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Their style, their images adorned the writings of the Tertullians and the Origens, at the same time as their sentences reinforced the already so sublime replies of the martyrs. Now, these books themselves, wholly heavenly, wholly supernatural, did not disdain to make use, in the reckoning of divine events, of the mode in use for earthly calculations. They proceeded by the aid of the fasti of humanity as by the light of a torch, and the word of God borrowed, in a manner, its certainty of fact from the events of this mortal dwelling.
To recall here only a few examples: open first the Old Testament, at the article of the prophecies, those wholly spiritual phenomena of the first infusion of the divine Word by the Holy Spirit into humanity, and you will there find the transient years of the kings of the earth affixed as a necessary seal to the oracles of eternal Wisdom. Let us choose among a thousand examples: 'The vision of Isaiah son of Amos concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah' (b). Further on: 'In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated upon a throne,' etc. (c).
'The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin. The word of the Lord came to him in the days of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign' (d). 'The word that was given to Jeremiah concerning the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, which is the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon' (e). 'In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream,' etc. (f). 'In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar' (g). 'In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, of the race of the Medes, who reigned over the empire of the Chaldeans,' etc. (h).
'In the third year of Cyrus king of the Persians, the word was revealed to Daniel,' etc. (i). This is doubtless enough, and we may dispense with citing the minor Prophets, who furnish a far greater number of examples of this particularity. Let us pass to the New Testament. 'In the days of Herod, king of Judah, there was a priest named Zacharias,' etc. (j). Thus begins the narrative of the gospel history in Saint Luke. In the following chapter: 'In those days there went out an edict from Caesar Augustus for the enrolment of the whole world. This enrolment was made when Cyrinus was governor of Syria' (k). Saint Matthew, speaking of the coming of the Magi:
'Jesus being born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the days of king Herod, behold, Magi came from the East to Jerusalem' (l). Saint Luke, wishing to announce the preaching of Saint John, the solemn prelude to that of Christ, likewise determines its epoch by that of the princes of the time: 'In the fifteenth year of the empire of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Philip his brother tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias of Abilene, under the high priests Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the Lord came upon John son of Zacharias, in the desert,' etc. (m).
This is certainly more than enough to excuse the first Christians in their own eyes when they made use of the consular fasti to fix the years of the Roman Pontiffs; and lest one think that these observations are the fruit of a systematic research more ingenious than conclusive, we cannot resist the desire to cite here the following passage of Saint Ambrose, who saw the matter from the same point of view, and who comments in the following manner on one of the texts we have just cited:
'The enrolment of which Saint Luke speaks took place when Cyrinus was governor of Syria, as if the Evangelist had wished to set upon his book, like a seal, a kind of consular indication. Indeed, if one marks the consuls upon contracts of purchase, what is more fitting than to employ this reckoning of time to fix the epoch of the universal redemption? You have here all that one is accustomed to place upon contracts: ordinarily one sets there the name of the holder of sovereign authority, the day, the place, the cause, the witnesses. Christ too willed to make these various marks serve to certify his nativity and his generation according to the flesh—he who said to his apostles:
Be my witnesses in the presence of Jerusalem' (a). There is therefore no reason to be astonished that the first faithful transported into the facts of religion a manner of counting which the genius of the holy books rendered sacred to them, at the same time as the usages of the age left them not even another one at their disposal. Thus is explained this passage of Tertullian, in the book of the Soldier's Crown: 'The common crowd has its feasts and its crowns, sometimes in honour of the fortune of princes, sometimes for the particular solemnities of the city, and lust forms the foundation of all these public rejoicings.
You, Christian, are a stranger to this world, a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, as the Apostle says: Our city is heaven. But have you not also your lists? Have you not also your fasti?' (b). After having shown that the existence of Christian fasti, during the first three centuries, presents nothing but what is most natural, we shall have no difficulty in showing that one could still read in 354 those which the Christians of Rome had drawn up concerning the years of the Popes. A single reason would have rendered this reading impossible: it would be the case where they had all perished before this epoch; but this supposition is inadmissible.
