of pope. Gregory VII, in the Council of Rome of 1076, strictly ordered that the title of pope should be unique in the Catholic world, and that no one should be allowed either to take that name for himself or apply it to any one but the sovereign pontiff."

"Carni has published a dissertation on the question whether that decree of Saint Gregory VII is genuine. It is written in Italian, and the title is in Latin."

With the reign of Siricius are also connected the sedition of Antioch, the massacre of Thessalonica, the letter of Saint Ambrose to Theodosius, and the penitence of that emperor, who for eight months refrained from entering the Church. During that time Siricius added his zeal to that of the great Saint Ambrose in endeavoring to restore peace to the empire. Siricius governed the Church during fourteen years. He died in 398, at the age of seventy-four years, and was interred in the cemetery of Priscilla, on the Via Salaria. His body was removed by Pascal I into the Church of Saint Praxedes. The Holy See was vacant nineteen days.

I must add that, under Saint Siricius, also appeared what Fleury calls the beginnings of Saint Augustine. He had been made a catechumen by the sign of the cross and by salt. At first he was addicted to the pleasures of the world, and fell into the hands of the Manichaeans, who, leading him astray by their pompous discourses, gave him a taste for their reveries, and an aversion for the Old Testament. Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, begged a bishop to bring her son back into the right way. The bishop replied that it was necessary to wait, and, as the mother replied to those words with a flood of tears, he added, it is impossible that the child of those tears should perish.

Under the reign of Saint Siricius, died Saint Gregory of Nyssus, brother of Saint Basil and Saint Macrina. Gregory was Bishop of Nyssus, a city of Dardania; he is surnamed the Father of fathers. His principal works are Funeral Orations, Sermons, Panegyrics of the Saints, Commentaries on Scripture, and Dogmatic Treatises. He may be compared to the most celebrated orators of antiquity for purity, ease, strength, fecundity, and magnificence of style.

We must not forget the great Saint Athanasius, who died about this time (eleven years before the reign of Saint Siricius), after being Bishop of Alexandria during forty-six years. During more than fifty years he was persecuted by the Arians, whom he opposed with an invincible courage. Erasmus was a great admirer of the style of Saint Athanasius; a style which is by turns noble, simple, elegant, clear, and pathetic.

Siricius, having settled the affairs of the Church, died and was buried in the cemetery of Priscilla, in the Via Salaria, February 22. He was in the chair fifteen years, eleven months, twenty days; and by his death the see was vacant twenty days.

 

SAINT ANASTASIUS I

A.D. 399-402

 

ANASTASIUS I, the son of Maximus, was made Bishop of Rome in the time of Arcadius and Honorius, the sons of Theodosius.

Our Anastasius decreed that the clergy should by no means sit at the singing or reading of the holy Gospel in the church, but stand bowed, and in a posture of veneration; and that no strangers, especially those that came from the parts beyond the seas, should be received into our holy orders, unless they could produce testimonials under the hands of five bishops. Which latter ordinance is supposed to have been occasioned by the practice of the Manichees, who, having gained a great esteem and authority in Africa, were wont to send their missionaries abroad into all parts, to corrupt the orthodox doctrine by the infusion of their errors. He ordained, likewise, that no person infirm of body, or maimed, or defective of any limb or member, should be admitted into holy orders. Moreover, he dedicated the Crescentian Church, which stands in the second region of the city, in the Via Marurtina.

The pontificate of this Anastasius, as also that of Damasus and Siricius, his predecessors, were signalised not only by those excellent emperors, Jovinian, Valentinian, Gratian, and Theodosius, but also by those many holy and worthy doctors, both Greek and Latin, that were famous in all kinds of learning. Cappadocia, as Eusebius tells us, brought forth Gregory Nazianzen and Basil the Great, both extraordinary persons, and both brought up at Athens. Basil was a Bishop of Cesarea of Cappadocia, a city formerly called Mazaca. He wrote divers excellent books against Eunomius, one concerning the Holy Ghost, and the orders of a monastic life. He had two brethren, Gregory and Peter, both very learned men, of the former of which some books were extant in the time of Eusebius. Gregory Nazianzen, who was master to St Hierom, wrote also many things, particularly in praise of Cyprian, Athanasius, and Maximus the philosopher; two books against Eunomius, and one against the Emperor Julian, besides an encomium of marriage and single life in hexameter verse. By the strength of his reasoning and the power of his rhetoric (in which he was an imitator of Polemon, a man of admirable eloquence), he brought off the citizens of Constantinople from the errors with which they had been infected. At length, being very aged, he chose his own successor, and led a private life in the country. Basil died in the reign of Gratian, Gregory of Theodosius. About the same time flourished Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamine, in Cyprus, a strenuous oppugner of all kinds of heresies; as did also Ephrem, a deacon of the Church of Edessa, who composed divers treatises in the Syrian language, which gained him so great a veneration that in some churches his books were publicly read after the Holy Scriptures.

Saint Jerome calls Saint Anastasius "a man of very rich poverty and apostolic zeal."

It was especially in defending Saint Chrysostom, whom they attempted to expel from Constantinople, that Anastasius evidenced a great devotion.

In two ordinations Anastasius created ten or twelve bishops, eight or nine priests, and five deacons. "He governed the Church," says Innocent I, "with purity of life, abundance of doctrine, and perfect strictness of ecclesiastical authority." He reigned three years and ten days, and died in 401.

Saint Jerome further says that Rome did not long retain such a pontiff, because it was not intended that the chief city of the world should be attacked under the rule of such a bishop. In fact, very shortly after the good pope's death, in 410, Rome was for the first time sacked by the Goths. Their king, Alaric, had assaulted it three times before he could take it.

Saint Anastasius was interred in the cemetery of the Orso Pileato, on the Esquiline, and afterwards removed by Sergius I into the Church of Saints Sylvester and Martin a' i Monti. The Holy See remained vacant twenty days.