September XX

Saint Eustachius And Companions, MM.

See the Bollandists, t. 6, Sept. p. 107.

St. Eustachius, called by the Greeks Eustathius, and before his conversion named Placidus, was a nobleman who suffered martyrdom at Rome, about the reign of Adrian, together with his wife Theopista, called before her baptism Tatiana, and two sons Agapius and Theopistus. These Greek names they must have taken after their conversion to the faith. The ancient sacramentaries mention in the prayer for the festival of St. Eustachius, his profuse charities to the poor, on whom he bestowed all his large possessions, some time before he laid down his life for his faith. An ancient church in Rome was built in his honor, with the title of a Diacony; the same now gives title to a cardinal. His body lay deposited in this church, till, in the twelfth age, it was translated to that of St. Denis near Paris. His shrine was pillaged in this place, and part of his bones burnt by the Huguenots in 1567;¹ but a portion of them still remains in the parish church which bears the name of St. Eustachius in Paris.²

How noble is it to see integrity and virtue triumphing over interest, passion, racks, and death, and setting the whole world at defiance! To see a great man preferring the least duty of justice, truth, or religion, to the favor or menace of princes; readily quitting estate, friends, country, and life, rather than consent to anything against his conscience; and at the same time meek, humble, and modest in his sufferings; forgiving from his heart and tenderly loving his most unjust and treacherous enemies and persecutors! Passion and revenge often make men furious; and the lust of power, worldly honor, applause, or wealth, may prompt them to brave dangers; but these passions leave them weak and dastardly in other cases, and are themselves the basest slavery, and most grievous crimes and misery. Religion is the only basis on which true magnanimity and courage can stand. It so enlightens the mind as to set a man above all human events, and to preserve him in all changes and trials steady and calm in himself; it secures him against the errors, the injustices, and frowns of the world, is by its powerful motives the strongest spur to all generous actions, and under afflictions and sufferings a source of unalterable peace and overflowing joy, which spring from an assured confidence that God’s will is always most just and holy, and that he will be its protector and rewarder. Does religion exert this powerful influence in us? Does it appear in our hearts, in our actions and conduct? It is not enough to encounter dangers with resolution; we must with equal courage and constancy vanquish pleasure and the softer passions, or we possess not the virtue of true fortitude.

St. Agapetus, Pope, C.

This holy pope was a native of Rome, and being received among the clergy discharged the inferior functions of the ministry in the church of SS. John and Paul. His great sanctity recommended him to the love and veneration of all that knew him, and pope John II. dying on the 26th of April, 535. Agapetus, who was at that time archdeacon, was chosen to fill the holy see and ordained on the 4th of May. He healed by mildness the wounds which had been made by dissensions, and by the unhappy schism of Dioscorus against Boniface II. in 529. The emperor Justinian, being apprised of his election, sent to him a profession of his faith, which the holy pope received as orthodox, and, in compliance with his request, condemned the Acæmetes monks at Constantinople, who were tainted with the Nestorian heresy. Hilderic, king of the Vandals in Africa, having been deposed by Gilimer, Justinian took that occasion to break the alliance which the emperor Zeno bad made with Genseric, and in the year 533, the seventh of his reign, sent Belisarius with a fleet of five hundred sail into Africa. That experienced general made an easy conquest of the whole country, and took Carthage almost without opposition. Justinian sent to the churches in Jerusalem the vessels of the ancient Jewish temple, which Titus had formerly brought to Rome and which Genseric had carried from thence to Carthage. He reestablished the temporal government of Africa, which he divided into seven provinces Zeugitana, named heretofore the Proconsular, that of Carthage, Byzacena and that of Tripoli, which four had for governors men of consular dignity the three others, Numidia, Mauritania, and Sardinia, had only presidents all these were subject to the Præfectus Prætorio of Africa, who resided at Carthage. Each province had its primate, though in Numidia that dignity was not annexed to any particular see, but was enjoyed by the oldest bishop in the province, as in the time of St. Cyprian. These churches being restored to the Catholics, both the emperor and the bishops of Africa wrote to the pope, entreating him to allow that such Arian bishops as came over to the Catholic faith, should retain their sees. Agapetus answered them both that he could not act in that point against the canons, and that the Arian bishops ought to be satisfied with being received into the Catholic Church, without pretending to be admitted among the clergy, or to retain any ecclesiastical dignity. The emperor having built the city Justinianæa, near the village where he was born, desired the pope to appoint the bishop of this new see his vicar in Illyricum.

