A REMARKABLE phenomenon of the third century was the great number of conversions which took place amongst the Roman soldiers whose duty it was to carry out the cruel orders of the authorities with regard to the Christians. Of these soldiers, the most widely celebrated were Sebastian, Quintin, Hippolytus, Romanus, and Maurice, all of whom, after refusing to injure their fellow-believers, were martyred for their new faith.
St. Sebastian was born at Narbo Martins, the present Narbonne, but he was of Italian parentage, and is said to have been converted to Christianity before he entered the army. Through the influence of his father, he was early made captain of a company of the famous Praetorian Guards, whose duty it was to be always about the person of the Emperor. The fact that Sebastian was a Christian was first revealed to the heathen authorities by his conduct at the martyrdom of two young men named Marcus and Marcellinus, with whom he had long been intimate. It is said that he had secretly visited them in prison, and that his exhortations had had much to do with their steadfastness at their trial. When they were led forth to die, already weakened by much torture, they showed signs of yielding to their fear of death; but Sebastian, leaving the ranks of the Guards, hastened to them, entreating them not to lose the crown of martyrdom at the last moment. The result of this appeal was indeed extraordinary. Not only did the condemned men take heart again, but the rest of the Praetorians on duty were converted on the spot, the executioners followed suit, and Marcus and Marcellinus were released. The respite, however, was short. The Emperor, enraged at the account given to him of the scene, condemned nearly all the actors in it to death. Marcus and Marcellinus were nailed to a post and shot to death with arrows; several of the Guards were tortured in various ways and finally drowned, whilst Sebastian, whom Diocletian would fain have saved, for he loved him as a son, was promised his life if he would recant.
A very touching scene is said to have taken place between the Emperor and the rebellious young officer, the former examining the culprit himself, and saying: ‘Why hast thou thus rebelled against me, who honored thee above all thy comrades?’ To which the Saint replied: ‘O Caesar, I have ever been true to thee in all due service, and I have even prayed to Jesus Christ for thy prosperity, but I cannot worship thy gods, who are but idols of wood and stone.’ Seeing that there was no hope of winning back the traitor, as he considered him, Diocletian then condemned Sebastian to be bound to a stake and shot to death with arrows, adding the unusual order, a touching token of the affection he still felt for the culprit, that an inscription should be fastened to the stake to the effect that the punishment was for being a Christian, not for any military fault.
The sentence was carried out in the presence of immense crowds, the young Saint showing the greatest heroism; and after the executioners had simply riddled his body with arrows, they left him for dead. That same night the Christians came to carry away and bury the body, led by a widow named Irene, who, as she examined the wounds, suddenly cried out that the victim still breathed. St. Sebastian was therefore carried to her home, and there he was cared for till he recovered. He was now urged by his friends to leave Rome, for they knew that he was not likely to escape a second time; but he refused, for to him it had been a terrible disappointment to have lost the martyr’s crown at the last moment. As soon as he could walk, therefore, he went to the gate of the Emperor’s palace, and there waited till his old friend came out, when he cried aloud to him for mercy on the Christians condemned to torture.
Diocletian recognized him at once, and asked: ‘Art thou Sebastian whom I condemned to death?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply, ‘I am he, whom God Himself has delivered out of thy hands, that I may plead once more for His servants and bear witness to Christ the Lord.’ Not unnaturally enraged at this public defiance, the Emperor ordered the bold speaker to be seized and beaten to death with clubs. The order was carried out, the executioners taking care this time that there should be no mistake about the death.
When life was quite extinct the body was thrown into the great sewer known as the Cloaca Maxima, whence it was removed later to the Catacomb of St. Calixtus by a Christian lady named Lucina, to whom, it is said, St. Sebastian himself appeared, begging her to give him Christian burial. A church named after the Saint was later built above his relics, which from very early times was one of the seven so-called Stationary Churches of Rome, and was rebuilt in the seventeenth century. The body was, however, translated in the ninth century to the Church of St. Medard at Soissons, and the shrine containing it was rifled in the sixteenth century by the Calvinists, who threw the bones into the river, whence they are said to have been recovered some fourteen years afterwards, and dispersed amongst various churches.
Although St. Sebastian was not actually shot to death by arrows, it is as a martyr at the stake that he is almost always represented in art, and he has become throughout Europe the patron Saint of archers and arquebusiers, as well as of dealers in old iron; it is suggested because, as an officer of the Praetorian Guard, it was his business to look after military equipments. He is also said to protect cattle from distemper and human beings from infectious diseases, a powder some learned authors supposed to have been attributed to him through an association in the popular mind between the pestilential arrows of Apollo alluded to in the ‘Iliad’ and the arrows aimed at the Saint. However that may be, it is certain that the young martyr was first applied to for aid against the plague in 680, for during a pestilence then raging in Rome it was revealed to a holy man that all that was needed to appease the wrath of Heaven was the erection of an altar to St. Sebastian in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli. The suggestion was, of course, at once carried out: there were no more deaths, the sick recovered, and the fame of the Saint spread throughout the whole of Europe, church after church being erected to him.
