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Section: 2A3 - Of Death or the Dead.

Number of quotes: 292

A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 88/89

Section: 2A3,3A2A

In the second episode Cyril tried to gain the upper hand. With the help of a cohort of five hundred monks brought from the desert monasteries south of the city (Nitrun), he fomented a revolt against Orestes. When the prefect’s chariot passed through the streets, the monks gathered crowds and accused him of being a “sacrificer” and a pagan (“Hellene”). Orestes, at first on the defensive, justified himself, declaring that he was already baptized (many Christians at that time were baptized late in life, after they considered themselves worthy of the sacrament). A particularly excited monk threw a stone at the prefect, hitting him in the head and causing blood to cover his face. That was too much. The fanatic was arrested and tortured to death by the prefectorial police. Once again the prefect and the bishop informed the emperor, while the body of the monk was exposed in a church as a martyr for the faith. Cyril gave him a new name, that of a saint. This recalls a pagan usage by which the dead were often hero-ized, becoming the object of a funerary cult, under another name. But the moderate Christians of Alexandria did not support their bishop, feeling that the victim had only paid for his crime, so the advantage this time was the prefect’s.

Unable to attack his adversary directly, Cyril---and this is the third episode---avenged himself on a figure from his entourage. Some time after the attempt on the prefect’s life---during Lent, when fasting and religious exaltation encouraged violence, as it did many times in the future---Hypatia was returning from a trip when fanatics dragged her from her carriage into one of the town’s main churches, which was the seat of the patriarch. This church, though it had been dedicated to Saint Michael, was still known by the name of the pagan sanctuary whose walls it reused: the Caesareum (center of the former imperial cult in Alexandria). {39} There Hypatia was stripped, stabbed with shards of pots and crocks, then hacked to pieces. The remains of her body were paraded around the streets of the town and finally burned---a repulsive custom that was neither a Christian innovation nor peculiar to Alexandria.

Quote ID: 49

Time Periods: 45

A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 125

Section: 1B,2A3

Christianized nobles preserved Roman traditions. Not only did Christianity tolerate their national pride, it offered them a new manifestation of it when Pope Leo I “the Great” (440 - 461), conferring on Rome the praise attributed to the Jewish people, glorified “a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city”

Quote ID: 60

Time Periods: 5

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 15

Section: 2A3,3A2A

The Dark Workings of Hatred

In January 897 CE, Stephen announced that a trial was to take place at the church of St John Lateran, the official church of the pope as Bishop of Rome. The defendant was Pope Formosus, now deceased for nine months, for whom Stephen had developed a fanatical hatred.

Quote ID: 79

Time Periods: ?

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 15/16

Section: 2A3,3A2A

…the posthumous trial of Pope Formosus some time in January 897 then nine-months dead.

The dead pope was not tried in his absence. At Agiltrude’s promptings, Formosus – or rather his rotting corpse, which was barely held together by his penitential hair shirt – was removed from his burial place and dressed in papal vestments. He was then carried into the court, where he was propped up on a throne.

Quote ID: 80

Time Periods: ?

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 17

Section: 2A3,3A2A

…Formosus was found guilty on all the charges against him. Punishment followed immediately.

….

At Stephen’s command, his corpse was stripped of its vestments and dressed instead in the clothes of an ordinary layman. The three fingers of Formosus’ right hand, which he had used to make papal blessings, were cut off.

…

Finally, Pope Stephen ordered that Formosus should be reburied in a common grave. This was done, but there was a grisly sequel. Formosus’ corpse was soon dug up, dragged through the streets of Rome, tied with weights and thrown into the River Tiber.

Quote ID: 81

Time Periods: 7

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 17

Section: 2A3,3A2A

…a monk who had remained faithful to the dead pope’s memory asked a group of fishermen to aid him in retrieving Formosus’ much misused remains. Afterwards, Formosus was buried yet again, this time in an ordinary graveyard. Like the rescue itself, the burial had to be kept secret.

Quote ID: 82

Time Periods: 7

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 20

Section: 2A3,3A2A

Ten years later, Sergius III, who was elected pope in 904 CE, dug up Pope Formosus and put him on trial all over again.

Quote ID: 83

Time Periods: 7

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 20

Section: 2A3,3A2A

This time, Sergius restored the guilty judgement and added some ghoulish touches of his own. He had Formosus’ corpse beheaded and cut off three more of his fingers before consigning him to the River Tiber once more.

Quote ID: 84

Time Periods: 7

A Dark History: The Popes
Brenda Ralph Lewis
Book ID: 5 Page: 20

Section: 2A3,3A2A

Not long afterwards, Formosus’ headless corpse surfaced again when it became entangled in a fisherman’s net.