Theodatus, king of the Goths in Italy, hearing that Justinian was making preparations for an expedition to recover Italy, obliged pope Agapetus to undertake a voyage to Constantinople in order to divert him from such a design. About the same time the Catholic abbots at Constantinople wrote to St. Agapetus, to acquaint him with the disorders and dangers into which that Church was fallen. Epiphanius, patriarch of Constantinople, dying in 535, Anthimus, bishop of Trebizond, was called to that see, by the interest of the empress Theodora. He passed for a Catholic, but was in truth an enemy to the council of Chalcedon, as well as that princess herself. The removal of Anthimus to Constantinople so much encouraged the Acephali, that Severus, the false patriarch of Antioch, and other chiefs of that sect, repaired thither, and filled that Church with confusion. Agapetus informed these Catholic abbots that he was coming himself to Constantinople; whereupon they waited his arrival. St. Gregory the Great relates¹ that the good pope, in his journey through Greece, cured a man who was lame and dumb, by saying mass for him. St. Agapetus reached Constantinople on the 2d of February in 536, and was received by the emperor with respect. The pope, true to his trust, pressed him on the business which had brought him thither; but that prince had proceeded too far to think of drawing off his forces from the expedition into Italy. St. Agapetus therefore began to treat of religious affairs. He absolutely refused to admit Anthimus to his communion, unless he publicly subscribed the council of Chalcedon, and would by no means allow of his translation to the see of Constantinople. The empress employed all her power and all her artifices to gain this point of him.* The emperor also plied him both with large promises, and with threats of banishment; but the holy man was inflexible, and at length Anthimus went back to Trebizond, for fear of being compelled to receive the council of Chalcedon. The pope declared him excommunicated, unless by subscribing that synod he declared himself a Catholic; which drew upon the saint the whole fury of the Eutychian party, and of the empress. His constancy, however, baffled all their efforts, and Mennas, a person of great learning and piety, was chosen patriarch of Constantinople, and consecrated by the pope. Several petitions were delivered to St. Agapetus, containing complaints and accusations of heresy, and other crimes, against Severus, and certain other bishops of the party of the Acephali, which the pope was preparing to examine in a council, when he fell sick, and died at Constantinople on the 17th of April, in 536, having sat about eleven months, and three weeks. His body was brought to Rome, and interred in St. Peter’s church on the Vatican, on the 20th of September, the day which the Western Church has consecrated to his memory. The Greeks commemorate his name on the day of his death, the 17th of April. See his epistles and other monuments, Conc. t. 5; also Liberatus Breviar. c. 21, 22, and Anastasius’s Pontifical, especially the new edition, or Liber Pontificalis, seu de Gestis Rom. Pontificum, quem cum Cod. MSS. collatum emendavit et supplevit Joannes Vignolius, Bibl. Vaticanæ Præfectus alter: Romæ, 1756, three vol. in 4to. Cle. t. 6, Sept. p. 163.

September XXI

St. Matthew

apostle and evangelist

Matt. 9 Mark 2 Luke 5. See Tillemont, Calmet, Ceillier, Hammond, &c.

St. Matthew is called by two evangelists Levi, both which names are of Jewish extraction.* The latter he bore before his conversion, the other he seems to have taken after it, to show that he had renounced his profession, and was become a new man. St. Mark calls him the son of Alphæus; but the conjecture which some form from hence, that he was brother to St. James the Less, has not the very shadow of probability. He seems to have been a Galilæan by birth, and was by profession a publican, or gatherer of taxes for the Romans, which office was equally odious and scandalous among the Jews. The Romans sent publicans into the provinces to gather the tributes and this was amongst them a post of honor, power, and credit, usually conferred on Roman knights. T. Flavius Sabinus, father of the emperor Vespasian, was the publican of the provinces of Asia. These Roman general publicans employed under them natives of each province, as persons best acquainted with the customs of their own country. These collectors or farmers of the tributes often griped and scraped all they could by various methods of extortion, having frequent opportunities of oppressing others to raise their own fortunes, and they were usually covetous. On this account even the Gentiles often speak of them as exactors, cheats, and public robbers.* Zaccheus, a chief among these collectors, was sensible of these occasions of fraud and oppression, when he offered four-fold restitution to any whom he had injured.