The memory of St. Sebastian’s intervention is preserved at Rome by a mosaic effigy near his altar in S. Pietro, beside which is a tablet telling the story of the plague and its cessation. In this effigy St. Sebastian is represented bearded, a manifest error, repeated later by Albert Dilrer and Pinturicchio in their various renderings of the martyr, all the legends respecting him agreeing in making him quite a young man scarcely out of boyhood. In course of time indeed he became the very ideal of adolescent beauty, and it has not been uncommon amongst the passionate and imaginative Southern races for young girls to fell in love with the image of St. Sebastian, as did Pygmalion with his own creation, Galatea.
St. Sebastian is very constantly introduced in devotional pictures, and is generally standing near the Virgin, pierced with many arrows, and gazing up to heaven with a rapt expression of ecstasy. To quote but a very few amongst the immense number of fine representations of him, either with other Saints or alone, may be mentioned as especially beautiful the painting by Sodoma in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, in which the martyr looks up with a face full of devotion and an angel hovers above, about to place a crown upon his head; the Odoni altar-piece by Crivelli in the National Gallery, London; the ‘Madonna and St. Sebastian,’ by Correggio, in the Dresden Gallery; the ‘Virgin in Glory,’ by Andrea del Sarto, in the Pitti Gallery, Florence; and that by Luini in the Santuario della Vergine, Saronno, in which, as is very often the case, St. Sebastian is the pendant to St. Roch. Very beautiful also is the figure of the favorite Saint in the bronze relief by Donatello in the Andre Collection, Paris, and the marble statue by Matteo Civitale in the Cathedral of Lucca, whilst the recumbent figure by Bernini beneath the high-altar of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, is a fine modem interpretation of the same theme.
The so-called ‘Martyrdom of St. Sebastian’ has perhaps been more often painted than that of any other Saint, although the young soldier did not actually die from the arrows with which he was pierced. Perhaps the greatest pictures of the class are the large oil-painting by Domenichino in S. Maria degli Angeli, Rom; that by Vandyck in the Munich Gallery; and that by Antonio Pollajuolo in the National Gallery, London. Scenes from the life of St. Sebastian are of rare occurrence, the interest of the so-called martyrdom having eclipsed that of every other subject ; but Paolo Veronese painted for the Church of S. Sebastiano at Venice the scene at the Execution of Marcus and Marcellinus, and the actual ‘Death in the Circus’ of St. Sebastian himself, and Vandyck, in a fine picture now at St. Petersburg, represented the Restoration to consciousness of the Martyr by the widow Irene.
St. Quintin was of noble birth, and held an important command in the Roman army when he became convinced of the truth of Christianity. He at once, it is said, deserted his post and fled secretly to Gaul, where he preached the Gospel with great success, especially at Samarobriva, the present Amiens, and in its neighborhood. Thrown into prison by order of the cruel Prefect, Rictius Varus, who had earned an evil notoriety by his zeal against the Christians, St. Quintin was rescued by an angel, only, however, to be seized again and put to death after horrible tortures. It is related that he was first fastened to a wooden chair by great bolts driven through his hands and knees, and he is thus represented in various mediaeval seals and in a wooden statuette in the possession of Arthur Forgeais, the learned author of the ‘ Plombs Histories du Seine/ As he failed to succumb to his sufferings St, Quintin was finally beheaded, and it is related that as his head fell his spirit was seen rising to heaven in the form of a white dove, whilst the voice of God Himself was heard bidding His faithful servant welcome. His body was thrown into the Somme; but it was recovered by his disciples and buried on the banks of the river, where it was discovered some fifty years later by a lady named Eusebia, together with the very nails used in the martyrdom of the Saint. A church was built to mark the spot, where the Cathedral now stands, and in the crypt are still preserved the relics of St. Quintin with those of two of his converts. Saints Victoricus and Gentianus, who with a companion named Fuscienus were martyred soon after their teacher.
St. Quintin is generally represented in the armor of a Roman officer, but sometimes, although he is not known to have been ordained, he wears the deacon’s robes. According to an account of his martyrdom, differing slightly from that given above, he was impaled on two iron spits, which met in his body in the form of a St. Andrew’s cross, and in some old representations of him he is holding in his hand his own heart marked with that sigil. Sometimes he has an iron spit or three nails in one hand, but the usual mode of hinting at his sufferings is by nails in his shoulders, his ears, or on the top of his head. The soldier-martyr is still much beloved in Picardy, and until quite recently all the children of Amiens learnt to read in what was called St. Quintin’s book.
The three Saints mentioned above in connection with St. Quintin were all of humble origin, but their memory is preserved in the village of Saintes, so named on account of their having suffered near it. St. Gentianus was an old peasant of Gaul who was converted by St. Quintin, whilst Saints Fuscienus and Victoricus, when are supposed to have joined the Roman soldier when he gave up his military post.
