shining with glory; the first of these was St. John the Evangelist, and the other the Holy Virgin. St. John dictated to him a creed, which Gregory afterwards went about to preach. In his way he passed through Neo-Cæsarea, where the rain obliged him to stay all night, and he took up his lodging near a temple famous for its oracles. Here he made several signs of the cross. The high priest coming the next morning into the temple was surprised to find that the oracle did not give its answer as usual, upon which he invoked the spirits of the place, who appearing, told him that they could no longer inhabit that mansion, as St. Gregory had passed a night there and had made signs of the cross, upon which the high priest caused Gregory to be seized, who gave him to understand that he could drive out or cause to enter the familiar spirits wherever he pleased. “If so,” said the high priest, “pray send them back here again.” Then St. Gregory, tearing a leaf from a little book he held in his hand, wrote these words upon it: “Gregory to Satan: I command thee to enter again into this temple.” The paper being laid upon the altar, the demons, in obedience to the saint’s mandate, gave their oracles that day as usual, after which they remained silent.
This story is related by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgos. Certainly, the idolatrous priests had great reason to be offended with St. Gregory, and might have delivered him over to the secular power as one who was their greatest enemy, and yet we do not find that they offered him any hurt.
The history of St. Cyprian informs us that he was the first bishop of Carthage who suffered martyrdom; this was A. D. 258, consequently no bishop of Carthage had been put to death on account of religion for a great length of time. The history of this saint does not inform us what charge was brought against him, who were his enemies, or how he incurred the displeasure of the proconsul of Africa. We find St. Cyprian thus writing to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: “There has been a tumult of the people lately at Carthage, in which it was twice proposed to throw me to the lions.” It might possibly happen that the blind resentment of the people of Carthage did at length cause Cyprian to be put to death, for, certainly, he was never condemned to suffer for his religion by the Emperor Gallus, who lived at so great a distance, and, moreover, permitted Cornelius to exercise his episcopal function under his very eye.
So many and various are the hidden causes that are frequently blended with the apparent one, in the persecution of an individual, that it is hardly possible for posterity to discover the true source of the misfortunes that befell even the most considerable personages, much less that of the sufferings of a private person, hardly known to any but those of his own sect.
And here let it be observed that neither St. Gregory Thaumaturgos nor St. Denis, bishop of Alexandria, who were both contemporaries of St. Cyprian, suffered the slightest persecution. How then happened it that, being certainly as well known as the bishop of Carthage, they were suffered to live unmolested, while he was delivered over to punishment? May we not fairly infer that the one fell a victim to personal and powerful enemies, either in consequence of a malicious accusation, or from reasons of state, which frequently interfere in religious matters, while the other had the good fortune to escape the designs of wicked men?
We cannot, with any degree of probability, suppose that the charge of being a Christian was the only cause of St. Ignatius being put to death, under the just and merciful Trajan, since we find that several of his own religion were suffered to accompany and minister comfort to him on his way to Rome.26 There had been frequent seditions in Antioch, a city remarkable for the turbulent disposition of its inhabitants; here Ignatius privately acted as bishop over the Christians. It might happen that some of these disturbances, being maliciously imputed to the innocent Christians, had occasioned the government to take cognizance of them, and that the judge might have been mistaken, as it often happens.
St. Simeon, for example, was accused before King Sapor of being a spy to the Romans. The history of his martyrdom tells us that Sapor proposed to him to worship the sun, whereas every one knows that the Persians paid no divine honors to that planet, but only considered it as an emblem of the good principle, the Orasmades, or Sovereign Creator, whom they all adored.
Any one of the least tolerating spirit cannot help his indignation from rising against those writers who accused Diocletian of persecuting the Christians after his accession to the empire. Here we need only refer to Eusebius of Cæsarea, whose testimony certainly cannot be rejected. The favorite, the panegyrist of Constantine, and the declared enemy of the emperors his predecessors, is certainly entitled to our credit when he justifies those very emperors. The following are his own words:27
“The emperors had for a long time given the Christians great marks of their favor and benevolence; they had entrusted them with the care of whole provinces; many of them lived within the imperial palace; and some of the emperors even married Christian women; Diocletian, in particular, espoused Prisca, whose daughter was wife to Maximianus Galerius,” etc.
Let this authentic testimony make us cautious how we fall too readily into calumny; and from this let any impartial person judge, if the persecution raised by Galerius, after nineteen years of continued clemency and favor to the Christians, must not have been occasioned by some intrigues with which we are at present unacquainted.
From this also we may perceive the absurdity of that fabulous story of the Theban legion, said to have been all massacred for their religion. Can anything be more ridiculous than to make this legion be brought from Asia by the great St. Bernard? It is altogether impossible that this legion should have been sent for from Asia to quiet a tumult in Gaul, a year after that tumult was suppressed, and not less so that six thousand foot and seven hundred horse should have suffered themselves to be all murdered in a place where two hundred men only might have kept off a whole army. The account of this pretended butchery is introduced with all the marks of imposture: “When the earth groaned under the tyranny of Diocletian, heaven was peopled with martyrs.” Now, this event, such as it is related, is supposed to have happened in 286, the very time in which Diocletian most favored the Christians, and that the Roman Empire was in a state of the greatest tranquillity. But to cut short this matter at once, no such legion as the Theban ever existed; the Romans were too haughty and too wise to form a corps of those Egyptians, who served only as slaves in Rome, Vernæ Canopi; we may as well suppose them to have had a Jewish legion. We have the names of two and thirty legions that formed the principal military force of the Roman Empire, and it is very certain the Theban legion is not to be found among them. In a word, we may rank this story with the acrostic verses of the Sibyls, which are said to have foretold the miracles wrought by Jesus Christ, and with many other like spurious productions, which false zeal has trumped up to impose upon credulity.
Chapter X.
The Danger Of False Legends And Persecution.
Mankind has been too long imposed upon by falsehood; it is therefore time that we should come to the knowledge of the few truths that can be distinguished from amidst the clouds of fiction which cover Roman history from the times of Tacitus and Suetonius, and with which the annals of the other nations of antiquity have almost always been obscured.
Can any one, for example, believe that the Romans, a grave and modest people, could have condemned Christian virgins, the children of persons of the first quality, to common prostitution? This is assuredly very inconsistent with the noble austerity of that nation from whom we received our laws, and who punished so rigorously the least transgression of chastity in their vestals. These shameful stories may indeed be found in the Actes Sincères of Ruinart. But should we believe those acts before the “Acts of the Apostles”? The Actes Sincères tell us from Bollandus that there were in the city of Ancira seven Christian virgins, each of them upwards of seventy, whom the governor, Theodectes, ordered to be deflowered by the young men of the place; but these poor maidens