Among the Jews these publicans were more infamous and odious, because this nation looked upon them as enemies to their privilege of natural freedom which God had given them, as persons defiled by their frequent conversation and dealing with the pagans, and as conspiring with the Romans to entail slavery upon their countrymen. Hence the Jews universally abhorred them, regarded their estates or money as the fortunes of notorious thieves, banished them from their communion in all religious worship, and shunned them in all affairs of civil society and commerce. Tertullian is certainly mistaken when he affirms that none but Gentiles were employed in this sordid office, as St. Jerom demonstrates from several passages in the gospels.¹ And it is certain that St. Matthew was a Jew, though a publican. His office is said to have particularly consisted in gathering customs of commodities that came by the lake Genesareth or Tiberias, and a toll which passengers paid that came by water; of which mention is made by Jewish writers. Hence the Hebrew gospel published by Munster renders the word Publican in this place by, “The Lord of the Passage.” St. Mark says, that St. Matthew kept his office or toll-booth by the side of the lake, where he sat at the receipt of custom.

Jesus having lately cured a famous paralytic, went out of Capharnaum, and walked on the banks of the lake or sea of Genesareth, teaching the people that flocked after him. Here he espied Matthew sitting in his customhouse, whom he called to come and follow him. The man was rich, enjoyed a very lucrative post, was a wise and prudent man, and perfectly understood what his compliance would cost him, and what an exchange he made of wealth for poverty. But he overlooked all these considerations, and left all his interests and relations to become our Lord’s disciple, and to embrace a spiritual kind of commerce or traffic. We cannot suppose that he was before wholly unacquainted with our Saviour’s person or doctrine, especially as his custom-office was near Capharnaum, and his house seems to have been in that city, where Christ had resided for some time, had preached and wrought many miracles, by which he was in some measure prepared to receive the impression which the call of Christ made upon him. St. Jerom says, that a certain amiable brightness and air of majesty which shone in the countenance of our divine Redeemer, pierced his soul, and strongly attracted him. But the great cause of his wonderful conversion was, as Bede remarks, that, “He who called him outwardly by his word, at the same time moved him inwardly by the invisible instinct of his grace.” We must earnestly entreat this same gracious Saviour that he would vouchsafe to touch our hearts with the like powerful interior call, that we may be perfectly converted to him. He often raises his voice in the secret of our hearts: but by putting wilful obstacles we are deaf to it, and the seed of salvation is often clicked in our souls.

This apostle, at the first invitation, broke all ties; forsook his riches, his family, his worldly concerns, his pleasures, and hi profession, His conversion was sincere and perfect, manifesting itself by the following marks. First, it admitted no deliberation or delay: to balance one moment between God and sin or the world, is to resist the divine call, and to lose the offered grace. Secondly, it was courageous; surmounting and bearing down all opposition which his passions or the world could raise in his way. Thirdly, it was constant; the apostle from that moment looked no more back, but following Christ with fervor, persevered to the end, marching every day forwards with fresh vigor. It is the remark of St. Gregory, that those apostles who left their boats and nets to follow Christ, were some time afterward found in the same employment of fishing, from which they were called: but St. Matthew never returned to the custom-house, because it was a dangerous profession, and an occasion of avarice, oppression, and extortion. St. Jerom and St. Chrysostom take notice, that St. Mark and St. Luke mention our apostle by the name of Levi, when they speak of his former profession of publican, as if it were to cover and keep out of sight the remembrance of this apostle’s sin, or at least to touch it tenderly; but our evangelist openly calls himself Matthew, by which name he was then known in the Church, being desirous out of humility to publish his former infamy and sin, and to proclaim the excess of the divine mercy which had made an apostle of a publican. The other evangelists, by mentioning him in his former dishonorable course of life under the name of Levi, teach us, that we ought to treat penitent sinners with all modesty and tenderness; it being against the laws of religion, justice, and charity, to upbraid and reproach a convert with errors or sins which God himself has forgiven and effaced, so as to declare that he no longer remembers them, and for which the devil himself, with all his malice, can no longer accuse or reproach him.