The three friends are venerated in Picardy under the name of Les Saints engeles, because their fete-day falls on December nth, and they are said to have been all three beheaded. Their legend is related in the Amiens Missal of 1520 and elsewhere, and is to the effect that they were all three beheaded, St. Gentianus, with whom the other two had lodged, being the first to suffer. Saints Fuscienus and Victoricus, when their heads were Struck off, took them up in their bands and walked with them to the house of St. Gentianus, who lay dead on the threshold awaiting them, as is quaintly represented on a sculptured stone still preserved in the Church of Saintes, of which a drawing is given by Dr. Rigolot in his ‘Monuments des Arts de Picardie.’ Beneath the ancient crypt of the Church of Saintes is a tomb adorned with quaint recumbent figures of the three Saints, with halos round their heads, and at their feet is a bas-relief representing their martyrdom, with the Prefect looking on from horseback, and in the distance Saints Fuscienus and Victoricus carrying their o^^n heads. On the portal of St. Firmin de Notre Dame at Amiens these two again appear holding their heads, with two other figures at their feet, possibly representing Rictius Varus and St. Gentianus. The choir of the same church formerly decorated with bas-reliefs, removed to make way for the present decorations, of the martyrdom of the Saints engeles, and outside the Collegiate Church of St. Quintin at Amiens there is a good statue of St. Victoricus. In a thirteenth-century Lectionary belonging to the Abbey of Corbie there is a well-executed miniature of the three martyrs, and in another MS. owned by the same community is a representation of St. Gentianus bending his head to receive the fatal blow, whilst bis companions look on, awaiting their turn.
There are no less than eight Saints of the name of Hippolytus venerated in the Roman Catholic Church, three of whom are said to have suffered martyrdom in the third century: Hippolytus, a young priest, who with several companions was martyred under Valerianus in Rome; the so-called Bishop Hippolytus, about whom next to nothing is known, but whose writings are greatly lauded by St. Jerome, and who is said to have suffered under Decius, with the more celebrated gaoler of St. Lawrence, the only Hippolytus of whom there are any noteworthy representations in art.
Converted and baptized by the doomed deacon in his prison, St. Hippolytus the gaoler was present at the terrible tragedy of his teacher’s death, and aided the other Christians at bis interment. On his return home he and his whole household, including his old nurse Concordia, were arrested and brought before the Prefect, charged with being converts to the persecuted faith. It is related that Concordia was the first to be condemned, and that she was scourged to death, St. Hippolytus rejoicing at her constancy. The rest of the party were then condemned to be beheaded, with the exception of the gaoler himself, who was reserved for a more terrible fate. When all he loved were dead he was offered his own life, now worse than worthless to him, if he would retract, and on his refusal, he was sentenced to be torn to pieces by wild horses, the judges cynically remarking that this would be a fitting end for one named after the Greek hero, who had suffered in the same way.
The victims are said to have all been buried outside the Porta Tiburtina, where they had met their fate, by a priest named Justin, and although much of the story is doubtless apocryphal, recent researches tend to prove that St. Hippolytus really was martyred in the way described above. In the Church of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura is preserved a pillar discovered by Count J. B. Rossi, on which is painted in alternate black and red lines a Latin inscription, of part of which the following is a rough translation: ‘This Temple holds the bodies of many Saints, to whom the suppliant loves to pray for aid. Here with Xistus, rest Laurentius, burned with fire; Stephen the first martyr; . . Hippolytus, bound to the necks of horses; near him his nurse, with all his kin, Romanus the soldier, Triphoma the maiden, etc.’
A fragment of another inscription, written by Pope Damasus for the tomb of the priest St. Hippolytus, was found in S. Giovanni in Laterano, and Pere Picolin, commenting on the evidence with regard to the priest and the gaoler in his Supplement to ‘Les Petits Bollandistes,’ comes to the conclusion that they were buried near each other, there having been a cemetery named after the former, to which the faithful flocked in large crowds long before the death of the latter. Prudentius, who in his turn visited the Catacomb of Hippolytus, speaks of having seen a painting above the tomb of the gaoler representing his death by the agency of wild horses; but he evidently confuses the martyr with the Bishop mentioned above.
The supposed relics of St. Hippolytus the gaoler were translated with great pomp from Rome to the Abbey of St. Denis, Paris, in the eighth century, and as a result the martyr is now almost as much venerated in France as in Italy. Throughout Europe he is the patron Saint of all who have anything to do with horses, and he is supposed to be able to cure the diseases of all animals.
St. Hippolytus the gaoler is often introduced in devotional pictures, as m one by Bonvicino, in the National Gallery, London, in which he stands opposite to St. Catherine of Alexandria at the foot of the Virgin ; he ranks in the Procession of Martyrs at Ravenna next to St. Lawrence and before St. Cyprian; and he appears, with a bunch of keys in his hands, with St Lawrence in various old mosaics, as in one in S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura. Scenes from his life are often given in stained-glass windows, as in one in the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette, Paris. Revolting as is the subject of his martyrdom, it is very constantly painted. There is a most unpleasing picture of it in the Cathedral of Bruges, wrongly ascribed to Hans Memlinc, and a less repulsive one by Subleyras, in the Louvre. In the Escorial, Madrid, dedicated to St. Lawrence, St. Hippolytus is represented burying the body of his master at night, and in many French churches other episodes of the brief career of the gaoler as a Christian are occasionally given.