Doubtless the persecutions, the last one above all, destroyed a great quantity of monuments; but the small number that has remained to us of them, and which must necessarily have been still more considerable in the fourth century, suffices to prove that not everything had perished: we are going to fortify by facts these conjectures, unassailable moreover. Let us take for example the Acts of the Martyrs, monuments so important in the customs of the primitive Church, and upon which the Christians naturally must have inscribed the consuls in order to fix the epoch of the glorious confession. Everyone knows that the greatest part of these precious acts has been lost;
but such is the certainty of our assertion that a single glance at the remains that have come down to us will suffice to show even the least clear-sighted that, at the epoch of Liberius, one could establish still much better, by the aid of the consular torch, the ecclesiastical acts of the three preceding centuries. We shall not cite here the acts of the martyrs judged authentic by the Bollandists in their immense compilation, nor in several other collections later than that of Dom Ruinart:
let us simply confine ourselves to the collection of the latter, as the most widely diffused, and let us read in it forthwith what one could still much better read in the fourth century upon so many monuments which time and the negligence of those who ought to have better preserved them, joined to the ravages of the barbarians, have made disappear from the earth. Let us take at random from the Acta sincera of the learned and most impartial Benedictine. In the year of Jesus Christ 107, the acts of Saint Ignatius of Antioch: 'Now these things were done on the day before the thirteenth of the Kalends of January, Syrus and Senecio for the second time presiding among the Romans.' In the year 200, the proconsular acts of the Scillitan martyrs:
Indiebusillisprae- sidentebisClaudianoconsuleXVIKal. August. Enl’anCCL, lemartyredeS. Pionius : ActasunthaecsubProconsuleJulioProcloetQuintilianoconsule, ImperatoreGaio, mensequinto, TraianoDecioetVi- zetoGrato, et, utRomanidicunt, IIIIIdusMartii, et, utAsianidicunt, mensesexto, diesabbati, horadeci- ma. Enl’anCCLVIII, lesactesproconsulairesdesaintCyprien : ImperatoreValerianoquartumetGal- lienotertiumConsulibus, tertioKalendarumSeptem- brium, etc. Enl’anCCLIX, lesactesdessaintsmartyrsFructuosus, AuguriusetEulogius : ValerianoetGal- lienoimperatoribus, AEmilianoetBassocoss. XVIIKal. Februarii, dieDominico, etc.
'In those days, when Claudianus was for the second time consul, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August.' In the year 250, the martyrdom of Saint Pionius: 'These things were done under the proconsul Julius Proclus and the consul Quintilianus, the emperor being Gaius, in the fifth month, in the consulship of Trajanus Decius and Vetus Gratus, and, as the Romans say, on the fourth day before the Ides of March, and, as the Asians say, in the sixth month, on the Sabbath day, at the tenth hour.' In the year 258, the proconsular acts of Saint Cyprian: 'In the consulship of the emperor Valerianus for the fourth time and Gallienus for the third time, on the third day before the Kalends of September,' etc. In the year 259, the acts of the holy martyrs Fructuosus, Augurius, and Eulogius: 'Valerianus and Gallienus being emperors, Aemilianus and Bassus being consuls, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of February, on the Lord's day,' etc.
In the year 285, the acts of the holy martyrs Claudius and Asterius: 'This passion took place in the city of Aegea, under the governor Lysias, on the tenth of the Kalends of September, in the consulship of Augustus and Aristobulus,' etc. In the year 295, the acts of St Maximilian: 'In the consulship of Tuscus and Anulinus, on the fourth of the Ides of March, at Theveste,' etc. In the year 303, the acts of St Felix the bishop: 'In the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time and Maximian for the seventh time, the Augusti,' etc. In the year 304, the acts of the holy women Agape, Chionia, Irene, etc.: 'in the ninth consulship of Diocletian Augustus and the eighth of Maximian Augustus, on the Kalends of April,' etc. In the same year, the acts of St Euplus the deacon:
'In the consulship of Diocletian for the ninth time and Maximian for the eighth time, on the day before the Ides of August, in the city of Catania,' etc. Here at last we pause; but our aim was to put the reader in a position to judge for himself that the most exacting criticism could not reject the consular chronology of the Catalogue of Liberius for this reason alone, that this little work was composed only in the fourth century. Now, the Catalogue of Liberius does not confine itself to indicating the consuls corresponding to the accession and death of the Roman pontiffs; it also gives the years, the months and the days of their reign. Let us now examine the certainty of these particulars.