St. Matthew, upon his conversion, to show that he was not discontented at his change, but looked upon it as his greatest happiness, entertained our Lord and his disciples at a great dinner, in his house, whither he invited his friends, especially those of his late profession, doubtless hoping that by our Saviour’s divine conversation, they also might be converted. The Pharisees carped at this conduct of Christ, in eating with publicans and sinners. Our divine Saviour answered their malicious secret suggestions, that he came for the sick, not for the sound and healthy, or for those who conceited themselves so, and imagined they stood in no need of a physician; and he put them in mind, that God prefers acts of mercy and charity, especially in reclaiming sinners, and doing good to souls, before ritual observances, as the more necessary and noble precept, to which other laws were subordinate. Commerce with idolators was forbidden the Jews for fear of the contagion of vice by evil company. This law the proud Pharisee extended not only beyond its bounds, but even against the essential laws of charity, the first among the divine precepts. Yet this nicety they called the strict observance of the law, in which they prided themselves, whereas in the sight of God it was hypocrisy and overbearing pride, with a contempt of their neighbors, which degraded their pretended righteousness beneath the most scandalous sinners, with whom they scorned to converse, even for the sake of reclaiming them, which the law, far from forbidding, required as the first and most excellent of its precepts. Christ came from heaven, and clothed himself with our mortality, in the bowels of the most tender compassion, and of his infinite mercy for sinners: he burnt continually with the most ardent thirst for their salvation, and it was his greatest delight to converse with those that were sunk in the deepest abyss, in order to bring them to repentance and salvation. How affectionately he cherished, and how tenderly he received those that were sincerely converted to him, he has expressed by the most affecting parables, and of this St. Matthew is, among others, an admirable instance.

The vocation of St. Matthew happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ, who, soon after forming the college of his apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his Church. The humility of our saint is remarked in the following circumstance. Whereas the other evangelists, in describing the apostles by pairs, constantly rank him before St. Thomas, he places that apostle before himself, and in this very list adds to his name the epithet of the publican. He delighted in the title of Matthew the Publican, because he found in it his own humiliation, magnified by it the divine mercy and grace of his conversion, and expressed the deep spirit of compunction in which he had his former guilt always before his eyes. Eusebius and St. Epiphanius tell us, that after our Lord’s ascension, St. Matthew preached several years in Judea and the neighboring countries till the dispersion of the apostles; and that a little before it he wrote his gospel, or short history of our blessed Redeemer, at the entreaty of the Jewish converts, and, as St. Epiphanius says, at the command of the other apostles. That he compiled it before their dispersion appears, not only because it was written before the other gospels, but also because St. Bartholomew took a copy of it with him into India, and left it there.* Christ nowhere appears to have given any charge about committing to writing his history or divine doctrine; particular accidents gave the occasions. St. Matthew wrote his gospel to satisfy the converts of Palestine;² St. Mark, at the pressing entreaties of the faithful at Rome;³ St. Luke, to oppose false histories;⁴ St. John, at the request of the bishops of Asia, to leave an authentic testimony against the heresies of Cerinthus and Ebion.⁵ It was nevertheless by a special inspirauor of the Holy Ghost, that this work was undertaken and executed by each of them. The gospels are the most excellent part of the sacred writings. For in them Christ teaches us, not by his prophets, but by his own divine mouth, the great lessons of faith and of eternal life; and in the history of his holy life the most perfect pattern of sanctity is set before our eyes for us to copy after. The gospel of St. Matthew descends to a fuller and more particular detail in the actions of Christ, than the other three, but from ch. 5 to ch. 14 he often differs from them in the series of his narration, neglecting the order of time, that those instructions might be related together which have a closer affinity with each other. This evangelist enlarges chiefly on our Saviour’s lessons of morality, and describes his temporal or human generation, in which the promises made to Abraham and David, concerning the Messias to be born of their seed, were fulfilled; which argument was a particular inducement to the Jews to believe in him.