Another Roman soldier converted by St. Lawrence just before his own death was St. Romanus, who was one of those chosen to see that the execution of the deacon was carried out. It is said that as Romanus was watching the terrible agony of the martyr, he saw an angel of entrancing beauty wiping away the sweat from the sufferer’s face. Convinced by this of the truth of Christianity, the young soldier begged St. Lawrence to baptize him then and there. The other guards allowed him to fetch water for the purpose, and the performance of the ceremony is an incident often introduced, especially in stained-glass windows, amongst scenes from the life of St. Lawrence. Others say that the baptism took place in the prison to which the martyr was carried back after the first day on the rack, and the St. Romanus was beheaded the same night outside the Porta Salaria, near to which his body was buried by the faithful priest Justin. It was taken some centuries later to Lucca, and now rests beneath the high altar of the Church of S. Romano in that city, in a tomb adorned with a fine recumbent statue of St. Romanus by Matteo Civitali.
St. Maurice, who commanded the celebrated Theban legion in the time of Diocletian and Maximianus, is said to have be^ of very high birth, and to have risen to the position he held in the army through many a gallant service rendered to the Empire. According to the quaint old legend respecting him, his legion, which numbered 6,666, were in course of time all converted to Christianity, and were allowed to practice their own religious rites unmolested, until one day, when they were halting on the banks of the Lake of Geneva, the Emperor ordered a great sacrifice to be offered to the gods. On hearing this Maurice and his Christian soldiers withdrew from the camp to what was then known as Agaunum, but is now named St. Maurice after the young martyr. The Emperor, enraged at this defiance of his orders, commanded that certain of the legion should be selected by lot for punishment, and those who drew the fatal numbers were put to death, some with the sword, others with arrows, whilst others were trampled under the feet of the cavalry. Maurice and his officers were themselves at last condemned, and when they were told they should live if they would obey the order to sacrifice, the leader answered on their behalf: ‘O Caesar, it is true that we are thy soldiers, but we are also the servants of the living God. To thee we owe military obedience, but we cannot renounce Him who is alike our Master and Creator. We will obey and follow thee in all things lawful, but in this matter we cannot yield.’ For this obstinacy all the officers were beheaded, and on that terrible day it is said that hundreds of gallant soldiers also laid down their lives for Christ, including one named Victor, who, though he did not belong to the doomed legion, happened to pass by after the tragedy, and refused to take part in the rejoicings of the heathen over the massacre. Henceforth, the Theban legion received amongst the Christians the name of Felix, or ‘happy,’ and those who had belonged to it are still greatly venerated, especially in Switzerland and Germany.
The actual scene of the martyrdom of the ‘Happy Legion’ is supposed to have been obliterated by a landslip, but the memory of the tragedy is preserved in the Abbey of St. Maurice, built at the mouth of the Rhone, where it enters Lake Leman. The House of Savoy also founded in honor of the leader the Order of St. Maurice, now merged in that of St. Lazarus, which retains the trefoil cross designed for the monks of St. Maurice by Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, who became Antipope under the name of Felix V. Certain of the fellow officers of St. Maurice, notably Saints Gereon, Secundus, Alexander, Cassius, and Antoninus, with the stranger soldier Victor, are greatly venerated in Northern Italy and Switzerland, appearing with or without their leader in many devotional pictures.
St. Maurice is generally represented, as in various engravings in the Cabinet des Estampes, Paris, and on the hilt of a crosier in the Abbey named after him, on horseback in the full armor of a Roman officer. When on foot he holds, as a rule, a banner bearing the red cross of the Sardinian Order of St. Maurice in one hand and a palm in the other. He appears sometimes in devotional pictures, as in Mantegna’s ‘Madonna della Vittoria,’ in the Louvre. The actual martyrdom of the Saint has not been very often represented, but in the Pitti Palace, Florence, there is a fine picture by Pontorno known as the ‘Martyrdom of the Theban Legion,’ in which some of the victims are seen dying on the cross. In the Uffizi Gallery is another rendering of the tragedy from the same hand, in which the martyrs, instead of submitting to their fate, are struggling with the executioners. In the Church of S. Maurizio, Milan, is a fresco of the Martyrdom of St. Maurice by Luini, and in the Munich Pinacoteca the refusal of the soldiers to sacrifice to idols is seen on one wing, and the beheading of St. Maurice and his companions on the other, of an altar-piece by Pieter van Mares.
The patron Saint of many French, German, and Swiss towns, St. Maurice is also supposed to give special attention to the interests of dyers and to be able to save his votaries from the gout. The memory of the gallant young officer and his fellow sufferers still lives in French and Italian military circles, and in 1857 a society, named after St. Maurice, was founded in France for rendering the last offices of the Church to soldiers on the battlefield.