Quote ID: 85

Time Periods: 7

A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages: Its Organization and Operation
Henry Charles Lea, LL. D
Book ID: 237 Page: 8

Section: 2A3

At the commencement of the tenth century, as the bishop reached each parish in his visitation, the whole body of the people was assembled in a local synod. From among these he selected seven men of mature age and approved integrity who were then sworn on relics to reveal without fear or favor whatever they might know or hear, then or subsequently, of any offence requiring investigation.

Quote ID: 5929

Time Periods: 7

Ancient Roman Statutes: A Translation with Introduction,Commentary, Glossary and Index
Allen Chester Johnson, Paul Robinson Coleman-Norton, Frank Card Bourne
Book ID: 15 Page: 12

Section: 2A3

Table X. Sacred Law, 1. A dead person shall not be buried or burned in the city. (104)

Quote ID: 247

Time Periods: 04

Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii A Day
Philip Matyszak
Book ID: 17 Page: 19

Section: 2A3,2E3

It is illegal to bury corpses within the sacred city of Rome itself, though the privilege may be granted to an extremely distinguished individual. Only Rome’s great Valerian family, Vestal Virgins and the Caesars themselves have this as a right, and the Valerians choose not to exercise it.

Quote ID: 345

Time Periods: 3

Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii A Day
Philip Matyszak
Book ID: 17 Page: 103/104

Section: 2A3

[February] This is the month of purification. During the week of the Parentalia, dead parents are remembered. Temples are closed, and no marriages take place. Little groups gather in cemeteries with jugs of wine and milk, sharing meals with the dead. The festival ends with all the family gathering for a huge family reunion and a slap-up meal. The Parentalia coincides with the Lupercalia, a rite so old that no one really understands the point of it.

Quote ID: 350

Time Periods: 34

Ancient Rome: In The Light Of Recent Discoveries (1888)
Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani
Book ID: 18 Page: 141

Section: 2A3,2C

The highest distinction conferred upon the Vestals was the right of interment within the walls of the city.

Quote ID: 353

Time Periods: 01234

Ancilla To the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A complete translation of the Fragments in Diels
Kathleen Freeman
Book ID: 19 Page: 31

Section: 2A3

96. Corpses are more worthy to be thrown out than dung.

Quote ID: 364

Time Periods: 0

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 18

Section: 2A3

Some elements of the social matrix are being adapted by the great tradition.

Example: the Greco-Roman meal for the dead became the feast of the martyrs.

Quote ID: 448

Time Periods: 4

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 202

Section: 2A3

…in 64 C.E. there was no interest in martyrs.

Quote ID: 458

Time Periods: 1

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 248

Section: 2A3

Let everyone in harmony who understands this pray for Abercius.

Pastor John’s note: prayers for the dead

Quote ID: 467

Time Periods: 23

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 249

Section: 2A3

The date of the Alexander epitaph almost certainly forces this inscription back to the beginning of the third century or earlier.

Quote ID: 468

Time Periods: 23

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 251/258

Section: 2A3

Styger has assembled all the graffiti found on the walls of the triclia under S. Sebastiano. They were scribbled there by Christians who came to celebrate the death date of family members and friends, as well as the presence of the two martyrs Peter and Paul. The prayers often call upon assistance of Peter and Paul.

Pastor John notes: John’s note: funeral inscriptions. Note the prayers to dead saints

. . . .

Inscription N

A.….

Paul and Peter pray

for Victor.

D….

Peter and

Paul pro-

tect

[your] servants;

holy

Spirits, protect

a refrigerium

F….

Paul and Peter

pray for Nativus

always.

G….

Paul, Peter keep in

mind Sozomenus,

and you who peruse (this).

H….

Peter and Paul

come to the aid of Primitivos,

a sinner.

I….

Our Lord,

send me

(one) of the martyrs

…Ilucunisio

J….

Paul and Peter

in mind have us

all.

M….

Peter and Paul

keep us in mind

N….

Peter and Paul keep in mind

Primus and Prima his wife

and Saturnina the wife of his first son (XP)

and Victorinus his father in Christ

always forever and….

. . . .

If the date of graffito L should be established as A.D. 260, then we have a minimum period of use from 260 to 320. In our discussion of S. Sebastiano (see pp. 180-189), we set the dates 250 to 345 as the likely maximum dates of usage for the triclia.

