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| Of the number and character of the deeds done by Pagans against the Christians when they got the power from Julian.
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Chapter III.—Of the number and character of the deeds done by
Pagans against the Christians when they got the power from
Julian.
When Julian had made his impiety openly known the cities were filled
with dissensions. Men enthralled by the deceits of idolatry took heart,
opened the idols’ shrines, and began to perform those foul rites
which ought to have died out from the memory of man. Once more they
kindled the fire on the altars, befouled the ground with victims’
gore, and defiled the air with the smoke of their burnt sacrifices.
Maddened by the demons they served they ran in corybantic607
frenzy round about the streets, attacked
the saints with low stage jests, and with all the outrage and ribaldry
of their impure processions.
On the other hand the
partizans608
| 608 Θιασῶται. lit. The “club-fellows,” or “members of
a religious brotherhood.” | of piety could not brook their
blasphemies, returned insult for insult, and tried to confute the error
which their opponents honoured. In their turn the workers of iniquity
took it ill; the liberty allowed them by the sovereign was an
encouragement to audacity and they dealt deadly blows among the
Christians.
It was indeed the duty of the
emperor to consult for the peace of his subjects, but he in the depth
of his iniquity himself maddened his peoples with mutual rage. The
deeds dared by the brutal against the peaceable he overlooked and
entrusted civil and military offices of importance to savage and
impious men, who though they hesitated publicly to force the lovers of
true piety to offer sacrifice treated them nevertheless with all kinds
of indignity. All the honours moreover conferred on the sacred ministry
by the great Constantine Julian took away.
To tell all the deeds dared by
the slaves of idolatrous deceit at that time would require a history of
these crimes alone, but out of the vast number of them I shall select a
few instances. At Askalon and at Gaza, cities of Palestine, men of
priestly rank and women who had lived all their lives in virginity were
disembowelled, filled with barley, and given for food to swine. At
Sebaste, which belongs to the same people, the coffin of John the
Baptist was opened, his bones burnt, and the ashes scattered abroad.609
| 609 Sebaste was a name given to Samaria by Herod the Great in honour
of Augustus. cf. Rufinus H. E. xi. 28 and Theophanes,
Chronographia i. 117. Theodoretus claims to have obtained some
of the relics of the Baptist for his own church at Cyrus (Relig. Hist.
1245). On the development of the tradition of the relics, cf. Dict.
Christ. Ant. i. 883. A magnificent church was built by Theodosius (Soz.
vii. 21 and 24) in a suburb of Constantinople, to enshrine a head
discovered by some unsound monks. The church is said by Sozomen (vii.
24) to be “at the seventh milestone,” on the road out of
Constantinople, and the place to be called Hebdomon or
“seventh.” I am indebted to the Rev. H. F. Tozer for the
suggestion that Hebdomon was a promontory on the Propontis, to the west
of the extreme part of the city, where the Cyclobion was, and where the
Seven Towers now are; and that the Seven Towers being about six Roman
miles from the Seraglio Point, which is the apex of the triangle formed
by the city, the phrase at the seventh milestone is thus accounted for.
Bones alleged to be parts of the scull are still shewn at Amiens. The
same emperor built a church for the body on the site of the Serapeum at
Alexandria. |
Who too could tell without a tear the vile deed done in
Phœnicia? At Heliopolis610
| 610 Heliopolis, the modern Baalbec, the “City of the Sun,”
was built at the west foot of Anti-Libanus, near the sources of the
Orontes. | by Lebanon there
lived a certain deacon of the name of Cyrillus. In the reign of
Constantine, fired by divine zeal, he had broken in pieces many of the
idols there worshipped. Now men of infamous name, bearing this deed in
mind, not only slew him, but cut open his belly and devoured his liver.
Their crime was not, however, hidden from the all-seeing eye, and they
suffered the just reward of their deeds; for all who had taken part in
this abominable wickedness lost their teeth, which all fell out at
once, and lost, too, their tongues, which rotted away and dropped from
them: they were moreover deprived of sight, and by their sufferings
proclaimed the power of holiness.
At the neighbouring city of
Emesa611
| 611 On the
Orontes; now Homs. Here Aurelian defeated Zenobia in 273. | they dedicated to Dionysus, the
woman-formed, the newly erected church, and set up in it his ridiculous
androgynous image. At Dorystolum,612
| 612 Durostorum, now Silistria, on the right bank of the
Danube. | a famous city
of Thrace, the victorious athlete Æmilianus was thrown upon a
flaming pyre, by Capitolinus, governor of all Thrace. To relate the
tragic fate of Marcus, however, bishop of Arethusa,613
| 613 Valesius (note on Soz. v. 10) would distinguish this Marcus of
Arethusa from the Arian Marcus of Arethusa, author of the creed of
Sirmium (Soc. H. E. ii. 30), apparently on insufficient grounds (Dict.
Christ. Biog. s.v.). Arethusa was a town not far from the source of the
Orontes. | with true dramatic dignity, would require
the eloquence of an Æschylus or a Sophocles. In the days of
Constantius he had destroyed a certain idol-shrine and built a church
in its place; and no sooner did the Arethusians learn the mind of
Julian than they made an open display of their hostility. At first,
according to the precept of the Gospel,614
Marcus endeavoured to make his escape; but when he became aware that
some of his own people were apprehended in his stead, he returned and
gave himself up to the men of blood. After they had seized him they
neither pitied his old age nor reverenced his deep regard for virtue;
but, conspicuous as he was for the beauty alike of his teaching and of
his life, first of all they stripped and smote him, laying strokes on
every limb, then they flung him into filthy sewers, and, when they had
dragged him out again, delivered him to a crowd of lads whom they
charged to prick him without mercy with their pens.615
| 615 The
sharp iron stilus was capable of inflicting severe wounds. Cæsar,
when attacked by his murderers, “caught Casca’s arm and ran
it through with his pen.” Suetonius. |
After this they put him into a basket, smeared him with pickle616
| 616 γάρον, garum,
was a fish-pickle. cf. the barbarous punishment of the σκάφευσις, inficted among others on Mithridates, who wounded Cyrus
at Cunaxa. (Plut. Artaxerxes.) | and honey, and hung him up in the open air
in the height of summer, inviting wasps and bees to a feast. Their
object in doing this was to compel him either to restore the shrine
which he had destroyed, or to defray the expense of its erection.
Marcus, however, endured all these grievous sufferings and affirmed
that he would consent to none of their demands. His enemies, with the
idea that he could not afford the money from poverty, remitted half
their demand, and bade him pay the rest; but Marcus hung on high,
pricked with pens, and devoured by wasps and bees, yet not only shewed
no signs of pain, but derided his impious tormentors with the repeated
taunt, “You are groundlings and of the earth; I, sublime and
exalted.” At last they begged for only a small portion of the
money; but, said he, “it is as impious to give an obole as to
give all.” So discomfited they let him go, and could not refrain
from admiring his constancy, for his words had taught them a new lesson
of holiness.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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