St. Matthew, after having made a great harvest of souls in Judea, went to preach the faith to the barbarous and uncivilized nations of the East. He was a person much devoted to heavenly contemplation, and led an austere life, using a very slender and mean diet; for he ate no flesh, satisfying nature with herbs, roots, seeds, and berries, as St. Clement of Alexandria assures us.⁶ St. Ambrose says,⁷ that God opened to him the country of the Persians. Rufinus⁸ and Socrates⁹ tell us, that he carried the gospel into Ethiopia, meaning probably the southern and eastern parts of Asia. St. Paulinus mentions,¹⁰ that he ended his course in Parthia. Venantius Fortunatus relates, that he suffered martyrdom at Nadabar, a city in those parts. According to Dorotheus, he was honorably interred at Hierapolis in Parthia. His relics were long ago brought into the West. Pope Gregory VII. in a letter to the bishop of Salerno, in 1080, testifies that they were then kept in a church which bore his name in that city. They still remain in the same place.

St. Irenæus, St. Jerom, St. Austin, and other fathers, find a figure of the four evangelists in the four mystical animals represented in Ezechiel,¹¹ and in the Apocalypse of St. John.¹² The eagle is generally said to represent St. John, who, in the first lines of his gospel, soars up to the contemplation of the eternal generation of the Word. The calf agrees to St. Luke, who begins his gospel with the mention of the priesthood. St. Austin makes the lion the symbol of St. Matthew, who explains the royal dignity of Christ; but others give it to St. Mark, and the man to St. Matthew, who begins his gospel with Christ’s human generation.

In the gospel, The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him,¹³ and hath delivered to us the most sublime truths. Wherefore St. Austin writes,¹⁴ “Let us hear the gospel, as if we listened to Christ present.” The primitive Christians always stood up when they read it, or heard it read.¹⁵ St. Jerom says: “While the gospel is read in all the churches of the East, candles are lighted, though the sun shine, in token of joy.”¹⁶ St. Thomas Aquinas always read the gospel on his knees. In this divine book not only the divine instructions of our Blessed Redeemer are delivered to us but moreover a copy of his sacred life on earth is painted before our eyes. As St. Basil says;¹⁷ “Every action and every word of our Saviour Jesus Christ is a rule of piety. He took upon him human nature that he might draw as on a tablet, and set before us a perfect model for us to imitate.” Let us study this rule, and beg the patronage of this apostle, that the spirit or Christ, or that of his humility, compunction, self-denial, charity, and perfect disengagement from the things of this world, may be imprinted in our hearts.

St. Maura, V.

She was nobly born at Troyes in Champagne in the ninth century, and inner youth obtained of God by her prayers the wonderful conversion of her father, who had till then led a worldly life. After his happy death, Maura continued to live in the most dutiful subjection and obedience to her mother, Sedulia, and by the fervor of her example was the sanctification of her brother Eutropius and of the whole family. The greatest part of the revenues of their large estate was converted into the patrimony of the poor. The virgin’s whole time was consecrated to the exercises of prayer, to offices of obedience or charity, in attending on her mother and serving the poor, or to her work, which was devoted to the service either of the poor or of the Church: for it was her delight in a spirit of religion to make sacred vestments, trim the lamps, and prepare wax and other things for the altar. As order in what we do leads a soul to God, according to the remark of St. Austin, she was regular in the distribution of her time, and in all her actions. She spent almost the whole morning in the church, adoring God, praying to her divine Redeemer, and meditating on the circumstances of his sacred life and passion. Every Wednesday and Friday she fasted, allowing herself no other sustenance than bread and water, and she walked barefoot to the monastery of Mantenay, two leagues from the town, where she prayed a long time in the church, and with the most perfect humility and compunction laid open the secrets of her soul to the holy abbot of that place, her spiritual director, without whose advice she did nothing. The profound respect with which she was penetrated for the word of God, and whatever regarded the honor of his adorable name, is not to be expressed. So wonderful was her gift of tears, that she seemed never to fall upon her knees to pray but they streamed from her eyes in torrents. God performed many miracles in her favor; but it was her care to conceal his gifts, because she dreaded the poison of human applause. In her last sickness she received the extremeunction and viaticum with extraordinary marks of divine joy and love, and reciting often the Lord’s Prayer, expired at those words, Thy kingdom come, on the 21st of September, 850, being twenty-three years old. Her relics and name are honored in several churches in that part of France, and she is mentioned in the Gallican Martyrology. See her life written by St. Prudentius of Troyes, who was acquainted with her. Also Goujet and Mezangui, Vies de Saints.

