Although, owing to the commanding personality of Cyprian, Carthage and Pro-consular Africa was the chief center of interest in the stormy period of the general persecutions during the reigns of Decius, Gallus, and through the latter years of the reign of Valerian, some events of considerable interest deserve to be chronicled in the Church of Rome during those eventful years.
We have in Eusebius a brief summary, or catalogue, of the staff of the Church of Rome at the time of the Decian persecution; the catalogue runs as follows: "There were (besides the bishop) forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, forty-two acolytes (clerks), exorcists, readers and janitors, numbering fifty-two; widows, with the afflicted and needy, more than fifteen hundred; all of whom the goodness of God doth support and nourish." The historian then proceeds briefly to allude to the laity of the Roman communion as follows: "There were others who by the Providence of God were wealthy and opulent, together with an innumerable multitude of all people."
Such a bare summary of the numbers of the officials belonging to the congregations of the capital gives us some idea of the size and importance of the Church of Rome, and also some conception of its elaborate organization. The bishop was Fabianus, who had been elected some fourteen years before in A. D. 236, eighteen years after the death of Callistus. Tradition says Fabianus was chosen on account of a dove alighting on his head as the election was proceeding. He was a prelate of great power and considerable administrative ability. The elaborate and careful organization of the community was in great measure his work; his interest in the vast network of the subterranean cemeteries, where so much had been done by Callistus, was sustained, and he is reputed to have done much to improve and beautify them. The head of the Roman Christians in the second quarter of the third century was an important and influential personage in the life of the great city, well known to the official world of the capital. Tradition, too, speaks of him as exercising considerable power with Decius' predecessor, the Emperor Philip, the friend of the Christians. This Bishop Fabianus was at once marked for destruction by Decius, who put him to death, hoping by this act of cruel tyranny to disorganize the community he so dreaded. His flock reverently laid him to rest in the crypt of S. Callistus. De Rossi discovered the fragments of the marble slab which once closed in the narrow cell where the body of the martyred bishop had been entombed. The name Fabianus was deciphered on the slab, with the letters annexed, telling of his rank and noble martyr end.
We possess the letter addressed by Cyprian of Carthage to the presbyters and deacons of Rome, in which he acknowledges their letter containing the particulars of the glorious close of Fabianus' life, and expresses his own joy that so upright a career had been so fitly crowned. The glory of such a death, said the African Master, is reflected upon his Church; such an example set by the bishop is a strong incentive to a similar brave resistance on the part of his brethren for their Faith's sake.
After an interval of a year and some months, a delay occasioned by the severity of the persecution, which no doubt prevented any formal assembling of the Faithful in Rome, Cornelius, who probably belonged to the well-known patrician family of that name, was elected in the room of the martyred Fabianus. The new bishop had passed through every order and office in his church, and was generally respected and revered. His pontificate was short and troubled; banished, not long after his election, from Rome to Civita Vecchia, he soon died in his exile. No doubt his death was hastened by the harsh treatment experienced by him in his place of banishment, for he is reckoned as a martyr, and is spoken of as such by his friend and contemporary Cyprian of Carthage, although no record of a violent death in his case is preserved to us.
The body of Cornelius was brought back to his own city of Rome and laid, not in the historical Papal crypt of the cemetery of S. Callistus, where most of his predecessors had been buried since the beginning of the third century, but in an adjoining catacomb where were the graves of other Christian members of that proud patrician house to which he apparently belonged. De Rossi has discovered his Sepulcher; the broken pieces of the marble tablet, which once closed up the deep niche wherein originally was placed a sarcophagus containing his remains, have been pieced together; and the inscription in Latin, graven in Roman characters, can be clearly read: Cornelius Martyr. Ep. The Latin tongue was probably used instead of the ordinary Greek, the official language of the Roman Church, the illustrious family to which the bishop belonged preferring Latin as more fitting for a noble Roman's grave. The sarcophagus was probably of somewhat later date than A. D. 253, the remains in the first instance having been apparently at first laid in a simpler grave.