Next to St. Maurice, the favorite member of the Happy Legion is St. Gereon, and in an altar-piece by Meister Stephan, of Cologne, now in the Cathedral of that city, he is introduced, with some of his companions, as a pendant to St. Ursula and her maidens; whilst in a painting by an unknown master in the St. Maurice Chapel, Nuremberg, he and his comrades are opposite to their leader and his officers.
Other soldiers who were privileged in the third century to join the noble army of martyrs were Saints Polyeuctus of Mitylene and Minias, or Miniato, of Florence. The former, a Roman officer of noble birth, was beheaded by order of the Governor of Armenia, whose daughter he had married, and is sometimes represented in art with Jesus standing beside him, for it is related that the Savior Himself, clad in shining raiment, appeared to him in his prison cell. The sword and palm are the usual attributes of St. Polyeuctus, who is immortalized in one of the tragedies of Corneille, and is supposed to be able to save his votaries from false swearing. In olden times there was a church dedicated to him at Constantinople, in which the most solemn oaths were taken, and the early French kings used to swear in his name to observe their treaties.
St. Minias was also a Roman officer, who was arrested at Florence on account of his faith and dragged before the Emperor Decius, then encamped outside that city. Refusing to recant, he was first thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheater, who would not touch him; plunged in a caldron of boiling oil, which did him no harm; riddled with arrows; and, finally, beheaded, an angel soothing him in all his sufferings. St. Minias, who is said to have been of princely birth, is often introduced in Italian pictures wearing the dress of a noble, with a crown of gold upon his head, and in his hand a spear or javelin, a lily, and a palm, all in allusion to his martyrdom. He is said to have walked across the Amo after his death, taking his head with him, and to have laid it down on the site of the fine church named after him in Florence, beneath the crypt of which his relics are supposed to be still preserved. In the apse of the choir is a thirteenth-century mosaic in, which St. Minias appears standing with the Virgin and St. John at the feet of the Savior.
At Pisa are specially honored two comrades who suffered together for Christ under Diocletian : St. Ephesus, an officer of the Roman army, and St. Potitus, a civilian of Cagliari, who, after the usual tortures, were both beheaded. The tragedy is said to have taken place in Sardinia, whither St. Ephesus was sent by Diocletian with orders to exterminate the Christians. The envoy was about to begin making arrests when Christ Himself appeared to him, telling him not to persecute His servants, and St. Ephesus therefore turned his weapons against the heathen, aided by some of his friends, including St. Potitus. The bodies of the martyrs were as usual buried near the scene of their death, but were translated in the eleventh century to Pisa, and re-interred in the Cathedral. The story of their fate was told by Spinello Aretino in the Campo Santo of Pisa in some frescoes, unfortunately now nearly faded away.
The last year of the third century, so full of tragic interest in the history of the Church, was signalized by the martyrdom of the Roman Proconsul Demetrius, who is said to have been speared to death by order of Maximianus for professing himself a Christian. He is introduced in Greek and other Oriental pictures in the robes of his office and with the lozenge on the breast of his tunic which indicates high rank at court. With St. Demetrius may be mentioned as specially worthy of honor the two Doctors Diomedes and Antiochus, who were both beheaded under Diocletian, after the wild beasts in the amphitheater had refrained from injuring them, and occasionally appear in works of art, holding an axe or a sword.
Equally steadfast in the faith were the two young Persians, Abdu and Sennen, who on a visit to Rome in the time of Diocletian were accused of being Christians. Proudly owning the truth, they were condemned to the amphitheater, but, as was the case with so many other martyrs, the wild beasts only licked their feet. They were therefore beheaded, and it is related that Christ Himself appeared to them before the end and placed crowns upon their heads. They are represented in an old mural painting in the catacombs, in which they wear the distinctive Phrygian cap or helmet, referred to in connection with St. Zacharias. After death the bodies of the martyrs were dragged before the idol of the Sun, and there left exposed for three days, when they were buried by a Christian named Quirinus beneath his own house. Here they were discovered by the Emperor Constantine, who had them re-interred on the Pontian Way in a cemetery since named after them.
Other laymen who sealed their faith with their blood at about the same time as the Roman doctors and the two Persians were Saints Mammes, Tiburtius, Julian, Crispin and Crispianus, with the four boys, who were little more than children. Saints Justin, Agapetus, Zoilus, and Venantius.
St. Mammes, who was martyred at Caesarea in Cappadocia, is said to have dwelt for many years in the forests, nourished only with the milk of wild animals, and to have been loved and aided by the most savage beasts. When the Roman soldiers came to arrest him, they found him surrounded by his four-footed friends, and were so struck with the remarkable sight that they were unwilling to lay hands on him. The Saint, however, told them to do their duty, and went with them to the judge, who condemned him to the amphitheater, where he received his death-blow, not from the lions, but from a soldier, who stabbed him in the stomach with a trident by order of the Emperor. The legend further relates that the dying Saint was allowed to depart, and wandered out of the city to a lonely place, where an angel met him, who soothed his last hours. St. Mammes is the patron Saint of Langres Cathedral; he appears on its seal with a lion rampant at his feet, and his whole legend is told in the old Breviary of that church. He is supposed to be the special protector of nursing mothers, and is represented in art with a doe beside him. He also sometimes appears with his hands pressed upon a gaping wound in his body, or he is standing beside a lion whilst a soldier is striking him with a trident. More rarely he is in the midst of burning coals with his hands tied behind him, although there is no record of his having been tortured in that way.