More than any other evidence, these graffiti document the fact of and characteristics of a large cult of the dead in early Christianity. Since the discovery of the triclia, historians have been more observant of and attuned toward the practices of the local Christian. In the representative graffiti we see that a meal was eaten either with (I) or for (C) the special dead. Meals (refrigeria) obviously were eaten for and with the family dead (Parthenius in E and Celerinus in L). Whether such meals always included Peter and Paul cannot be easily determined, but they often did (K). In addition to the meals, the celebrants of the Agape left us copies of their prayers. In these they asked Peter and Paul to pray for the family dead (A, F, M), or more often to “keep in mind” the dead (B, G, K, M, N,), and those holding the refrigerium (J). There were other prayers. In D they asked Peter and Paul, holy spirits, to protect them. In H Primitivos asked for them to aid him, for he was a sinner. Presumably the celebrants in both these cases have offered a refrigerium for Peter and Paul rather than the family dead.

The assumption that the presence or daemon (psyche) of the special dead remained near the place of burial ran strongly through the Greco-Roman world. This presence served not only as a rallying point for community formation (eating and praying with each other and extended families), but also as a means of intervention with the deity. The graffiti on the walls of the triclia and the spring point to a religious perception popular throughout the Greco-Roman culture that was adapted to Christian special dead and possibly Christian liturgical language.

Quote ID: 469

Time Periods: 34

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 298

Section: 2A3

Two other observations are important: from 180 to 400 artistic analogies of self-giving, suffering, sacrifice, or incarnation are totally missing. The suffering Christ on a cross first appeared in the fifth century, and then not very convincingly.

Quote ID: 479

Time Periods: 2345

Ante-Pacem Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
Graydon F. Snyder
Book ID: 25 Page: 301

Section: 2A3

We have seen that the Agape—likely based on the Feeding of the Five Thousand, but derived, in practice, from the Greco-Roman meal for the dead––was eaten in cemeterial situations. It appears in cemetery art as an actual meal. Structures for its celebration have been found in martyria, covered cemeteries, and the catacombs. Its symbols—fish, bread and wine—pervade all of early Christian symbolism and art. Despite the basic nature of this meal, there is no clear reason to suppose it was practiced outside the cemetery situation, just as there is no way to determine by archaeology the nature of any meal in the house church. From the literature one would suppose the ἀνάμνησις eucharist was celebrated in the house church.

Quote ID: 482

Time Periods: 234

Appian Way: Ghost Road, Queen of Roads, The
Robert A. Kaster
Book ID: 335 Page: 33

Section: 2A3

Ordinarily, no person could be buried inside the pomerium, above all because the dead were so problematic, in so many ways. They were, first of all, a source of pollution, not in a physical or environmental sense, but in a religious sense. A dead body was “matter out of place,” as one famous definition of pollution puts it, and unfit to occupy the same space as the living and the gods above: corpses belonged to the gods below. Even handling the dead made a person ritually unclean and a source of pollution in his own right. In Roman towns the men who prepared dead bodies for their final disposition were themselves barred from living in town, and their civic status suffered from various official disabilities, like being disqualified from serving on the town council or holding public office.

Quote ID: 7832

Time Periods: 0

Appian Way: Ghost Road, Queen of Roads, The
Robert A. Kaster
Book ID: 335 Page: 51

Section: 2A3

…the ninth century. That is when most of the remains of the saints and martyrs were moved inside the city, and the Appia took another step, a big one, on the way to neglect and decline.

Quote ID: 7833

Time Periods: ?

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 440

Section: 2A3

. . . this, I say, is man’s real death, when souls which know not God shall {4} be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging fire, into which certain fiercely cruel beings shall {4} cast them, who were unknown {5} before Christ, and brought to light only by His wisdom.

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, II.14.

Quote ID: 9466

Time Periods: 347

Arnobius, ANF Vol. 6, Fathers of the Third Century
Edited by Alexander Roberts
Book ID: 659 Page: 508

Section: 2A3

What can you say as to this, that it is attested by the writings of authors, that many of these temples which have been raised with golden domes and lofty roofs cover bones and ashes, and are sepulchers of the dead? Is it not plain and manifest, either that you worship dead men for immortal gods, or that an inexpiable affront is cast upon the deities, whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the dead?

PJ footnote reference: Arnobius, Against the Heathen, VI.6.

Quote ID: 9478

Time Periods: 34

Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: 177

Section: 2A3,2E3,3A3A

The legal difficulty remained, at least in theory. Under Roman law, temples and their sites were res sacrae, consecrated to the gods by the authority of the Roman people, by a law or a decree of the senate; but the “houses” of the church were not temples. Tombs and cemeteries were res religiosae, consecrated to the gods below (dis Manibus) by legal burials made by persons competent to make them. Christian cemeteries could not be dedicated to the dii Manes.{29}

[Footnote 29] Cf. M. Kaser, Das romische Privatrecht I (Munich, 1959), 105-7, 175-76.