The tomb of this bishop has been the scene of many a pilgrimage. Pope Damasus, in the fourth century, restored the chapel where Cornelius lay, and arranged a special staircase for pilgrims. It was injured by the Lombard invaders in their hunt for treasure or relics. In the ninth century Pope Leo III. once more restored it and painted on its dark walls the figures of Cornelius and his friend Cyprian, on which picture, dim and scarred by time, the twentieth century pilgrim may still gaze.
A SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER IN THE CEMETERY OF LUCINA
We have described the grave scandals at Carthage which arose owmg to the number of "Lapsi"—Christians who, in the persecution of Decius, coming after the long peace of the Church, fell away in the hour of trial; the same sad falling away was noticeable at Rome and in other great centers of population. The settlement of Cyprian in the all-important question of reconciling these "Lapsi" to the Church, and of restoring them, when thoroughly penitent, to communion, was followed generally by Rome and by the whole Church. But at Rome there was a violent opposition to the merciful and gracious view of a temporary weakness of members of the flock of Christ taken by the bishop and the large majority of the rulers of the Christian community. This opposition was headed by a presbyter of great ability but of eccentric disposition, named Novatian.
During the vacancy of the see after the martyrdom of Fabian, this Novatian exercised great influence at Rome. He seems to have expected to have been chosen bishop, although he vehemently protested that he did not desire the position. At all events, after the election of Cornelius, a schism was formed, and Novatian was consecrated to the Episcopate by three obscure Bishops. Novatian and his party held that the Church had no power of granting absolution to the "Lapsi," and was bound to exclude them for ever from communion. He sent notice of his consecration as schismatic bishop of Rome to many of the greater churches, but his claim was generally ignored. His vigorous opinions, however, on the subject of the "Lapsi" found many adherents, especially in the West; and his sentence of lifelong exclusion from all Church communion, which, in the first place, had been confined to those only who had fallen away, was subsequently extended to all who after baptism were guilty of any grave sin. The followers of Novatian styled themselves Puritans (Cathari); they even went so far as to re-baptize proselytes from the Church, whose lax discipline they deemed imperfect and impure. On other points the followers of Novatian were orthodox.
This schism, which first arose at Rome in the Decian persecution, did not die out for a long time. In parts of the east, e.g. in Phrygia, the Novatians united with the Montanists. There was a remnant of them in certain places even as late as the latter years of the sixth century.
On the death of Cornelius in exile, Lucius was elected Bishop of Rome in A. D. 252. A solitary letter addressed to him by Cyprian is extant. Lucius appears to have been immediately banished by the Imperial Government. In this letter Cyprian consoles the exile by telling him that he has the prayers of the Church of Carthage that the crown he had already won by a noble confession might be perfected—Cyprian probably meant by a glorious martyrdom for the Name. But Lucius was not called to suffer a violent death; for he was recalled from his banishment in the beginning of Valerian's reign, and, on his return, died almost immediately. He was laid with his predecessors in the sacred Papal crypt in the Callistus cemetery, and the broken slab of marble which once veiled his last resting-place has been discovered, simply bearing his name, engraved in Greek characters.