St. Lo. In Latin Laudus, Bishop

of coutances in normandy

He was descended from a noble family in the same diocess of which he became afterward bishop, and was consecrated by St. Gildard or Godard, archbishop of Rouen and metropolitan of Neustria, about the year 528. A little after his consecration, he applied to St. Melanius of Rennes for instructions to advance the glory of God. He was present at the second, third, and fifth councils of Orleans, and by proxy at the fourth council of the same city. It was he who performed the funeral ceremony of St. Paternus or Pair, bishop of Avranches. It is said, that succeeding to the family estate, he enriched his diocess and endowed it with the lands of Briovere (now St. Lo), Courci, Trielli, &c. It is also asserted that the castle of Briovere was his family seat, and that for this reason in the fifth council of Orleans he signs himself not Lo of Coutances, but Lo of Briovere.* The holy bishop governed his diocess with equal zeal and virtue till the year 568, when he went to receive the reward of his labors in heaven. Romachaire, one of his priests, succeeded him. He was an Englishman born, and for piety and learning esteemed one of the first men of his age. The incursions of the Normans caused the relics of St. Lo to be translated to Thouars in Poitou, in the ninth century. His feast, which is celebrated this day at Coutances, is of the first class, with an octave. It is inserted in the Roman Martyrology on the 22d of September. There is a town in Normandy which bears the saint’s name, and a parochial church at Rouen dedicated under his invocation. See the acts of the saints: l’Abrégé de la Vie des Evêques de Coutances by Rouault, Coutances, 1742, in 12mo. Trigan, Hist. Eccles. de Normand. pp. 94, 128, et. 458.

¹ See Baillet.

² See the new Paris Breviary on the 3d of November. Also Falconius, in Ephem. Græco-Moschas, &c.

¹ Dial l. 5, c. 3.

* If we consider the great actions of Justinian, we shall be inclined to think, that in his reign the glory of he ancient Roman empire was revived: but if we look narrowly into his vices and bad administration, we shall rank him among tyrants. This prince began his reign in 527, and died in 565. To reform the laws, which, by their multitude, confusion, and contradictions, were become a public nuisance, and the heaviest burden and oppression of the people for whose protection they were established, he caused the Code to be complied, consisting of select constitutions of preceding emperors, which he published in 529, and more correctly again in 534. The most useful decisions of the ablest lawyers he published under the title of Digestum or Pandectæ, in 533. He caused his institutes to be composed in four books, to serve as an introduction to his Pandectæ. He added a great number of ecclesiastical and other laws under the title of Novellæ. These works compose to this day the body of the Roman or Civil Law.

The laws, edicts, and letters which go under the name of Justinian, are stamped with such marks of gravity, wisdom, and majesty, as to surpass all the others. Though this performance does so much honor to his memory, it is certain that this prince was more desirous to give to his subjects good laws than good magistrates; he aspired not so much to the glory of impartially administering justice, as to the vanity of being a legislator to posterity; his actions were far from being examples of that equity, of which his saws and lessons were rules. (See F. Dande, Jesuit, Historia Universalis Romani Imperii, t. 2, at Wirtzburg, anno 1754.) The questor Trebonian, a heathen, the principal and most learned of all the lawyers whom he employed in compiling these works, openly sold his sentences, and suppressed, or made laws as his interest or passions inclined him, as Procopius (l. de Bello Persico, c. 24, 25), and Suidas (v. Trebon.) assure us.