In 321 Constantine insisted that property could be left by will to “the most holy and venerable council [concilium] of the Catholic church,” presumably with individual churches in view.{30}

[Footnote 30] Cod. Theod. 16, 2, 4; cf, Kaser, op cit., 348; H. Dorries, Das Selbstzeugnis Kaiser Konstantins (Gottingen, 1954)m 183.

Quote ID: 646

Time Periods: 14

Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World
Peter Brown
Book ID: 35 Page: 71

Section: 2A3

It was barely possible to discriminate between holiness and illusion. In the 430s, a monk appeared in Carthage. He applied to the sick, oil poured over the bone of a martyr.

Quote ID: 721

Time Periods: 5

Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 663

Section: 2E1,2A3

Apparently by his commission she went to Jerusalem, and leveled to the ground the scandalous Temple of Aphrodite that had been built, it was said, over the Saviour’s tomb. According to Eusebius the Holy Sepulcher thereupon came to light, with the very cross to which Christ had died. Constantine ordered a Church of the Holy Sepulcher to be built over the tomb, and the revered relics were preserved in a special shrine. As in classical days the pagan world had cherished and adored the relics of the Trojan War, and even Rome had boasted the Palladium of Troy’s Athene, so now the Christian world, changing its surface and renewing its essence in the immemorial manner of human life, began to collect and worship relics of Christ and the saints. Helena raised a chapel over the traditional site of Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem, modestly served the nuns who ministered there, and then returned to Constantinople to die in the arms of her son.

Quote ID: 953

Time Periods: 4

Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 96

Section: 2A3

“Before leaving Alexandria, Septimius visited the tomb of Alexander the Great, its founder. Augustus had done the same, touching the face, and, it was said, breaking off a bit of the nose. Septimius --and this pre-Christian veneration of relics is not without interest--entered the monument, took away, as was his custom, any liturgical books which he thought might contain arcane lore, and then had the tomb sealed up, that he might be the last ever to view the features of so great a man.”

Quote ID: 997

Time Periods: 023

Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 110

Section: 2A3,4B

the catacombs were not “secret meeting places”. They were very public places, far outside the city walls, no one being able to get to them without being seen by the guards.

PJ: Clubs

Quote ID: 1001

Time Periods: 0123

Catechism Of The Catholic Church
Pope John Paul II
Book ID: 48 Page: 291

Section: 2A3,2A5

The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.{604} The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:{605}

As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.{606}

This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in Sacred Scripture: “Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”{607} From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God.{608} The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead….

Quote ID: 8465

Time Periods: 012

Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 144

Section: 2E1,3A2A,2A3

Horses and men grew impatient. A bishop from the Pyrenees grabbed the relic from Fulk’s hands and gave a collective blessing to the assembly, assuring that those who had died in battle would go directly to heaven.

Quote ID: 6587

Time Periods: 7

Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 199/200

Section: 2A3,3A2A

When pressed, as ever, to name names, the craftier credentes gave a long list of the deceased, thereby fulfilling their obligation to finger as many people as possible while sparing the living the perils of punishment.

The inquisitors had an answer to this tactic. They dug up and burned the dead. To the stupefaction of friends and family, cemeteries were turned upside down and decomposing corpses carted through the streets to the burning ground as priests cried, “Qui aytal fara, aytal pendra” (Whoso does the like, will suffer a like fate). These macabre bonfires were just the beginning. If the flaming cadaver had been notorious for lodging a Perfect, his house was razed, regardless of who happened to be occupying it.

Quote ID: 6610

Time Periods: 7

Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 200

Section: 2A3,3A2A

The Dominicans were hated. In Albi, the inquisitor Arnold Cathala was beaten to within an inch of his life when he began disinterring bodies.

Quote ID: 6611

Time Periods: 7

Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 202

Section: 2A3,3A2A

Seila and Arnald wasted no time in making enemies. On receiving their papal commission in 1233, they had immediately targeted one of the most prominent Perfect in Toulouse, Vigoros of Bacone. Before his many allies and friends could rally to his defense, Vigoros was tried, convicted, and burned. There followed an unseemly two-year binge of body exhuming, coupled with sweeping imprisonments. To do the actual physical work of arresting, jailing, and executing, the two friars had to force the secular authority of Toulouse to do their bidding, by threatening prosecution of all who dared defy them. Refusing to obey the Inquisition was, according to Rome, as much a spiritual crime as heresy. Therefore it fell within the jurisdiction of Church, not secular courts. The successful inquisitor used the full panoply of clerical intimidation - threat of excommunication, interdict, dispossession - to obtain the armed men necessary to do his job.

