The Acts of the Christian Martyrs

450 Pages·2000·12.42 MB·English

by  Herbert Anthony Musurillo

THE ACTS
OF THE CHRISTIAN
MARTYRS
INTRODUCTION
TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
BY
HERBERT M USURILLO
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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ISBN 0-19-924058-2 (Vol. 1)
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PREFACE
It is no great task to justify the need for a new critical
edition of the earliest Acts of the Christian martyrs, a tool
so necessary for all students of the Roman empire and the
history of primitive Christianity. Our sources in Greek and
Latin are widely scattered, and the existence of different
recensions adds to the awkwardness of any edition; com­
mentaries and translations are either sparse or non-existent.
Even indispensable works like O. von Gebhardt’s Acta mar-
tyrum selecta, and Knopf-Kruger-Ruhbach, Ausgewahlte Μάτ-
tyrerakten, fall short of completeness or contain much that
is inadequate.
No volume of the Acts will, of course, meet the require­
ments of all specialists, and in the terra incognita of the
persecutions of the first three Christian centuries it was neces­
sary to make a choice. The present volume owes much to the
encouragement of Mr. C. H. Roberts and the late Dr. Martin
R. P. McGuire, both former teachers. Of my Jesuit colleagues
at Fordham University, N.Y., Charles P. Loughran, S.J., and
James H. Reid, S.J., made helpful suggestions. Dr. Rachel
Skalitzky, S.S.N.D., of Mt. Mary College, Milwaukee, Wis­
consin, assisted in the tedious work of checking the typescript.
To all of these I owe more than I can say.
HERBERT MUSURILLO
Fordham University, N.T.

CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS IX
INTRODUCTION
The Acts of the Christian Martyrs xi
The Earliest Acts: The Texts xiii
Tradition and Form in the Acts of the Christian
Martyrs 1
The Christian Persecutions lvii
Notes lxiii
THE TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
1. The Martyrdom of Polycarp 2
2. The Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonic£ 22
3. The Martyrdom of Ptolemaeus and Lucius 38
4. The Acts of Justin and Companions 42
5. The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne 62
6. The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs 86
7. The Martyrdom of Apollonius 90
8. The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 106
9. The Martyrdom of Potamiaena and Basilides 132
10. The Martyrdom of Pionius 136
11. The Acts of Cyprian 168
12. The Martyrdom of Fructuosus and Companions 176
13. The Martyrdom of Conon 186
14. The Martyrdom of Marian and James 194
15. The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 214
16. The Martyrdom of Marinus 240
17. The Acts of Maximilian 244
18. The Acts of Marcellus 250
19. The Martyrdom of Julius the Veteran 260
20. The Martyrdom of Felix the Bishop 266
viii CONTENTS
21. The Martyrdom of Dasins 272
22. The Martyrdom of Agap6, Irene, Chionfc, and Com­
panions 280
23. The Martyrdom of Irenaeus Bishop of Sirmium 294
24. The Martyrdom of Crispina 302
25. The Acts of Euplus 310
26. The Letter of Phileas 320
27. The Acts of Phileas 328
28. The Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste 354
index 363
ABBREVIATIONS
Anal. Boll. = Analecta Bollandiana (Paris and Brussels, 1882- ).
Amdt-Gingrich = W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Cam­
bridge, 1957).
Bardenhewer = O. Bardenhewer, Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur,
5 vols. (Freiburg, 1913-32).
Blaise-Chirat = A. Blaise and H. Ghirat, Dictionnaire latin-frangais des
auteurs chritiens (Strasbourg, 1954)·
CAH = The Cambridge Ancient History (1st edn. 1923-39).
CSEL = Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866- ).
DACL = Dictionnaire d'archiologie chritienne et de liturgie (1907-53).
Delehaye, Les Passions = H. Delehaye, S. J., Les Passions des martyrs et les
genres litteraires (Brussels, 1921).
-----Propylaeum Decembris — Acta Sanctorum: Propylaeum Decembris (Brus­
sels, 1940).
DHGE — Dictionnaire d’histoire et de giographie ecclesiastiques (1912- ).
DTC = Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (1903-50).
Eusebius, HE = Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. E. Schwartz (G.G.S.,
Berlin, 1903-9).
Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution — W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and
Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965; New York, 1967).
Gebhardt, Acta martyrum selecta = O. von Gebhardt, Acta martyrum
selecta (Berlin, 1902).
Haraack, Geschichte — A. von Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
bis Eusebius, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1904; repr. 1958).
HTR = Harvard Theological Review (1908- ).
JTS = Journal of Theological Studies (1900- ).
Knopf-Kriiger-Ruhbach = R. Knopf, Ausgewahlte Martyrerakten (Tu­
bingen and Leipzig, 1901; 3rd edn. by G. Kruger, 1929; 4th edn. by
G. Ruhbach, 1965).
Lazzati, Gli sviluppi = G. Lazzati, Gli sviluppi della letteratura sui martin
net primi quattro secoli (Turin, 1956).
LTK = Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, ed. M. Buchberger (1930-8).
Monceau, Hist, litt. = P. Monceau, Histoire litteraire de VAfrique chritienne
depuis les origines jusqu’d Γinvasion arabe, 7 vols. (Paris, 1901-22; repr.
Brussels, 1963).
X ABBREVIATIONS
PG = Patrologia Graeca, cd. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1857-66).
PGL = A Patristic Greek Lexicon,, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Oxford, 1961-8).
PIR = Prosopographia imperii Romani saeculi 7, 77, 777, 1st edn. by E. Klebs
and H. Dessau (1897-8); 2nd edn. by E. Groag and A. Stein (1933- ).
PL — Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1844-64).
PP = Past and Present (London, 1952- ).
Propylaeum Decembris, see Delehaye.
RAC = Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart, 1950- ).
Rauschen, MMSS = G. Rauschen, Monumenta minora saeculi secundi,
Florilegium patristicum, 3 (Bonn, 1914).
RE = A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, Real-Encyclopadie der
klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1893- )·
Ruinart, Acta martyrum — T. Ruinart, Acta primorum martyrum stncera
etselecta (1689; ed. Ratisbon, 1859)·
SBHeid. = Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Phil.-hist. Kl. (1910- ).
ST = Studi e Testi (Rome, 1900- ).
Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects* = G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, ‘Aspects of the “Great**
Persecution’, HTR 47 (1954)» 75-'II3·
Tillemont = Le Nain de Tillemont, Memoires pour servir ά Vhistoire
ecclisiastique des six premiers sttcles, 15 vols. (Venice, 1732).
INTRODUCTION
THE ACTS OF THE CHRISTIAN MARTYRS
O ne cannot embark on a new English edition of the Acts of
the Christian martyrs without recalling the words of Edward
Gibbon. Times have indeed changed since he wrote: ‘The
total disregard of truth and probability of these primitive
martyrdoms was occasioned by a very natural mistake. The
ecclesiastical writers of the fourth and fifth centuries ascribed
to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable
and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against
the heretics or the idolaters of their own times.’1 But the
criticisms of Gibbon, impatient as he was with the state of
contemporary scholarship, accelerated the growth of a his­
tory of the early Church based on more adequate foundations.
No study of the Church can be complete without a discus­
sion of the Acts of the early martyrs. For many years scholars
relied on the monumental collection of these Acts by the
Maurist scholar, Thierry Ruinart, in bis Acta primorum martyrum
(1689, 1801, and 1859); at the same time, the great collection
of vitae and passiones undertaken by the Jesuits at Antwerp
in 1643 under the leadership of Jean Bolland did much to
establish reliable texts of the Acts which came under their
scope. Distinctions between the authentic and non-authentic
Acts were largely established through the criticisms of Adolf
von Hamack, especially in his classic Geschichte der altchrist-
lichen Literature and this enterprise was supported by the
investigations of Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri, as published in
Studi e Testi, and by the work of Hippolyte Delehaye, S.J., the
eminent editor of the great Propylaeum Decembris (Brussels,
1940), the last volume of the Acta Sanctorum to be published
to date. Indeed, literary and historical studies, such as Dele-
haye’s Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littiraires (Brussels,
1921), attempted to lay down practical criteria by which
xii INTRODUCTION
historical acta could be distinguished from fictional ones.
Finally, useful modern collections of selected Acts were made
by O. von Gebhardt, Acta martyrum selecta (Berlin, 1902),
by R. Knopf, Ausgewahlte Martyrerakten (Tubingen and Leip­
zig, 1901; third edition, by Gustav Kruger, Tubingen, 1929;
fourth edition, by G. Ruhbach, Tubingen, 1965), and by G.
Lazzati, Git sviluppi della letteratura sui martin net primi quattro
secoli (Societa editrice internazionale, Torino, etc., 1956).
A German translation of Ruinart appeared at Vienna in 1831
(Echte und ausgewahlte Akten der ersten Martyrer), and an exten­
sive collection by H. Leclercq, Les Martyrs, was published
in Paris in three volumes in the years 1902, 1903, and 1904.
Of modem versions might be mentioned a collection of the
six earliest acta in the Bibliothek der Kirchenvater (vol. 14)
by Gerhard Rauschen (Kempten and Munich, 1913); there
is a French version of fifty-seven of the Acts by A. Hamman,
La Geste du sang (with an introduction by Daniel-Rops, Paris,
1953), and a Spanish bilingual text by D. Ruiz Bueno, Adas
de los mdrtires (Madrid, 1962).2
For the present edition, I have chosen twenty-eight of the
texts which I consider the most reliable or indeed, in the case
of those with fictional elements (like the Martyrdom of Pionius,
the Martyrdom of Montanas and Lucius, and the Martyrdom of
Marian and James), extremely important and instructive.
Hence, from the Knopf-Kruger-Ruhbach collection, for
example, I have not thought it necessary to treat the Acta
Acacii, of which even Harnack was suspicious, the Acta Claudii,
Asterii et Sociorum, and the Gothic Martyrium Sabae; I have also
omitted the Acta Satumini, Dativi, et Sociorum, which had been
taken seriously by some translators, the Martyrium Pollionis
(who allegedly died shortly after Irenaeus of Sirmium), the
Martyrium Philippi Heracleensis, and the Passio Sereni, to men­
tion but a few which, though printed by Ruinart, have not
found their way into the more modern collections. I have not
included the De martyribus Palaestinae, which can be recon­
structed from Eusebius; and the Acts of the Syriac and
Persian martyrs fall outside the limits of the present work.