After having remarked to the reader that these assignments of years, months and days must, across the centuries, have been even more exposed to the errors of copyists than the consular fasti themselves, and that consequently we do not at all undertake to vouch for every one of the figures with which the Catalogue of Liberius is filled, we say that nothing is in itself less astonishing than the preservation of these chronological details at Rome in the fourth century. Have not the monuments of history—and Dodwell himself agreed to this—preserved, despite the distance of time, the years, months and days of the emperors?
To do the same thing in the chronicle of the Popes, whose years were already determined by the consuls, did it then require such great efforts? And when the voluminous writings of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen passed safe and sound through such disastrous tempests, would it have been so impracticable to save the page on which had been written the years, days and months that some thirty bishops had reigned—especially when the contents of that page were so popular that for that very reason it was impossible for it to be lost? For the facts here too come to the support of what one might call our conjectures, and this is in what manner.
Is it not true that, if we can prove that the Christians naturally knew the day of the death of most of the ancient Popes, it was thereby easy for them to compute not only the years of their pontificate, already designated by the consuls, but even in a certain manner the months and the days—quite apart from the records that the Church was bound to preserve concerning all these things? Now this is what no one, possessing the slightest tincture of ecclesiastical antiquity, can call into doubt. From the very origin of Christianity, the day of the death of the saints was consecrated by a feast in their honour, under the beautiful name of 'birthday,' Natalis, preserved in the Roman liturgy.
Thus, as early as the year 107, in the circular letter that went out from Rome to announce the confession of St Ignatius of Antioch, the Churches were told: 'We make known to you the day and the time, so that on the anniversary of his martyrdom we may all gather in honour of so generous an athlete and witness of Christ.' Such was the apostolic tradition. When the Roman Church sent a message to the other Churches to notify them of the sublime passing of its pontiff, it never failed to transmit at the same time, that it might be recorded, the day on which the sacrifice had been offered. 'You shall know,' writes St Cyprian to Successus, one of the bishops of his province;
voussaurezqueSixteaétémisàmortdanslecimetière, lehuitdesidesd’août »( d ). OnconservaitdoncàRome, aumoyendesmé- moiresetcommémorationsdesmartyrs, lejourpré- cisoùchaquePapeavaitterminésacarrière; etc’esticilelieudemettresouslesyeuxdulecteurlefameuxcalendrierecclésiastiquedel’ÉgliseRo- maine, qui, rédigéaussiversl’an 354, faisaitpartiedesquatreopusculesqueCuspinienetleP. BouchertrouvèrentsurlemêmemanuscritàcôtéduCataloguedeLibère.
you shall know that Xystus was put to death in the cemetery, on the eighth of the Ides of August.' Thus there was preserved at Rome, by means of the records and commemorations of the martyrs, the precise day on which each Pope had ended his course; and this is the place to set before the reader's eyes the famous ecclesiastical calendar of the Roman Church which, likewise drawn up around the year 354, formed part of the four little works that Cuspinian and Father Boucher found in the same manuscript alongside the Catalogue of Liberius.
OnyverralesanniversairesdesdiversmartyrsdontRomechrétiennecélébraitlafêteauquatrièmesiècle, etl’inspectiondecemonumentneservirapaspeuàfairetoucheraudoigtlavéritédenosassetions. Nousdonnonscecalendrier, nond'aprèsDumRuinart, quin’afaitquereproduirelaleçouduP. Boucher, maisd’aprèsleP. ConradJanning, quil’apubliéen 1717 ( e ), sansrienchangeràlaleçonoriginale, commel’avaitfaitleP. Boucherenquelquesendroits. VIKal. Januar . IIIKal. Jan . Prid. Kal. Jan . IVIdusJan . XVIIIKal. Febr . IIINon. Mart . XKal. Mai . IVNon. Aug . VIKal. Octobr . VIIdusDecembr . Non. Octobr . Prid. idusApril . Dionisi, inCalisti.