St. Tiburtius, who must not be confounded with the brother-in-law of St. Cecilia of the same name, was the son of the prefect of Rome, who was unable to save him from condemnation when he refused to sacrifice to the gods. He was beheaded, after being compelled to walk on burning coals, which did him no harm, and in allusion to this he is generally represented holding a brazier in his hands.
St. Julian of Alexandria, who sometimes appears in Oriental works of art bound to a camel, is said to have been a great sufferer from the gout, and when accused of being a Christian was carried before the judge by two of his slaves, one of whom, named Ennes, also a Christian, was condemned with him to be scourged to death on the back of a camel.
Saints Crispin and Crispianus are said to have been brothers of noble Roman birth, who went with St. Denis to preach the Gospel in Gaul, and pretended to be shoemakers only, winning all who gave them employment to their own faith, and never charging the poor for the work they did. They are supposed to have been martyred at Soissons by being stretched on the rack and cut to pieces with the implements of their trade. The whole story of their sufferings is told in the seventeenth-century Soissons Missal, and they are very constantly introduced in French and Belgian stained-glass windows, making shoes or enduring their awful martyrdom. They appear also in certain devotional pictures, as in one by Guido Reni, now in the Dresden Gallery, in which one brother is presenting the other to the Virgin, and they may be everywhere recognized by the implements of their craft, which they hold as well as the martyr’s palm. They are the patron Saints of shoemakers, cobblers, weavers, and of glove-makers; the last probably because the German word for glove signifies shoe for the hand.
St. Justin of Auxerre is said to have been beheaded when a child of nine years old, because he would not betray the hiding place of his father and brother, who were Christians. The tragedy took place at the village of Louvres, four miles from Paris, and the boy-martyr is greatly venerated in the whole neighborhood. He is sometimes represented holding his head in his hands. There is a quaint statue of him in the Church named after him at Beauvais, and he is commemorated in the thirteenth-century Breviary of that city and other liturgies. In one of the latter the touching words are put into the little martyr’s mouth: ‘If my mother misses me, let her take care to follow me to the Heavenly Jerusalem, where she will find me with the Saints’; and the mother, to whom her boy is said to have sent his head, after thanking the Lord Jesus for deigning to receive her son, cries to Justin in the anguish of her heart: ‘Oh, be thou mindful of me in the kingdom into which thou hast entered!’
St. Agapetus, the patron Saint of Palestrina, was martyr^ in that city at the age of fifteen, and appears in various devotional pictures with a palm and a sword as his attributes. It is related that his judge, Annas by name, fell down dead when he was examining the young convert; but even this signal judgment did not save the victim, who, after being thrown to the wild beasts, which refused to harm him, was beheaded.
St. Zoilus, who is little known out of Spain, but appears in devotional pictures at Cordova and elsewhere as a lad of about sixteen, holding a sword and crowned with leaves, is said to have been one of nineteen martyrs who were beheaded by order of Diocletian, the Governor of Cordova himself striking off the head of the boy in an access of rage at his steadfastness.
St. Venantius, the patron Saint of Camerino, who appears in various pictures and on certain coins and medals of that city in the armor of a Roman soldier, holding a banner in one hand, and in the other a plan of Camerino, was also martyred at fifteen for refusing to sacrifice to idols. His dress is supposed to symbolize that he was in the army of Jesus Christ, but it must be remembered that it was customary in the Middle Ages to make all the patron Saints knights. Sometimes the plan of the town held by St. Venantius is replaced by a church, and amongst the many treasures found in the Seine, and figured in Arthur Forgeais’s ‘Plombs Histories,’ is a quaint medal, on one side of which St. Venantius is seen with a spring of water at his feet, in allusion to a tradition that in the midst of his own tortures he caused a spring to rise up for the use of his thirsty executioners. Occasionally St. Venantius appears in devotional pictures with the priest Porphyrus, who converted him, and was the real evangelizer of Camerino, though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his young disciple.
To the third century, so prolific in marvels, are also said to have belonged the more or less apocryphal Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and the much-loved St. Christopher of Lycia, whose legend is, however, scarcely better authenticated than that of the Sleepers.
