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| To Domitius and Didymus. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Part II.—Containing
Epistles, or Fragments of Epistles.
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Epistle I.—To Domitius and
Didymus.777
777
Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., vii. 11. |
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1. But it would be a superfluous task for me
to mention by name our (martyr) friends, who are numerous and at the
same time unknown to you. Only understand that they include men
and women, both young men and old, both maidens and aged matrons, both
soldiers and private citizens,—every class and every age, of whom
some have suffered by stripes and fire, and some by the sword, and have
won the victory and received their crowns. In the case of others,
however, even a very long lifetime has not proved sufficient to secure
their appearance as men acceptable to the Lord; as indeed in my own
case too, that sufficient time has not shown itself up to the
present. Wherefore He has preserved me for another convenient
season, of which He knows Himself, as He says: “In an
acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I
helped thee.”778
2. Since, however, you have been
inquiring779
779
Reading ἐπειδὴ
πυνθάνεσθε,
for which some codices give ἐπεὶ
πυνθάνεσθαι. | about what has
befallen us, and wish to be informed as to how we have fared, you have
got a full report of our fortunes; how when we—that is to say,
Gains, and myself, and Faustus, and Peter, and Paul—were led off
as prisoners by the centurion and the magistrates,780
780
στρατηγῶν.
Christophorsonus would read στρατηγοῦ
in the sense of commander. But the word is used here
of the duumviri, or magistrates of Alexandria. And
that the word στρατηγός
was used in this civil acceptation as well as in the
common military application, we see by many examples in
Athanasius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and others. Thus, as Valesius
remarks, the soldiers (στρατιωτῶν)
here will be the band with the centurion, and the attendants
(ὑπηρετῶν) will be the
civil followers of the magistrates. | and the soldiers and other attendants accompanying
them, there came upon us certain parties from Mareotis, who dragged us
with them against our will, and though we were disinclined to follow
them, and carried us away by force;781
781
This happened in the first persecution under Decius, when
Dionysius was carried off by the decision of the prefect Sabinus to
Taposiris, as he informs us in his epistle to Germanus. Certainly
any one who compares that epistle of Dionysius to Germanus with this
one to Domitius, will have no doubt that he speaks of one and the same
event in both. Hence Eusebius is in error in thinking that in
this epistle of Dionysius to Domitius we have a narrative of the events
relating to the persecution of Valerian,—a position which may
easily be refuted from Dionysius himself. For in the persecution
under Valerian, Dionysius was not carried off into exile under military
custody, nor were there any men from Mareotis, who came and drove off
the soldiers, and bore him away unwillingly, and set him at liberty
again; nor had Dionysius on that occasion the presbyters Gaius and
Faustus, and Peter and Paul, with him. All these things happened
to Dionysius in that persecution which began a little before Decius
obtained the empire, as he testifies himself in his epistle to
Germanus. But in the persecution under Valerian, Dionysius was
accompanied in exile by the presbyter Maximus, and the deacons Faustus,
and Eusebius, and Chæremon, and a certain Roman cleric, as he
tells us in the epistle to Germanus.—Valesius. | and how Gaius and Peter and myself have
been separated from our other brethren, and shut up alone in a desert
and sterile place in Libya, at a distance of three days’ journey
from Parætonium.
3. And a little further on, he proceeds
thus:—And they concealed themselves in the city, and secretly
visited the brethren. I refer to the presbyters Maximus,
Dioscorus, Demetrius, and Lucius. For Faustinus and Aquila, who
are persons of greater prominence in the world, are wandering about in
Egypt. I specify also the deacons who survived those who died in
the sickness,782
782
ἐν τῇ νόσῳ.
Rufinus reads νήσῳ, and renders it, “But of
the deacons, some died in the island after the pains of
confession.” But Dionysius refers to the pestilence which
traversed the whole Roman world in the times of Gallus and Volusianus,
as Eusebius in his Chroniconand others record. See
Aurelius Victor. Dionysius makes mention of this sickness again
in the paschal epistle to the Alexandrians, where he also speaks of the
deacons who were cut off by that plague.—Vales. | viz., Faustus,
Eusebius, and Chæremon. And of Eusebius I speak as one whom
the Lord strengthened from the beginning, and qualified for the task of
discharging energetically the services due to the confessors who are in
prison, and of executing the perilous office of dressing out and
burying783
783
περιστολὰς
ἐκτελεῖν.
Christophorsonus renders it: “to prepare the linen cloths
in which the bodies of the blessed martyrs who departed this life might
be wrapped.” In this Valesius thinks he errs by looking at
the modern method of burial, whereas among the ancient Christians the
custom was somewhat different, the bodies being dressed out in full
attire, and that often at great cost, as Eusebius shows us in the case
of Astyrius, in the Hist. Eccles., vii. 16. Yet
Athanasius, in his Life of Antonius, has this sentence:
“The Egyptians are accustomed to attend piously to the funerals
of the bodies of the dead, and especially those of the holy martyrs,
and to wrap them in linen cloths: they are not wont, however, to
consign them to the earth, but to place them on couches, and keep them
in private apartments.” | the bodies of
those perfected and blessed martyrs. For even up to the present
day the governor does not cease to put to death, in a cruel manner, as
I have already said, some of those who are brought before him; while he
wears others out by torture, and wastes others away with imprisonment
and bonds, commanding also that no one shall approach them and making
strict scrutiny lest any one should be seen to do so. And
nevertheless God imparts relief to the oppressed by the tender kindness
and earnestness of the brethren.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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