Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Sedition excited at Alexandria, and how George was slain. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter II.—Of the
Sedition excited at Alexandria, and how George was slain.
It is now proper to mention
what took place in the churches under the same [emperor]. A great
disturbance occurred at Alexandria in consequence of the following
circumstance. There was a place in that city which had long been
abandoned to neglect and filth, wherein the pagans had formerly
celebrated their mysteries, and sacrificed human beings to Mithra.466
466The friendly or propitious divinity of the Persian
theology; hence identified with the light and life-giving sun.
|
This being empty and otherwise useless, Constantius had granted to the
church of the Alexandrians; and George wishing to erect a church on the
site of it, gave directions that the place should be cleansed. In the
process of clearing it, an adytum467
of vast depth was discovered which unveiled the nature of their
heathenish rites: for there were
found there the skulls of many persons of all ages, who were said to
have been immolated for the purpose of divination by the inspection of
entrails, when the pagans performed these and such like magic arts
whereby they enchanted the souls of men. The Christians on discovering
these abominations in the adytum of the Mithreum, went forth eagerly to
expose them to the view and execration of all; and therefore carried
the skulls throughout the city, in a kind of triumphal procession, for
the inspection of the people. When the pagans of Alexandria beheld
this, unable to bear the insulting character of the act, they became so
exasperated, that they assailed the Christians with whatever weapon
chanced to come to hand, in their fury destroying numbers of them in a
variety of ways: some they killed with the sword, others with clubs and
stones; some they strangled with ropes, others they crucified,
purposely inflicting this last kind of death in contempt of the cross
of Christ: most of them they wounded; and as it generally happens in
such a case, neither friends nor relatives were spared, but friends,
brothers, parents, and children imbrued their hands in each
other’s blood. Wherefore the Christians ceased from cleansing the
Mithreum: the pagans meanwhile having dragged George out of the church,
fastened him to a camel, and when they had torn him to pieces, they
burnt him together with the camel.468
468This George is, according to some authorities, the
St. George of the legend. In its Arian form the legend represents St.
George as warring against the wizard Athanasius; later, the wizard was
transformed to a dragon, and George to an armed knight slaying the
dragon. On other forms and features of the legend, see Smith &
Wace, Dict. of Christ. Biogr., Georgius
(43).
|
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|