It was during the persecution of Valerian, circa A. D. 258, when all assemblies in cemeteries were sternly forbidden, that some of the curious work of "earthing up," the destruction of staircases communicating with the different catacomb galleries in Rome which has of late years been observed, was carried out; and at the same time many secret entrances and exits were skillfully contrived. One curious and deeply interesting account of a terrible catacomb scene of martyrdom deserves special mention. Circa A. D. 257, in the course of the Valerian persecution, two well-known Christians, a husband and wife, named Chrysanthus and Daria, were buried alive in one of the cemeteries beneath the Via Salaria Nova on the north-east of the city. In the course of the following year, disregarding the stern edict, which forbade any such gatherings under a death penalty, a number of Christians assembled in the labyrinthine recesses of the great arenaria (or sand pit) adjoining the cemetery, where the two revered martyrs had met their death. This devout company of believers were in the act of partaking of the Holy Eucharist, when they were surprised by a party of legionnaires, who were employed in the work of detecting these proscribed assemblies. The legionnaires with little difficulty closed up the exits of the arenaria, and by piling up a great heap of sand and stones literally buried alive the numerous band of worshippers, who thus perished. In the following century when Pope Damasus was busied in restoring and putting in order some of the more celebrated burying places in the catacombs, his officials came upon the sad relics of this entombed company of worshippers. There, lying amidst the remains, were the holy vessels which they had taken down with them for the celebration of the sacred communion rite. Pope Damasus would not touch these pathetic memorials of an age of suffering. He simply set up one of his well-known inscriptions telling the story, and opened a window in the adjacent wall or rock in order that pilgrims might see without disturbing "this monument of a glorious past so unique of its kind, this Christian Pompeii in miniature." These touching relics of suffering believers, whom death had overtaken while they were in the very act of prayer, were seen by pilgrims in the sixth century, when Gregory of Tours wrote. To return to our list of Roman bishops. When Lucius' brief career was closed, Stephen was elected bishop, circa A. D. 253. Considerable interest is attached to this pontificate, owing to the haughty claims made by Stephen to a very definite supremacy in the Church. These claims were evidently resisted by Cyprian and practically ignored by Firmilian, the famous bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, whose high position among the prelates of the middle of the third century has been already alluded to; and the claim of Rome was also ignored by many other bishops of this period.
It is indisputable that Cyprian, who during these troubling times occupied the foremost position in the Christian Church, accorded to the Roman see a position of inherited precedence, but at the same time resisted her claim to dictate her will to other and independent churches. Stephen, however, was not content with an acknowledgment of an undefined supremacy, and there is little doubt that during his pontificate the relations between him and the church of North Africa, with its powerful phalanx of bishops, were severely strained. Nor were his relations with many of the Eastern bishops by any means of a friendly nature, although the alleged fact of his positively severing his communion with these oriental prelates is uncertain. After the death of Stephen, the more conciliatory policy of his successor, Sixtus II. (Xystus), seems to have restored the harmony between Rome and the provincial churches which had been seriously imperilled by Stephen's arbitrary conduct.
The character of Bishop Stephen of Rome has been variously painted. Jeremy Taylor's estimate, which represents him as a zealous and furious person, has perhaps too largely influenced modern opinion, for it has been well remarked f by the latest scholarly student of Cyprian, an enthusiastic admirer of the great Carthaginian leader who ever resisted Stephen's assumption of authority, that "we must not forget that Stephen's portrait is made up of traits etched in scraps by the pen of an adversary, that Dionysius, the revered bishop of Alexandria, on the other hand, makes grateful mention of his (Stephen's) liberality to the churches of Syria and Arabia, and that to Vincent of Lerins there floated across two centuries a tradition of modesty as well as zeal, of faith as well as dignity."
The story of the long controversy of Stephen with Cyprian on the question, "Should heretics be re-baptized?" has been told with some little detail in the previous section which dealt with Cyprian. It was seemingly an anxious dispute. On the one side stood the foremost man of the Christian world, one, too, who was greatly loved as he was universally revered; behind him were councils composed of many bishops. The Eastern church sympathized with, even if it did not directly support him; Alexandria with her bishop, though on the whole neutral, was inclined to be with him. Stephen of Rome had few friends; his arrogance and want of charity alienated many a foreign church; but his teaching and the tradition of his metropolitan church triumphed in the long run, and the unanimous voice of the Catholic Church, after the original disputants had passed away, has pronounced that the unpopular Stephen was right, and the loved Cyprian wrong. The issue of this great controversy, which for a brief season threatened to rend the Church asunder, has no doubt been one of the unacknowledged factors which, in the coming ages, powerfully contributed to consolidate the claim of Rome to being the depository of unerring apostolic authority.
Stephen died in the late summer of A. D. 257. A somewhat vague tradition says he too won a martyr's crown in the course of Valerian's persecution. He was followed by Sixtus II. (Xystus), who was a teacher of learning and power, and evidently, from the kindly reference to him by Pontius, Cyprian's dear friend and biographer, was a gentle and conciliatory prelate. The circumstances of Sixtus' death in A. D. 258 are strangely pathetic.