Justinian adorned his imperial city and other parts of his dominions with stately churches and other buildings in an elegant taste, by which he added a lustre to his empire: yet by them he seemed rather to offer incense to his own vanity, than to raise his view to more noble prospects. He rescued Africa and Italy out of the hands of barbarians: but he devoured his own subjects, studying by every act of oppression, perfidy, and treachery, to amass treasures to feed his own extravagance and vices, and those of his empress Theodora, and Antonina, the wife of Belisarius. Never did any prince meddle so much with the affairs of the Church, as appears by the great number of laws which he made in his Novellæ, to regulate almost its whole discipline; and by an unhappy Itch to be always disputing about the most abstruse theological points and mysteries of faith, in canvassing which he spent much of that time which he owed to the government of his empire. Having himself little or no learning, if we may believe Suidas, he was not happy in the choice of his theologians, and he contributed very much to widen and inflame the wounds, and increase the distraction of the Oriental Churches. The issue of his presumptuous curiosity and Inquiries was, that he fell into the heresy of the Incorrupticolæ, which he confirmed by an edict in which he declared that Christ’s body, in his mortal state, was never liable to any alteration, or even natural passion such as hunger, thirst, or pain, and that he ate without any necessity. (Procop. de Bello Gothico, l. 3, c. 35 et 33 et Anecdot. c. 18.)

Procopius, a native of Cæsarea in Palestine, secretary to Belisarius in his expeditions in Africa and Italy, wrote two books on the Persian War, two on the Vandalic War, four on the Gothic War, and six on the Buildings of Justinian. In these histories the great actions of that emperor are displayed with honor. The same author left his Ανεκδοτα, or the Secret History of Justinian, Theodora, Belisarius, and Antonina. which he brought down to the year 562, recounting the secret enormous crimes of those persons, and describing the court as a den of Incarnate fiends rather than men. In the printed copies, some pages relating to the obscenities of Theodora are justly omitted, which are preserved in the MS. copy in the Vatican library. The author discovers, by his inconsistency, at least, his own disingenuity. In his first works he flattered his prince, as Velleius; Paterculus commended Sejanus, whom, had he written two years later, after the fall of that wicked minister, he would have described as one of the most execrable monsters of the human race. The last work of Procopius seems the production of disappointed ambition and spleen, and is probably in great part a collection of slander. Though the author professed himself a Christian, this he probably did with views to temporal interest; for in many parts of his last work he betrays an aversion to the faith, and an attachment to the wild superstitions of idolatry, as Eicholius proves at length, Præfat. in Procop. Anecdot. n. 17 ad. 22. See the edition of Helmstadt, 1654. But we want not this secret history of Procopius to come at the true character of Justinian.

* Levi signifies one associated; Matthew, him that is given; in Latin Denatus.

* The profession of a tax-gatherer is in itself lawful and necessary, and may be innocent. It has even furnished eminent examples of sanctity, witness the baron of Montmorency in Flanders, and Bernieres is Normandy, &c.

¹ Ep. 146, ad Damas.

* The English word Gospel signifies, in the language of our ancestors, not God’s Word, but Good Word or tidings, as Evangelium in Greek. Good they wrote God; and God, Gode, with c. We now retain the word Spell only to signify a charm. See Hammond (p. 3), Somner, and Fr. Junius’s Etymological Dictionary, by Edm. Lye. That St. Matthew’s gospel was originally written in the modern Hebrew, that is, in the Syro-Chaldaic language, used by the Jews after the captivity, is affirmed by Papias, Origen, St. Irenæus, Eusebius, St. Jerom, St. Epiphanius, Theodoret, and all the ancient fathers, so positively and so unanimously, that it is matter of surprise that Erasmus, Calvin, Lightfoot, and some few others, should pretend it was written first in Greek, which they falsely mistake to have then been the vulgar language of the Jews in Palestine. That Christ preached to them in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue is plain from many words of that language used by him, which the evangelists retain and interpret in the gospels. St. Paul, haranguing the Jews at Jerusalem, spoke in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue (Acts 20:2, 27:40, 26:14). The Syro-Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos on the Pentateuch, composed about the time of our Redeemer, and that of Jonathan on the books of Josue, Judges, and Kings, not much later, extant in the Polyglot, &c., were made to expound the Bible to the common people, who no longer understood the true ancient Hebrew, in which language the second books were still read in the Synagogues. (See Huet, de Claris Interpret. §. 6. Simon. l. 2, c. 18. Walton, Proleg. 12, Frassen, contra Morin, l. 2, Exercit. 8, et Nat. Alex. Sæc 2 Diss 11.)