In it will be seen the anniversaries of the various martyrs whose feast Christian Rome celebrated in the fourth century, and the inspection of this monument will not contribute a little to making the truth of our assertions palpable. We give this calendar not according to Dom Ruinart, who merely reproduced Father Boucher's reading, but according to Father Conrad Janning, who published it in 1717 without altering anything of the original reading, as Father Boucher had done in some places. VI Kal. Januar. III Kal. Jan. Prid. Kal. Jan. IV Idus Jan. XVIII Kal. Febr. III Non. Mart. X Kal. Mai. IV Non. Aug. VI Kal. Octobr. VI Idus Decembr. Non. Octobr. Prid. idus April. Dionysius, in [the cemetery] of Calixtus.
Felix, in [the cemetery] of Calixtus. Silvester, in [that] of Priscilla. Miltiades, in [that] of Calixtus. Marcellinus, in [that] of Priscilla. Lucius, in [that] of Calixtus. Gaius, in [that] of Calixtus. Stephanus, in [that] of Calixtus. Eusebius, in [that] of Calixtus. Eutychianus, in [that] of Calixtus. Marcus, in [that] of Balbina. Julius, on the Aurelian Way at the third milestone, in [that] of Calixtus. VIII Kal. Jan. Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. IN THE MONTH OF JANUARY. XIII Kal. Febr. Of Fabian, in [the cemetery] of Calixtus; and of Sebastian, in the Catacombs. XII Kal. Feb. Of Agnes, on the Nomentan Way. IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY. VIII [Kal. Mart.] The festival of Peter's Chair. IN THE MONTH OF MARCH. Nones of March. Of Perpetua and Felicitas, in Africa. IN THE MONTH OF MAY. XIV Kal. Jun. Of Parthenius and Calocerus, in [the cemetery] of Calixtus, in the consulship of Diocletian for the eighth time and Maximian for the eighth time. IN THE MONTH OF JUNE. III Kal. Julii.
Of Peter, in the Catacombs; and of Paul, on the Ostian Way; in the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus. IN THE MONTH OF JULY. VI Idus [Julii]. Of Felix and Philip, in [the cemetery] of Priscilla; and in [that] of the Jordani, of Martialis, Vitalis, Alexander; and in [that] of Maximus, of Silanus—this Silanus, a martyr, the Novatianists stole away; and in [that] of Praetextatus, of Januarius. III Kal. Aug. Of Abdon and Sennen, in [the cemetery] of Pontianus, which is at the 'Bear in the Cap.' IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST. VIII Idus Aug. Of Xystus, in [the cemetery] of Calixtus; and in [that] of Praetextatus, of Agapitus and Felicissimus. VII Idus Aug. Of Secundus, Carpophorus, Victorinus and Severianus, at Albano and on the Ostian Way. VI [Idus Aug.], the Ballistaria: of Cyriacus, Largus, Crescentianus, Memmia, Juliana and Smaragdus. IIII Idus Aug. Of Laurentius, on the Tiburtine Way. On the Ides of August, of Hippolytus, on the Tiburtine Way; and of Pontianus, in [the cemetery] of Calixtus.
XI Kal. Sept. Of Timothy, on the Ostian Way. V Kal. Sept. Of Hermes, in [the cemetery] of Basilla, on the Old Salarian Way. IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER. Nones of Sept. Of Acontius, at Portus, and of Nonnus and Herculanus and Taurinus. V Idus Sept. Of Gorgonius, on the Labican Way. III Idus Sept. Of Protus and Hyacinthus, in [the cemetery] of Basilla. XVIII Kal. Octob. Of Cyprian, in Africa; at Rome he is celebrated in [the cemetery] of Calixtus. X Kal. Octob. Of Basilla, on the Old Salarian Way; in the consulship of Diocletian for the ninth time and Maximian for the eighth time. IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER. The day before the Ides of October, of Calixtus, on the Aurelian Way at the third milestone. IN THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER. VI Idus Novemb. Of Clement, Sempronianus, Clavus, Nicostratus, in the retinue. III Kal. Decemb. Of Saturninus, in [the cemetery] of Trason. IN THE MONTH OF DECEMBER. The Ides of December, of Ariston, at Portus.