In defiance of the Imperial edict forbidding Christian meetings, the Roman bishop and small companies of believers continued to worship together in the secret recesses of some of the less famous cemeteries. In one of these, the catacomb of Praetextatus, Sixtus and a band of devoted Christians were surprised by a company of legionnaires. When the soldiers entered the dark and narrow chapel of the catacomb, Sixtus was preaching. The bishop and the attendant clergy were at once hurried away and brought before one of the city Prefects, who was always on duty at the time deciding the fate of the many arrested Christians. Sixtus was condemned to be beheaded on the spot where he was taken. Once more brought to the little chapel in the cemetery of Praetextatus, he quietly placed himself on his rough stone chair and, bowing his head, he received the death blow; with him were executed four of his deacons.
Laurence, his senior deacon, so runs the beautiful story, was not present when his chief was arrested, but hurried at once to bid him farewell. "Whither goest thou, my father, without thy son?" "I shall not forsake you," replied Sixtus. "Do not mourn me; yet greater trials are before thee, and thou wilt follow me in three days." The prophecy was literally fulfilled. Laurence was summoned at once by the Prefect of the city, and, as the confidential minister of the martyred bishop, commanded to give up the treasures which belonged to the Church. These, of course, largely consisted in the sacred Eucharistic vessels. The deacon asked for a brief space to enable him to collect and make a list of the Church's treasures. On the morrow he appeared again before the Prefect, followed by a crowd of poor Christian folk who had been helped by the brethren. "Here," said Laurence, "are the treasures of the Church, for which you were enquiring." The angry magistrate condemned Laurence, who thus dared to brave the Roman power, to be burned alive. Common tradition speaks of him as having been roasted to death on a gridiron, his persecutors hoping that the agonizing tortures would induce him to reveal the secret of the Church's suqposed treasures. Several other members of the Roman clergy suffered death with the deacon Laurence. These are only a few notable examples of the many Roman sufferers in this period of storm and stress, the persecution at Rome in A. D. 258 being memorable for its extreme severity. But no memory of that noble martyr army has been so revered as has that of Laurence. The stately basilica on the Via Tiburtina rises over the first little simple memoria erected above his tomb; four other churches in the Eternal City are dedicated to him; there is, besides, scarcely a city in Christendom but contains a church or altar bearing his loved name. In Genoa the cathedral, in Spain the Escurial, preserve the honored memory of S. Laurence, the friend of Bishop Sixtus, deacon and martyr."
S. LAURENCE BEFORE THE JUDGE.
The campaign in the East, A. D. 260, closed the reign of Valerian, who had issued the edicts for the bitter persecutions under which perished Cyprian, Sixtus II of Rome, his deacon, Laurence, and so many of the noblest Christians whose names are unwritten in the Church's martyrology. Sapor, the Persian king, defeated the Imperial forces, and captured the Emperor Valerian, who never reappeared. Tradition speaks of unheard-of indignities being suffered by the hapless Roman Emperor at the hands of the Persian conqueror. Gallienus, his son, who had been before associated in the Empire, now reigned alone. At once the persecution at Rome, and in those provinces where the edicts of Valerian ran, ceased. Not only was all harrying of the followers of Jesus stayed, but an Imperial edict restored the confiscated churches, cemeteries, and property to the Christian communities. This great and sudden change in the fortunes of the Church is attributed to the influence of Salonina, the Empress of Gallienus. Salonina was the devoted disciple of Plotinus, the Neo-Platonic philosopher. For more than half a century, at intervals, the influence of princesses at the Palatine had been marked. The teaching of Plotinus had led the Empress to the borderland of Christianity, and eventually, it is probable, she became actually a Christian. The Christian inscription which runs round some of Salonina's medals, "Augusta in pace," seems to indicate the conversion to Christianity of the Princess. At all events her influence was exerted in favor of the Church, and the result was the gracious and generous edict we have just spoken of. In Rome, and over most of the West, including Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, the Christians at once enjoyed a period of quietness and toleration. In the East, where the authority of Gallienus was largely opposed, persecution, more or less severe, continued.