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The Scillitan Saints and the Pauline Epistles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
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It is, no doubt, appropriate that the document which ushers in the stormy history of the African Church should be a record of martyrdom. But there is another, scarcely less significant, feature in the Acts of the Scillitan Saints—a reference to Holy Scripture. Saturninus proconsul dixit: Quae sunt res in capsa vestra? Speratus dixit: Libri et epistolae Pauli, viri justi. Biblical scholar and palaeographer alike find the reference interesting. For the one, there is evidence of the spread of the text of the Bible in North Africa at the end of the second century. For the other, there is the problem of the nature of the book-form in which the scriptures circulated. Recently, however, another aspect has been mentioned, in this Journal, by Dr. W. H. C. Frend in an article on ‘The Gnostic-Manichaean tradition in North Africa’. In this article, Dr. Frend argues that there was in the North African Church, besides the rigorist tradition which produced the Donatists, and the more inclusive and more compromising element, which constituted the strength of the Catholics, a third element, whose outlook was enshrined first in the Gnostics against whom Tertullian fulminated and later in the Manichees, from whom African Catholicism was to draw her most illustrious convert. Dr. Frend argues persuasively for the existence of an historical continuity between the Gnostics and the Manichees, one of his points being that both heretical movements relied extensively on the writings of St. Paul to support their teaching. In this connexion, he writes: ‘Rejection of the Old Testament led in Africa to an almost exaggerated respect for the Epistles of St. Paul, and also for the various Gnostic Ada of the Apostles.
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References
page 141 note 1 J.E.H., iv. I (1953), 21.Google Scholar
page 142 note 1 Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires, Brussels 1921, 63.Google Scholar
page 142 note 2 The proconsul asks: ‘Numquid ad deliberandum spatium vultis?’ and Speratus answers: ‘In re tam justa, nulla est deliberation.’ Then follows the passage under discussion, after which Saturninus says: ‘Moram xxx dierum habete et recordemini’, to which Speratus replies: ‘“Christianus sum”, et cum eo omnes consenserunt’. It is possible that the passage referring to the writings may have become displaced. On the other hand, methods of interrogation vary and it is possible that the proconsul, anxious to avoid putting the accused to death, if possible, would return to his original invitation to them to accept a remand.
page 142 note 3 Op. cit., Oxford 1952, 96: ‘These latter [the Scillitan Martyrs[ had in their possession the Epistles of St. Paul, “a righteous man”, when they appeared before the magistrates.’
page 142 note 4 ‘The early persecutions and Roman law again’, in The Journal of Theological Studies, N. S., iii. 2 (1952), 199–213.Google Scholar
page 143 note 1 Sherwin-White, op. cit., 210.
page 143 note 2 Sherwin-White draws attention to this passage: op. cit., 211.
page 143 note 3 Op. cit., 212–3.
page 143 note 4 The former seems the more probable. Cf. Harnack, , Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, Leipzig 1893–1904, Teil 2, Bd. ii. 298n: ‘Sehr wahrscheinlich ist es, dass die Frage des Prokonsuls im Prozess der Scilitaner, und ihre Antwort … auf einen Kasten zu beziehen sind, den sie mit sich führten (und nicht auf eine capsa in christlichen Versammlungsgebäude).’Google Scholar
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page 144 note 1 ‘Before Christendom began, magic, with its lower accompaniment of witchcraft, preoccupied the whole Roman Empire; we have forgotten the darkness out of which we came’: Williams, Charles, Witchcraft, London 1941, 305Google Scholar. Although his approach is literary, rather than historical or anthropological, Williams has some illuminating comments on the trial of Apuleius, op. cit., 21–7, 48–9. The trial and suicide of Libo Drusus, whom Firmius Catus ‘ad Chaldaeorum promissa, magorum sacra, somniorum interpretes inpulit’ is related by Tacitus ‘curatius … quia tum reperta sunt quae per tot annos rem publicam exedere’: Annals, ii. 27. Three centuries later the trials for magic under Valentinian I achieved great notoriety. See Alföldi, A., A Conflict of Ideas in the late Roman Empire, trans. by Harold Mattingly, Oxford 1952Google Scholar. It is, however, a salutary corrective to remind ourselves that the last condemnation for witchcraft in England was that of Jane Wenham in 1712, and that Ruth Osborne was lynched at Long Marston, near Tring, in 1751, because of her neighbours’ belief that she was a witch.
page 144 note 2 Apologia, c. 30.
page 144 note 3 Ibid., 61. It is possible that Apuleius regarded Christ as a sorcerer. See H. E. Butler and Owen, A. S., Apulei Apologia, Oxford 1914, 162, note to vel his in c. 23.Google Scholar
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page 144 note 6 Op. cit., xiv.
page 145 note 1 Monceaux, op. cit., 106.
page 145 note 2 Op. cit., 298.
page 145 note 3 Op. cit., 214–5: ‘La suppellettile libraria, su cui il proconsule interpella il gruppo dei confessori di Scilli non può essere stata constituta che di testi biblici e neotestamenti latini.’
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page 146 note 1 Roberts, op. cit., 191–2. For information about the parchment notebook, see Ibid., 173 ff.
page 146 note 2 Op. cit., 211n-2n. (Italics mine).