What Erasmus and the rest of these authors ground their conjecture upon, that St Matthew quotes the Old Testament according to the Greek Septuagint, is another mistake. For out of ten quotations found in his gospel, seven are visibly taken from the Hebrew, and the rest are no way contrary to that text, though they are mentioned only as to the sense, not in the words. St. Jerom expressly observes, from a copy of this gospel, in the original Hebrew, which he saw in the library at Cæsarea, that St. Matthew’s quotations are made from the Hebrew (in Catal.) We are fools, says Isaac Vossius (Præf. App. in l. de 70 Interpr.) if we spend our time in confuting all idle dreams which trample upon the unanimous testimony of all antiquity, and the authority of all churches which conspire in assuring us, that the gospel of St. Matthew was originally written in the Syro-Chaldaic language. The Greek translation was made in the time of the apostles, as St. Jerom and St. Austin affirm, perhaps by some of them; it was at least approved by them, and from their time has been always looked upon to hold the place of the original. For, the Syro-Chaldaic copy seems to have been soon corrupted by the Nazareans, or Jewish converts, who adhered to the ceremonies of the law. Also the Ebionite heretics retrenched many passages.

Among the additions made by the Nazareans, some consisted of sayings of our Divine Redeemer, handed down by those that had received them from his sacred mouth, and are quoted as such by the fathers See a collection of these in Grabe. (Spicilegii, t. 1, p. 12.) Other additions of these heretics were fictitious. These interpolations and falsifications brought the Hebrew copy into disrepute in the Church; or if the gospel of the Nazareans had a different ground from the Hebrew text of St. Matthew, at least the latter is long since lost: and St. Epiphanius tells ns (Hær. 29, n. 9) that the gospel of the Nazareans or Hebrews was only that of St. Matthew interpolated. The Chaldaic text of St. Matthew’s gospel, published by Tillet, and republished from another more imperfect copy by Munster, is evidently a modern translation made from the Greek. The Latin Vulgate, or rather the old Italic, was translated from the Greek text, and corrected according to it by St. Jerom. See Le Long Biblioth. Sacra: Mills, Proleg. in Gr. Test. p. 5 e: 31 &c. Dom Martianay published, in 1695, the ancient Italic version of this gospel. Since that time an old MS. copy of the four gospels in the true ancient Italic version, was found at Corbie; and published at Verona.

² Eus. l. 3, c. 24. S. Hieron. in Catal.

³ Eus. 1. 2, c. 15.

⁴ Luke 1:1.

⁵ S. Hieron. Prol. in Matt. S. Epiph. hær. 31. b. 12.

⁶ Pædag. l. 2, c. 1.

⁷ In Ps. 45.

⁸ L. 10, c. 9.

⁹ L. 1, c. 19.

¹⁰ Carm. 26.

¹¹ Ezech, 1:10.

¹² Apoc. 4:7.

¹³ John 1:18.

¹⁴ Tract. 30 in Joan.

¹⁵ Const. Apost. L. 2, c. 62

¹⁶ Adv. Vigilant.

¹⁷ Constit. Monast. c. 2.

* Briovere is a Celtic word, and signifies a bridge on the river Vire. The castle of Briovere belonges to the bishopric of Coutances till 1576, when it was exchanged for that of Moutiers, by Arthur de Cossé.

 Butler, A., The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (New York 1903) III, 724-733.