Quote ID: 6615

Time Periods: 7

Cathars: Perfect Heresy, The
Stephen O’Shea
Book ID: 261 Page: 277

Section: 2E1,2A3

A lot of relics came on the market following the crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204; thus some of the objects listed...

….

For example, Enrico Dandolo, the wily old doge of Venice, brought back from Constantinople the lions that stand in front of St. Mark’s, as well as a piece of the True Cross, the arm of St. George, a vial of Christ’s blood, and a chunk of John the Baptist’s head (source: Marc Kaplan, “Le sac de Constantinople,” in Les Croisades, ed. R. Delort).

Quote ID: 6632

Time Periods: 7

Catholic FAQ: Purgatory, The
http://www.newadvent.org/faq/faq050.htm
Book ID: 308 Page: 1

Section: 2A3

I. I was told that devout Jews believe in purgatory. Is this true?

The practice of praying for the dead has been part of the Jewish faith since before Christ. Remember that 2 Maccabees 12:39-46, on which Catholics base their observance of this practice, show that, a century and a half before Christ, prayer for the dead was taken for granted.

Quote ID: 7544

Time Periods: 2

Celtic Sacred Landscapes
Nigel Pennick
Book ID: 51 Page: 31

Section: 2A3

Relic-takers were also the bane of St Craebhnat’s Tree at Killura. Irish seamen and emigrants took pieces of the tree in the belief that anyone who carried a piece could not drown. During the great emigrations of the mid-nineteenth century the tree was torn apart and is no more. (Section called The Tree of Inspiration)

Quote ID: 1133

Time Periods: 7

Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard
Edited and Translated by: Paul Edward Dutton
Book ID: 52 Page: 133/134

Section: 2A3

7 (Hampe 47). To Count Poppo 828-840

Einhard [wishes] salvation in the Lord to a magnificent, honorable, and illustrious man, the gracious Count Poppo.

Two poor people have fled to the church of Christ’s blessed martyrs, Marcellinus and Peter [in Seligenstadt], and have confessed that they are guilty. In your presence they were found guilty of robbery, which they committed when they stole wild animals in the lord’s forest. They have already paid of the fine, and should still pay the rest. But they claim that they do not have the means to pay [at present] because of their poverty. Therefore, I beg your Kindness to consider sparing them, as far as it is possible, out of love for the martyrs of Christ, to whom they fled, so that they may not be completely ruined by a crime of this kind, but rather may realize that, in your eyes, it helped them that they fled to the tombs of the holy martyrs.

I hope that you may always prosper in the Lord.

Quote ID: 1157

Time Periods: 7

Christian Inscriptions
H.P.V. Nunn
Book ID: 299 Page: 33

Section: 2A3

This inscription was set up in the crypt behind the present Church of St. Sebastian, formerly called the Basilica of the Apostles, on the Appian Way, to which the bodies of SS. Peter and Paul were removed from their tombs on the Vatican and the Ostian Way in 258, to preserve from desecration during the persecution of Valerian.

Quote ID: 7530

Time Periods: 3

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 45

Section: 2A3,3A2A

Perhaps, therefore, it was inevitable that legislation aimed at first at sacrifices conducted by high personages in the name of whole communities should be broadened intentionally to include those more ordinary folk and more ordinary acts that Libanius declared innocent. “It shall in no wise be permitted to hold convivial banquets in honor of sacrilegious rites in such funereal places as temples, honoring not the living but only “dead” gods, or to celebrate any solemn ceremony. We grant to bishops of such places the right to use ecclesiastical power to prohibit such practices,” and provincial governors shall second them without excuse or delay.

Quote ID: 1288

Time Periods: 45

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 91

Section: 2A3,2E6

Satanic agents were to be seen as the cause not only of wars and rebellions, persecution and heresy, storms at sea and earthquakes on land, but of a host of minor or major personal afflictions. So, in consequence, Christians were forever crossing themselves, whatever new action they set about, and painted crosses on their foreheads, too, from Tertullian’s day forward, responding to their leaders’ urging them to do so. It would protect them against all evil, so said Lactantius.{43}

Quote ID: 1296

Time Periods: 234

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 95

Section: 2A3

Fuller description is given to the entry of a water demon into a local youth who is rendered insensible by the invasion and is carried to a shrine which contains certain relics of Protasius and Gervasius. There the demon, driven out of his victim by the hymns of the lady who owns the land, seizes the alter “with a terrifying roar, unable to move, as if chained or nailed there, and confesses with a great howl” (like the demon that Ambrose on another occasion exorcized before the eyes of his whole congregation) “just where, when, and how he had entered the youth.” As he leaves, he pulls out one eye of the youth, but, replaced, it is as good as ever.

