Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/774

 PERSECUTIONS

710

PERSECUTIONS

and cast into the sea (Mart. Pal., V, ii-iii). This glorious page of the history of the Church of Egypt is not of course qviite free from some dark spots. Many were overcome by the tortures at various stages of their confessions and apostatized more or less explicitly. This is attested by the "Liber de Pa'nitentia" of Peter of Alexandria, dated from Easter, 306 (published in Routh, Reliquia; Sacra>, 2nd ed.. IV, 23 sqq.). (See L.\psi.)

Persecution of Diocletian in the Acts op Martyrs of the Coptic Church. — The Acts of Martyrs of Egypt in their present form have been, with few exceptions, written in Coptic, and were cur- rently road in the churches and monasteries of Egypt at \ci\st from the ninth to the eleventh century. Later they were, like the rest of the Coptic literature, trans- lated into .\rabic and then into Ethiopic for the use of the Aby.ssinian Church. The Coptic Acts have often come down to us both in Bohairic and in Sahidic, those in the latter dialect being as a rule fragmentary, as most of its hterature. Where we have the same .A,cts in two or more dialects or languages, it generally happens that the various versions represent more or less different recensions, and this is sometimes the case even between two copies of the same Acts in the same language. The greater part of the extant Bohairic Acts have been published with a French translation by the present writer of this article in "Les Actes des Martyrs de I'Egj-pte", etc., I (here= H), and by J. Balestri and the present writer, with a Latin translation, in "Acta Martyrum", I (here= B-H). Two of the Arabic Acts have appeared in French translation only, and without indication of the RI8.S. from which they were taken, under the name of E. Amchneau in "Contes et romans", etc., II (here = A). For the publication of some of the Ethiopic Acts we are indebted to E. Pereira in "Acta Martyrum", I (here=P).

Unlike the .\cts of martyrs of the other churches, those of the Coptic Church, almost ■nithout any ex- ception, contain some historical data of a more general character, which are as the background of the narra- tive proper. Put side by side, the data furnished by the various Acts of martyrs referred to the persecu- tion of Diocletian prove on careful examination to constitute just such an outline of the history of that persecution as could result from a condensed com- pilation of the writings of Eusebius. Indeed it seems as though each individual writer of those Acts had before his eyes a compilation of that nature and took from it just what best served his purpose. Sometimes the original text is almost literally rendered in Coptic (and what is still more surprising in Arabic or in Ethiopic), with here and there an occasional distor- tion owing to the failure on the part of the translator to grasp the right meaningof a difficult orobscure passage; sometimes it is paraphrased; frequently it has been amplified or developed, and still more frequently we find it more or less curtailed. In other cases several passages have been condensed into one, so as to rnake appear simultaneous facts chronologically distinct. Finally, it not seldom occurs that a paragraph or even a short passage of Eusebius has been transformed into a real historical romance. In the latter case all proper names are fictitious, and the same historical character appears under various names, .\ntiochia is universally substituted for Nicomedia a-s the capital of the eastern empire. Naturally also some violence is inflicted on the original at the point where the romance is grafted upon it. A few examples will suffice to illustrate our ^^ew and at the same time we hope to show its correctness.

Bringing together the data furnished bv the "Acts of Claudius" (P., 17.5, and A., 3), and Theodore Stratelates (B-H, 1.57), we can easily reconstruct the primitive Coptic version of the beginning of the per- secution as follows: In the nineteenth year of Diocle-

tian, as the Christians were preparing to celebrate the Passion, an edict was issued everj'where, ordering their churches to be destroyed, their iloly Scriptures burnt, and their slaves liberated, wliile other edicts were promulgated demanding the imprisonment and punisiiment of the mini.stcrs of the Christian Church unless llicy sacrificed to the gods. This is unmistak- al)ly .-i translation of Eusebius, "Hist, eccl.", VIII, ii, 4-5, and although it shows three omissions, viz., the indication of the month; the mention that this was the first edict, and the third provision of the edict, together with the wrong translation of the fourth clause, however, two of the omissions are supplied by the "Actsof Epime" (B-H, 122; comp. Didymus H., 285), in which we find as heading of the general edict (fourth edict, see p. 707c) these curious words: This was the first edict [apographe] that was against all the saints. He [the king] got up early on the first day of the month of'Pharmuthi [27 March-25 April], as he was to pass into a new year and wrote an edict [dintagma] etc. It needs but a superficial comparison between Eusebius, "Hist, eccl.", VIII, ii, 4-5, and "Mart. Pal.", Ill, i, to see that the italics in the Coptic version above belong to the former passage, while the rest represent a distorted rendering of the latter. The Coptic has even retained to some extent the difference of style in the two places, having apo- graphe for graphe in the first case and diatagma for prostagnia in the latter. The other omission, viz., the third clause of the edict, may be lurking in some other te.xt already extant or yet to be discovered. As for having misunderstood the fourth clause of the edict, the Coptic compiler may well be forgiven his error in view of the divergence of opinion still obtaining among scholars as to the right interpretation of this somewhat obscure passage. (See McGiffert on the passage, note 6. In this case, as the reader may have observed, we have departed from McGiffert 's translation in supply- ing "their" before "household", thus making this f ourth clause inreality a continuation of the third one.) Here is now another passage in which the text of Eusebius is gradually transformed so as to lose prac- tically everything of its primitive .aspect. In the "Acts of Theodore the Eastern" (one of the most legendary compositions in the Coptic Martyrology), we read that Diocletian, having written the edict, handed it to one of the magi.strates, Stephen by name, who was standing by him. Stephen took it and tore it up in the presence of the king. Whereupon the latter grasped his sword and cut Stephen in twain, and wrote the edict over again which he sends all over the world (P., 120 sq.). The legend process has begun, to say the least. Yet everybody will recog- nize in this story a translation, distorted as it may be, of Eusebius, Vlil,v (those in Nicomedia). As in Euse- bius it is a man in high rank who tears the edict. Only in Evisebius the edict was posted up instead of being handed by the emperor, and the act took place "while two of the emperors were in the same city" not "in the presence of the emperor"; finally, Eusebius does not say with what death the perpetrator of the act met (Lactantius, "De mort. persec", XIII, says he was burnt). In the "Acts of Epime", the legend takes another step forward. A young soldier of high rank, seeing the edict (posted upl takes off his sword- belt and presents himself to the king. The king asks him who he is. The .soldier answers that he is Chris- todorus, son of Basilides the St rat elates, but that hence- forth he shall not ser\-e an impious king, but confess Christ. Then the king takes the sword of one of the soldiers and runs it through the young man (B-H, 122 sq.). There is almo.st nothing left of Eusebius' ac- count of this storv'. In fact it looks as if the writer of the "Acts of Epime" had taken it from those of Theodore the Eastern, or some other already dis- torted version of the Eusebian aceount, and spoiled it still more in his effort to conceal his act of plagiarism.