DomMabillonapubliéautroisièmevolumedesesAnalectauncalendrierdumêmegenreetpresquedumêmeâge, àl’usagedel’ÉglisedeCarthage. Nouslereproduisonsci-dessousdansunenotecommecomplémentdeceluideRome ( d ). Lelecteurseraparlààmémedejugercomment, aumoyendelaconfrontationdescalendriersdesdiverseséglises, il » devintaisederédigercefameuxmartyrologedeI’Έ- gliseRomainedontparlesaintGrégoireleGrandàEulogins, etdanslequelilditexpressémentqu’ontrouvaitlejourprécisauquelchaquemartyravaitsouffert ( a ).
Dom Mabillon published, in the third volume of his Analecta, a calendar of the same kind and almost of the same age, for the use of the Church of Carthage. We reproduce it below in a note, as a complement to that of Rome. The reader will thereby be in a position to judge how, by comparing the calendars of the various churches, it became easy to compile that famous martyrology of the Roman Church of which St Gregory the Great speaks to Eulogius, and in which he expressly says that one found the precise day on which each martyr had suffered.
Finally, all these details which we have taken pleasure in accumulating will have amply served to prove that one cannot, without rashness, claim that it was impossible in the fourth century to determine in detail the minute circumstances of the time of each pontificate. We shall now reply to our Protestant adversaries.
Lapremièreobjection, quiestcommuneàDod- wel ( b ) etàPearson ( c ), estquesaintIrenéeetsaintEpiphanequiomcitélasuccessiondesPontifesRo- mainsdansleurstraitéscontreleshéré(??)iques, Eu- sèbe, Rufin, saintProsperetlesautreshistoriensetchroniqueursquil’ontinséréedansleursrécits, n’ontpoint, nilesunsnilesautres, déterminédanslememedétailqueleCataloguedeLibéreles [an- nées, lesmoisetlesjoursdusiégedecesévéquesdeRome. Rienn’estplusaiséàrésondrequecettedifficulté. PourquoilessaintsdocteursIrénéeetEpi- phane, auxquelsoneutpujoindreencoresaintOp- tatetsaintAugustin.
The first objection, which is common to Dodwell and to Pearson, is that St Irenaeus and St Epiphanius, who cited the succession of the Roman pontiffs in their treatises against the heretics; Eusebius, Rufinus, St Prosper, and the other historians and chroniclers who inserted it into their accounts—none of them, neither the one nor the other, determined, in the same detail as the Catalogue of Liberius, the years, months and days of the reign of these bishops of Rome. Nothing is easier to resolve than this difficulty. Why should the holy doctors Irenaeus and Epiphanius—to whom one might further add St Optatus and St Augustine—
why should they have cited to the heretics, so minutely, the months and days of the Roman pontiffs, when all they needed was simply to show their succession in order to close the mouths of all the innovators? As for the chroniclers, who does not see that this so multiplied detail of months and days would have taken them outside the genre of their work, which consists solely in tracing the principal chronological lines and not at all in probing these indifferent particularities?
Finally, even granting that the nature of the historical work which Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret had set themselves had required them to enter into these minutiae which a chronicle ought to neglect, what is astonishing if these authors had been ignorant of them in the East where they wrote, while Rome kept with full certainty these domestic traditions? Pearson, who like us has been struck by the argument that can be formed in favour of the reckonings of months and days in the Catalogue of Liberius from the consideration of the customs of the ancient Church, which carefully preserved the anniversary records of the martyrs, makes every effort to escape the consequences we draw from it.