Quote ID: 1300

Time Periods: 4

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 103

Section: 2A3

A generation earlier, an eastern bishop addressing his flock on the feast day of a martyr asked them, “What offering shall we bring to the martyr in repayment, what gift in thanks? . . . Let us, please, dance to him in our usual way.”

Quote ID: 1311

Time Periods: 345

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 109

Section: 2A3

Christian burials were protected with the usual old invocations of divine punishment upon any person disturbing them; the stone was occasionally inscribed with the usual old formula at the top, “To the gods and the ghosts of the departed,” d(is) m(anibus); and the disposal of the body by cremation only slowly gave way to inhumation, by a change of custom which took place anyway in the non-Christian population as well, so that its origin is hard to establish and the religious loyalty of the deceased is likewise hard to establish, at least from archeological data.

Quote ID: 1313

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 111

Section: 2A3

The identical nature of the Christian and non-Christian cult of the dead appears not only in its physical details themselves, all of those just reviewed being of the third century and so at the earliest end of the chain of information we possess; but they are clear as well in the impossibility, sometimes, of determining which religion is represented by a given piece of evidence: for example, in the line of a third-century epitaph from Mauretania, where the dedicants recall how “We decided we would add on this stone table,” mensa, to their mother’s grave.

....

Or it may equally be said: for hundreds of years, the pagan cult of the dead was a common part of Christianity.{25}

Pastor John’s Note: look up

Quote ID: 1314

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 113

Section: 2A3

In Rome, the focus of cult was naturally on Paul and Peter, at various times and points in and about the city. The apostles were the object of pilgrimage recorded in hundreds of graffiti, the largest number under the present-day San Sebastiano. Here as elsewhere, the faithful acquitted themselves of vows to provide the martyrs with the refreshment of a banquet in return for their favor. One memorial was pierced to receive the pouring in of wine, while the pair together under San Sebastiano were equipped with a handy dining area and benches.{31}

There is nothing to distinguish the physical arrangements for martyr cult from all those that so

commonly surrounded the unsanctified dead. The latter setting indeed proves useful to explain

the former.

2A1

Quote ID: 1315

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 113/114

Section: 2A3

It is convenient to begin a more detailed account around the turn of the fifth century, with the verses of Paulinus, bishop of Nola. It was he who there put Saint Felix on the map, so to speak, by advertising and richly patronizing the martyr’s tomb; and since his acquaintance numbered the very most cultivated, the very richest of the western empire, to whom his accounts were well known, as he wished, clearly he is describing nothing that he thought odd or shameful. He is therefore a good witness for the practices of his day. His building program at the shrine included a cleared space (already mentioned, above at p. 11) enfolding a porticoed court decorated with frescoes showing appropriate religious scenes. For the walls of the chapel in which lay the tomb, he commissioned inscriptions to describe and glorify the martyr; on other walls he dedicated the shavings of his youthful beard, and he notes the testimonials on display, hung up by grateful ex-sufferers.{32} The slab over the tomb itself was pierced, the burial filled with aromatic unguents by the faithful; also with wine, “for they,” the worshipers though not Paulinus, “believe, wrongly, that the saints delight in having their tombs bathed in the fragrant wine.” They came with candles and torches, bringing votive incense, silver, and rich textiles. On festival days, the banquets of slaughtered animals as offerings which the local rich contributed, like those in temple precincts of yore, drew the poor to share in them; there was singing, of course, and for the laetitia everyone stayed up all night.{33} It is a picture of worship even to its slightest points of action and belief recognizable by Pliny or his like, were he only supplied with one necessary clue: that graveside cult and some admixture of temple cult could flow together.

Quote ID: 1316

Time Periods: 5

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 115

Section: 2A3

Well, such was indeed the pagan view of the rewards in refrigeration, as was acknowledged by bishops quoted above, indeed by Augustine himself in comparing the offerings to “a sort of parentalia, very much the same as those of pagan superstition”; and various texts have been quoted also to show that the same hopes of conciliation prevailed among most Christians in the act of martyr cult. More evidence will appear a little later.{39} Truly, if no conciliation, what could possibly have been the purpose of pouring a little wine into a tomb, inhabited, so everyone said, by a superhuman being (though not to be called a god!)? By what claim might you ask such a being to bear you in mind? What point to all the toasts, what point to the invitation that he should “Enjoy the party”? What could be the point of all the other offerings? Augustine, however, avoids these challenges by saying only what may well have been the case: nobody within the clergy had ever stood at an altar proclaiming it to be a saint’s and there made any offering.