According to one version of their story, the Seven Sleepers were young Christians who were condemned to death under the Emperor Decius, but escaped to a cave on the Caelian Hill, where they were discovered by the Roman soldiers. Instead of being brought forth again to die, they were told that they should meet the fate they had themselves chosen; a huge stone was rolled to the mouth of the cave, and they were left to starve. They were, however, miraculously preserved alive until the reign of Theodosius, when they all awoke from their sleep, thinking they had been unconscious for one night only. The immediate cause of their revival was the rolling away of the stone by a man who sought a stable for his cattle, and whose surprise was indeed great at finding the place inhabited. The Sleepers, who were still in the vigor of youth, sent one of their number named Malchus to fetch food, and his astonishment was unbounded when he found the gate of Ephesus surmounted by a cross, whilst on every side were tokens of great changes having taken place since he had fled for his life with his companions. His own appearance, meanwhile, awoke the curiosity of the people, and when at a baker’s he offered in payment a coin one hundred years old he was taken before the Bishop, to whom he told his remarkable story. It was at once, strange to say, believed, and the awakening of the Sleepers was supposed to be a direct answer to a prayer of Theodosius for a sign of the truth of the doctrine of the Resurrection. The Emperor himself, the Bishop, and all the notables of the city, hastened out to the cave, where the other six young men were awaiting the return of their messenger. There they were all found, looking exactly as they had done when they fled from Decius, but they did not long survive their awakening, for, having informed Theodosius that they had been preserved to bear witness to the truth of the resurrection of the dead, they fell asleep once more, never to awake again on earth.
However much or little truth there may be in this strange story, the Seven Sleepers lying side by side in their cave are constantly introduced in stained-glass windows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and in certain old miniatures and sculptures. They appear, for instance, in a quaint sculpture of a vision of St. Edward the Confessor, on the choir-screen of his chapel in Westminster Abbey, and in the Museum of Christian Antiquities at Rome there is an engraved stone on which the seven young men are represented each with an emblem of martyrdom; the three eldest, John, Constantine, and Maximilian, have clubs; Malchus and Martial hatchets; Serapion has a lighted torch; and Dionysius a large nail, which would point to the conclusion arrived at by several authorities, that the so-called Sleepers really existed, and were martyred in the time of Decius, their cave having been their tomb.
About the name of St. Christopher, although he, perhaps, never existed, have gathered some of the quaintest, and, at the same time, the most touching legends of the early Christian Church. He is said to have been a native of Canaan, and his name, before his conversion to Christianity, according to some, was Repronous, but, according to others, Offero. Of gigantic stature and abnormal strength, he resolved in early youth to go forth into the world to seek the greatest King upon earth, to whom he intended to offer his services. After long wanderings he reached the court of an Oriental monarch, who lived in very great magnificence, and the traveler was by him appointed to a high office about his person. All went well until one day when Offero’s master showed signs of fear at the mention of the devil. The giant inquired who this devil might be, and the King, after much beating about the bush, confessed that he was a spirit more powerful than himself. Offero set forth at once to seek this mighty personage, and in a remote desert district he found him in the form of a hideous monster, surrounded by an army of what looked like living men, but were really lost souls. After a short parley, Offero took service with the devil, and all again went well till the strange party approached a cross, when the Evil One began to tremble. Offero asked the reason of this emotion, and when it was explained, he at once declared his intention of transferring his allegiance to Christ. Satan tried to dissuade him, but in vain. Offero departed to begin his new quest, inquiring of all he met if they could tell where he should find the God-man.
At last, Offero came to the lonely retreat of a holy hermit, who received him with joy, and told him the beautiful story of the life of Jesus, promising him that if he would serve the Divine Master, that Master would certainly ere long reveal Himself to him. The wanderer replied that he would gladly serve One who had wrought such marvels, and the hermit, who was evidently a wise man, told him he must begin by helping others, even as Christ Himself had done. Near to the retreat of the recluse was a great and rapid river in which many travelers had perished, and Offero was set to watch on the bank for those in peril. ‘It may be,’ said his teacher, ‘that if thou dost save those who would otherwise perish, Jesus will in His turn save thee.’ To which Offero replied; ‘This will I do, for it pleases me well’ So he made himself a hut on the river bank, tore up a palm tree to serve as a staff, and waited for the first travelers.
Many were those rescued from a watery grave in the next few months, for Offero carried the weak and aided the steps of the faltering. He was so tall that his head and shoulders rose high above the river, however full it might be, so that he was never in real peril himself. There came, however, no such revelation of the God-man as the faithful servant had hoped for, and he was beginning to be weary of waiting, when one stormy night he heard the wailing voice of a little child calling for help. Twice he went to look, and saw no one, but the third time he answered the cry he found a very little boy sitting on the bank, who begged to be carried over. Offero at once lifted the child on to his shoulders and plunged into the river. Then the waters began to rage and foam, and the weight of the boy became ever greater and greater, so that when at last the passage was made, even the giant Offero was exhausted. As he gently laid his burden down upon the opposite bank he said to the boy: ‘Who art thou, that thus periled my life and thine own? Thy weight was as great as that of the whole world!’ To which the Child answered: ‘Wonder not, for He whom thou didst bear across the stream is He who made the world. Know that I am Christ, and henceforth shalt thou be called Christopher, because thou hast carried Me upon thy shoulders. In token that I am telling thee the truth, plant thy staff in the ground, and it shall again bear leaves and fruit.’ Then the heavenly little one vanished, but Christopher did as He had bid him, and the staff took root and became a vigorous tree, with foliage and fruit.