He regards, as we do, the Roman calendar we have just cited as a most respectable and very important monument for the chronology of the Popes, whose days of Deposition it contains; but he throws himself into a wholly gratuitous assertion when he claims that the author of the Catalogue of Liberius had no other records for drawing up the account of the months and days he assigned to the various Popes, and that, since this calendar—according to Pearson—contains the Deposition of only twelve Popes, from St Lucius to St Julius, the compiler of the Catalogue must necessarily have drawn from his own imagination the circumstances of time he attributed to the preceding pontificates.
We reply first that it is not accurate to count only twelve Depositions of Bishops in the calendar, since, on closer examination, it is easy to find four others under the title of Depositions of Martyrs, namely: of St Fabian, XIII Kal. Feb.; of St Xystus, VIII Id. Aug.; of St Calixtus, the day before the Ides of November; and of St Clement, V Id. Nov. Therefore sixteen in all, to which we should be entitled to add yet St Peter, whose day of martyrdom is marked III Kal. Jul.
Now, because this precious calendar has come down to us, is it sensible to conclude that it was the only indication that could be found in the third century concerning the days of death of thirty Popes who had reigned up to that time? And can this wholly gratuitous negative conjecture prevail over the weighty reasons by which we have sought to demonstrate to the reader's good sense that a religious institution as strong and as powerful as the Roman Church must have had, after three centuries of existence, records somewhat more extensive and circumstantial than those we are able today to register in two pages?
'The author of the Catalogue of Liberius will have had the calendar in his hands and made use of it to compose his chronicle,' Pearson tells us. For our part, we would just as readily say that these two little works were composed simultaneously from earlier records; for the author of the Catalogue of Liberius cannot have taken from the calendar the consular fasti he uses, since they were not there; whereas, on the other hand, the author of the calendar might well have drawn up the dates of death of the sovereign pontiffs from the catalogue—though, however, we do not pretend to affirm it, but simply to oppose a probability to an assertion devoid of every shadow of likelihood.
But, Pearson further says, one can draw from the very annals of the See of Rome the certain proof that all that is authentic in the records of the Papacy of the first three centuries is found in the Calendarium of Father Boucher; for the twelve Bishops whose certain date of Deposition is given are later than Fabian, who established the notaries and founded, in the middle of the third century, the archives of the Roman Church, which had had none until then.
As we shall establish in the following volume that the institution of the notaries of the apostolic See dates from the first century and not from the third, and as we cannot enter here upon this interesting discussion, we shall confine ourselves to repeating what we have already had occasion to remark several times—namely, that notes on the names, years, months and days of the bishops of Rome did not constitute so considerable a work that one is obliged to imagine a body of notaries officially occupied in accomplishing it;
that one cannot, without absurdity, suppose that the Roman Church, which already played so great a role from then on—as is seen from the affair of Easter—and which addressed to the other Churches epistles so powerful, from the time of St Clement onward, would have traversed more than two centuries without even having thought of creating, for its own needs, any kind of archives whatsoever; so that St Fabian, called to govern it, would have found it mute concerning all its past, so fruitful and yet so glorious—without memories, without writings, without monuments—in a word, known to all the churches, according to St Irenaeus, and yet not knowing itself.
In truth, the learned Anglican counts far too much on the simplicity of his readers, and we cannot sufficiently wonder that the paradoxes of his work were not refuted sooner by Catholic authors. Nevertheless, since there is never an error that has not had its more or less well-founded pretext, we shall readily acknowledge that, from about the time of St Fabian—that is to say, from the middle of the third century—one finds in the Catalogue of Liberius more that is definite in the details, dates less floating but more precise and more circumstantial.
One sees that since that epoch more care was taken in the drawing up of the records, and that the improvements of the holy Pope bore their fruit in the archives of the Apostolic See. For his part, the author of the catalogue registered the monuments such as he found them, in their more or less disparate form, without attempting to give to his work a unity of colour which a forger would not have failed to seek; and this brings us back once more to our conclusion—that in the assignment he has made of the years, months and days of each Pope, at the same time as his authority cannot fail to be very great, his good faith remains fully beyond suspicion.