Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/556

 the further violence of his tormentors by death. This took place on a Saturday. Crowds immediately flocked to the prison, singing hymns as if it were the eve of Easter, and they watched beside the corpse to ensure it Christian burial. To disappoint this intention, the proconsul on the day following gave orders that both the living man and the dead body should be cast together into the sea. To execute this command, the soldiers were obliged to clear the way from the prison by force, and many persons were wounded in the struggle. The two victims were thrown into the sea at some distance from each other in baskets weighted with sand to ensure their sinking. But the action of the waves, caused, according to the writer's belief, by divine interposition, tore away the sand, and after six days brought the two bodies together to shore, where they were received with welcome by their fellow-Christians on their way to the churches and received Christian burial, the malice of those who had sought to deprive them of it being thus gloriously defeated.

Notwithstanding the inflated style of the narrative (very different, as Mabillon remarks truly, from that of the existing accounts of the deaths of true Catholic martyrs), and notwithstanding the very slight notice St. Augustine takes of the event, into which he acknowledges that he had made very little inquiry, and also despite his evident success in convicting some accounts of Donatist martyrdoms of inaccuracy, if not of direct falsehood, there seems no reason for doubting the substantial truth of this narrative, especially as Marculus, in Dec. of the same year, suffered death for a similar cause and with similar circumstances of cruelty. Neither can we doubt that the cause for which these men suffered was essentially one of religion. True, St. Augustine compares such cases to that of Hagar, and elsewhere argues in favour of the duty of the state as the guardian of truth to repress heresy and insinuates that those guilty of this offence are punished not so much on account of religion as of treason or disloyalty; but we must bear in mind that (1) the proceedings here related took place six years before St. Augustine's birth, and had not been repeated in his time, and that thus he was no witness either to the truth or falsehood of the narratives; (2) the behaviour and language of Isaac remind us more of an angry partisan than a Christian martyr; (3) the glaring faults of the narrative in style and temper do not extenuate the treatment which, after every allowance for exaggeration, the sufferers must have endured. Aug. ''Tr. in Joann.'' xi. 315; c. Cresc. iii. 49, 54; Mabillon, Vet. Anal. p. 185; ''Mon. Vet. Don.'' No. 29, pp. 237, 248, ed. Oberthür; Ceillier, v. 106; Morcelli, Africa Christiana, ii. 249.

[H.W.P.]

Isaacus (28). Several eminent solitaries of the Egyptian deserts in the 4th cent. bore this name. The references are scattered up and down in the Vitae Patrum, and it is not always clear which Isaac is intended. The following seem to be distinct persons.

(i) Abbat Isaacus, presbyter of the anchorites in the Scetic desert (ἡ Σκῆτις, Copt. Schiêt), S.W. of Lake Mareotis. At 7 years of age he withdrew from the world, 358, and attached himself to Macarius of Alexandria, the disciple of St. Anthony. Palladius relates of abbat Isaac that he knew the Scriptures by heart, lived in utter purity, and could handle deadly serpents (κεράσται) without harm. He lived in solitude for 50 years, his followers numbering 3150. Certain anecdotes in the Apophthegmata Patrum appear to belong to him. "Abbat Isaac was wont to say to the brethren, Our fathers and abbat Pambo wore old bepatched raiment and palm husks (σεβένια); nowadays ye wear costly clothing. Hence! It was ye who desolated the district." (Scetis was overrun, c. 395, by the Mazices, a horde of merciless savages.)

Cassianus, who was in Scetis 398, conversed with Isaacus, to whom he assigns the 9th and 10th of his Conferences (Collationes), which treat of prayer. In the former Isaacus distinguishes four kinds of prayer, according to I. Tim. ii. 1 (Collat. 9, cc. 9–14). Then he expounds at length the Lord's Prayer (cc. 18–23). The highest type, however, is prayer "unuttered, unexpressed," like that of Christ on the mountain or in the garden (c. 25, de qualitate sublimioris orationis). In c. 36 he advises short and frequent petitions ("frequenter quidem sed breviter"), lest, while we linger, the foe suggest some evil thought.

The 10th Conference begins by relating how the patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria scandalized the Scetic anchorites by his Paschal Letter denouncing Anthropomorphism, and how the aged abbat Serapion, though convinced of his error, could not render thanks with the rest, but fell a-weeping and crying, "They have taken my God from me!" Cassianus and the other witnesses asked Isaacus to account for the old man's heresy. Isaacus made it a survival of heathen ideas of Deity in a simple and unlettered mind (cc. 1–5). Isaacus proceeds to shew how to attain to perfect and unceasing prayer. That will be realized when all our love and desire, every aim, effort, thought, all that we contemplate, speak of, hope for, is God; when we are united with Him by an enduring and indissoluble affection. C. 10 gives as a prayer suited to all emergencies the verse Ps. lxx. 1. Ill prays he who only prays when upon his knees. He prays never, who even upon his knees is distracted by wandering thoughts. Such as we would be found when praying, such should we be before we pray.

When 50 years old Isaacus was expelled from his desert by Theophilus of Alexandria, albeit that prelate had made bishops of seven or eight of his anchorites. Isaacus turned for succour to St. Chrysostom and Olympias. He was still living in 408.

Sources.—Pallad. ''Dialog. de Vita Chrysost. in Patr. Gk.'' xlvii. 59, 60; ''Cassiani Massil. Collat.'' 9, 10, in Migne, xlix. 770 sqq.; ''Apophthegmata Patr. ib.'' lxv. 223; a number of anecdotes headed περὶ τοῦ Ἀββᾶ Ἰσὰακ τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου τῶν Κελλίων, but referring to several persons, cf. ''de Vit. Patr.'' lib. iii. col. 752, in Migne, lxxiii.; Tillem. Mém. viii. 650, 617, 648, and 813, n. vi.; Ceillier, viii. 174–177.

(ii) Isaacus, presbyter and abbat of the Nitrian desert, sometimes called Presbyter of the Cells (Κελλία N. of Nitria). The chief