2A1

Quote ID: 1318

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 115/116

Section: 2A3

About the same time that Augustine was obliged to defend the boundaries around martyr cult, so was Jerome.{40} “Why,” he was asked by a certain Vigilantius, speaking perhaps from experiences in the west but most recently from a visit to the Holy Land as well, “why must you honor with such great honor, or rather, adore” the martyr in his tomb? And he goes on to say, “We see something close to a pagan rite brought into the church in the guise of religion: in full daylight, a mountain of candles lit,” and so forth. To which Jerome replies, specifically, that “we do not light candles, as you vainly and untruly allege, in the daytime but only to lessen the darkness of the night,” in vigils (which he must have known was by no means the case). “And bear in mind,” he goes on, “that we are not born Christians, but re-born; and because we once worshiped idols, are we now not to worship God?—lest we appear to venerate him with the same honors accorded to idols?” So Vigilantius’ accusation must be borne, after all. Yet “what used to be done for idols, and is therefore detestable, is done for martyrs, and on that account is acceptable.” His defense at the center of it sounds just like Augustine’s: pagan usages had inevitably entered the church in the past, inevitably they still did so and could not be excluded, because converts could not be expected to leave all of their paganism behind them.

Quote ID: 1319

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 120

Section: 2A3

The country people especially were forever finding another martyr and setting up an altar on or by the burial.{51} Everyone, meaning rustic and urban nobodies alike, unbelievable because unauthorized enthusiasts, stole and then advertised other people’s martyrs, i.e. relics, in Egypt of the 360s; there, again, some decades later, showed themselves no better than “drunk with false knowledge, who say, The martyrs have appeared to us and told us where their bones lay”; provoked an imperial decree from the eastern capital in the 380s to control the marketing of relics; from about the same date on, accounted for a strange novelty in France that amounted to fraud in the invention of martyrs, so it was charged; induced in Africa a resolution from the assembled bishops in 401 “that altars set up here and there in the countryside and along roads as if in memory of martyrs, in which it is shown that no body or relics of martyrs have been deposited, shall be overthrown, though, if this is impossible because of demonstrations by the people, at least the population should be admonished”

Pastor John’s Note: everyone was eager to advance the cult!

Quote ID: 1320

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 120

Section: 2A3

The sequence of incidents and testimonies to such spontaneous and unregulated enthusiasm may, more or less arbitrarily, end with a certain rascal (so seen by the Roman council of 745), Aldebert, who claimed to have been visited by nothing less than an angel in a dream and vouchsafed relics by which he could obtain all sorts of wonders from God.{52}

Quote ID: 1321

Time Periods: 7

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 120

Section: 2A3

Beyond all or any of this surge of religious energy, Lucius it was who saw the meaning that lay in a match of dates: the abrupt rise in martyr cult began in the generation preceding Julian, that is, starting in the latter years of Constantine, just when the numbers of converts began immensely to increase as well.{53} Here was more than coincidence. The two facts must be bound together as cause and effect. Converts evidently needed what they had put away, or something very like it.

....

For, by their own act, they found themselves without gods. A strange way to put it.

2A1

Quote ID: 1322

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 121

Section: 2A3

Conversion and the repudiation of their old patrons and rescuers among the divine ranks had left an emptiness, a loneliness in times of trouble, not comfortably to be filled by the Power preached from urban pulpits. We find Augustine again and again contesting his congregation’s doubts whether God should be bothered about affairs of everyday life.{54}

Quote ID: 1323

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 121

Section: 2A3

In a very similar strain, a generation earlier, Basil had confronted his people with their inclination, when some minor problem or anxiety beset them, to turn to daemones.{55} But there was a Christian answer: sanctified martyrs were the answer. If we happen to know of no miracle wrought by any of them for, with, on, or among hens, yet in Italy at Nola, it was Saint Felix who cured one’s larger animals, Felix who found the runaways; in Bithynia, Saint Hypatius, in Cilicia, Saint Thecla; in France, Martin who exorcised a demon from a mad cow or Fides (Foy) who would resurrect one’s mule. Perhaps we may add Saint Germanus, though in his living self, not from the tomb, who almost met Augustine’s challenge: ministering not to a hen but to a rooster which had somehow lost its cock-a-doodle-doo.{56}