Christopher, of course, told his wonderful experience to his friend the hermit, who advised him to return to the world, there to serve his newly-found Master; and so vigorously did the giant follow this advice that he was very soon in conflict with the heathen authorities. Ordered to sacrifice to idols, he refused, and he was thrown into prison to await the usual tortures. The Emperor, however, had been so struck with the prisoner’s unusual appearance that he was anxious to save his life and secure his services at court. He therefore gave instructions that every effort should be made to induce him to recant without proceeding to extremities. To begin with, two beautiful women, named Aquilina and Nicea, were sent to him to try and win him back to earthly joys; but, instead of yielding to their persuasions, he converted them, and they were both martyred, after pulling down with their scarves the idols they were ordered to worship. St. Christopher was then in his turn tortured; his head was encased in a red-hot helmet, but it did him no harm; arrows were shot at him, but they turned aside, and wounded the executioners themselves; and in the end he was beheaded. As he was led out to death, he paused for a moment to address the spectators, and told them that none who witnessed his end should ever suffer from storm, fire, or earthquake.
The prophecy of the martyr was fulfilled, and his name is still invoked for protection against these perils. He is also appealed to by those in dread of sudden death or of dying unshriven, as well as by sufferers from toothache. He is the patron Saint of porters and cross-bowmen — the former because of his great strength, the latter on account of the unsuccessful attempt to destroy him with arrows. For less obvious reasons, husband-men and fullers appeal to him for aid, and in Lombardy it is the custom to bless grains of pepper in his honor on his fete-day.
The legend of the Christ-bearer early took a very powerful hold upon the popular imagination, and when Christianity became the religion of the State, representations of St. Christopher with the Child on his shoulders and his palm-tree staff in his hand were constantly introduced in churches. Occasionally he wears a gleaming red helmet, and, in addition to his staff, holds a lantern in his hand. More rarely, as on a Reliquary preserved in a church at Arbe, in Dalmatia, he is represented riddled with arrows, and sometimes he has a serpent at his feet, possibly in allusion to an after-death miracle supposed to have been performed by him. As a rule, the martyrdom of St. Christopher and the preliminary tortures are ignored by artists, and the incident which won him his name of Christopher alone is given. Until their wholesale destruction in the eighteenth century, huge images of the giant with the Child on his shoulders were of frequent occurrence outside churches and even on the walls of private houses, the sight of which, even from a great distance, was supposed to bring good luck to travelers, whether by land or water. There used to be such a figure, 25 feet high and 16 feet broad across the shoulders, on the West Front of the Cathedral of Auxerre, and one of somewhat smaller dimensions outside Notre Dame, Paris, but both were broken to pieces by order of the ecclesiastical authorities. Yet another formerly adorned the facade of S. Miniato at Florence, and similar figures still exist in remote German, Italian, and Spanish churches, though they, too, are probably doomed to early destruction.
In a stained-glass window of the Cathedral of Chartres there is a very fine St. Christopher, and in his ‘Plombs Histories’ Arthur Forgeais mentions several quaint figures of him. These are probably of even earlier date than the celebrated woodcut representing the passage of the stream with the Infant Christ, long erroneously supposed to have been the first engraving ever produced, of which one impression, found in the cover of a Latin MS. in the Chartreuse Convent at Buxheim, is preserved in the Spencer Collection at Althorp, and another in the Cabinet des Estampes at Paris. In it, as in nearly all pictorial representations of the legend, the friendly hermit is seen on the banks of the river holding up a lantern, and the Saint is clutching with both hands at his staff, as he turns his head to look up at his strange burden, whilst the Child raises one little hand in benediction, and in the other holds a globe surmounted by a cross. Beneath this interesting survival of the fifteenth century is inscribed in quaint old lettering the words —
‘Christophori faciem die quacunque viderls,
Ilia nempe die morte mala non morieris. 1423,’
which may be roughly rendered: ‘On the day thou lookest on the face of St. Christopher no evil death shall befall thee.’
Other interesting wood engravings of St. Christopher are the four by Albert Dlirer, in which the great German master admirably interprets the simple, child-like character of the giant, and that by Lucas van Leyden, who has chosen the moment for representation when the Saint is about to go to the aid of the little traveler.
The legend of St. Christopher is graphically told by Andrea Mantegna and Bono Ferrarese in the frescoes of the Church of the Eremitani at Padua, and the ‘Execution of the Christ-bearer’ by Tintoretto, in the Church of S. Maria dell’ Orto, Venice; with the ‘ Crossing of the River ’ by Sodoma, in the Palazzo Spada, Rome, and above all the Central painting in the triptych by Hans Memlinc in the Bruges Museum, are also very fine.
In devotional pictures St. Christopher is sometimes introduced with the Child on his shoulder amongst the Saints at the feet of the Virgin, and in the celebrated ‘Adoration of the Lamb’ by Jan van Eyck in the Cathedral at Ghent he appears without his sacred burden, leading on a group of pilgrims, amongst whom he is distinguished by his great stature and his red mantle.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).