2A1

Quote ID: 1325

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 121

Section: 2A3

Absent the doctors of today, hospitals, clinics, drugstores, or any accepted pharmacopoeia, what else would one expect them to do? In this realm of difficulty, Christians were well served in Basil’s and Augustine’s day by the powers from the tomb.{57} The principal business of the martyrs, by far, then as for a thousand years to come, was to restore fertility, straighten limbs, clear the sight, or untwist the mind. Like Asclepieia, like sacred springs presided over by their healing deities, the martyria served as hospitals to urban and rural masses alike—even as the resort of the wealthiest, once they learned the limits of their medicos.

Quote ID: 1326

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 122

Section: 2A3

The need for divine help, as the traditional was banished by mission and persecution together, was no doubt enormous; to supply it, the Christian God might seem very distant; but the beneficence of the sanctified dead was close and comfortable. The religious world of antiquity thus retained or resumed its traditional character “under new management.”

Quote ID: 1327

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 122

Section: 2A3

However, the negative means of demonstration should be considered as well: the fact that benefits sought not from saints but directly from God are very rare (I recall seeing only one or two). He assured the greatest benefit of all, salvation from eternal torture; favors merely in this life and on this earth were more naturally in the gift of the saints, thanks to whose great numbers and comforting nearness, the loss of the old gods could be borne.

Quote ID: 1328

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 123

Section: 2A3

He goes on to remind his listeners of the source of that power, God not the saints; and Augustine and other bishops and church writers do the same very insistently.{60} In vain, so we must suspect, much or most of the time.

Pastor John’s Note: Theodoret

Quote ID: 1329

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 123

Section: 2A3

Even the educated of the church often expressed themselves in a way that left out God entirely, in the working of miracles, or came to terms with the divinity in saints: John of Damascus, for one, insisting that they were “truly gods.”{61}

Quote ID: 1330

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 123

Section: 2A3

Of an infinite number of illustrations, a bronze stamp may be instanced, to be used in the manufacture of clay lamps, inscribed with words, “Receive, O Saint, the incense, and heal all,” where the holy Symeon is addressed, and a picture drawn of the suppliant with censer in hand; or the sixth- and seventh-century lots may serve, surviving on papyri from Antinoe and Oxyrhynchus and inquiring about people’s individual concerns from the “all-conquering God of Saint Philoxenus” or “of Saint Kollouthos”; but sometimes, instead, the inquiry addresses the saint unassisted.{62}

Quote ID: 1331

Time Periods: 56

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 123

Section: 2A3

Before as after Vigilantius and Faustus, there were even openly expressed perceptions that conflicted with the sole divinity of God; for, says Augustine, “I know many people are worshipers of tombs and painted representations.” He uses a word, adoratores, which in his lexicon carries a meaning that reserves it for address to God alone.

Quote ID: 1332

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 123/124

Section: 2A3

First, Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, presiding in 429 over the resurrection of two martyrs’ remains to prominence and veneration at a site, Menuthis, only a morning’s walk from his own great city. Thus Saints John and Cyrus displaced a long-famous healing shrine dedicated to Isis. Cyril delivered three celebratory orations on the event, explaining that “these districts were in need of medical services from God,” and, in that need, “those who had no martyr shrine went off to other i.e., Isis’ places, and, being Christians, thus went astray; so, out of necessity, for this reason we sought out the remains of holy martyrs.”

Quote ID: 1333

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 124

Section: 2A3

What he makes plain as his strategy finds an echo in Pope Gregory’s directive for the conversion of the Angles, “that the shrines should not be destroyed but only the idols themselves. Let it be done with holy water sprinkled in those same shrines and let altars be built and relics be placed there so that the Angles have to change from the worship of the daemones to that of the true God”; and thus, with the shrine intact, “the people will flock in their wonted way to the places they are used to.”{65}

Quote ID: 1334

Time Periods: 456

Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 57 Page: 124

Section: 2A3

There is no saying if the feelings of reverence and love toward the divine beings at the center of the traditional ritual inspired the celebrants of the Christian imitation, too, since we lack the same sort of revealing texts from individual worshipers of Christian times that have survived from the pagan; but there is no reason to suppose that much was lost, so to speak, in translation. In other respects the Christian vigils seem to have been nearly identical with the pagan. Too nearly: they were sometimes condemned as immoral by church authorities, as has been seen; yet the authorities also tolerated them, having little choice, or, like the pope, actually instituted them.

Quote ID: 1335

Time Periods: 456