Fabiola : or, The church of the catacombs - Digital Repository Services

40 LTBIA.
before u* She then placed herself close to her companions, and
prayed unceasingly with bowed head. She was so lost in prayer
that she never moved her position, when the head of Justin was
held up to the applauding multitude. At last when her turn
came, she stepped forward, and answered the two questions:
'
For whom do you die? and, does death appear so agreeable?'
Her answer was: '
For my Faith in Christ, who is my Redeemer
and my All. It is sweet to suffer for a friend, but to die for
God is heavenly delight'" Lydia with tears in her eyes, looked
at one time on the earth, at another towards Heaven. How will-
ingly would she not have resigned her life at that moment, to be
happy with her mother. Occupied with these thoughts she left
the Forum, and Felicitas led her to the great ampitheatre of
Nero, which from the adjacent high Colossug was called the
Coliseum. How many hundred Christians, true to the faith have
stood on this Arena, how many lions and leopards have here lapped
up the blood of the martyrs, and how did the applause of ninety
thousand spectators thunder forth, when such amusements were
granted to pagan Rome! There were still two other tombs in
which Lydia felt the deepest interest, although in latter centuries
the veil of oblivion has passed over them.
About twenty years before Lydia's birth, there lived in a Prov-
ince of Umbria, a noble and richly endowed widow, named Sab-
ina. This pagan matron had a Syrian slave, who with a rare zeal
clung to the doctrines of the Gospel. She never ceased, so says
the legend, praising the beauty of Christianity to her mistress;
and as she exemplified it in her own pure and chaste life,
she overcame the prejudice which her mistress had for many
years entertained against the Christians. Sabina became a
Christian, and by the brilliancy of her virtues, was one of the
brightest ornaments of the Church in the second century.
The Emperor Adrian published an edict for a persecution of
the Christians, and in consequence of this, the Governor of the
province of Umbria imprisoned Sabina and her slave, Seraphica;
and as the latter was the cause of Sabina's conversion, he had her
beaten with rods till her tender body sunk under the cruelty, and
8he was finally beheaded. Seraphica's mistress, who was released
from prison in consideration of her high rank, procured the body
of her martyred slave, and gave it honorable interment. After
this, she led a more retired life than ever, and night and day,
besought her departed friend to obtain for her the grace of martyrdom.
Her prayer was heard, for in the following year she
was summoned by Elpidius, the new Governor of Umbria to
appear before him, and he having shamefully maltreated her, ordered
her to prison; when she arrived there, she found herself
filled with a "
holy Joy: And is it then possible" she
" exclaimed,
that I am to be admitted to a participation of the glory enjoyed
by my Seraphica? She has obtained for me this great privilege."
She was again summoned the following day, but Elpidius finding
all his entreaties vain, condemned her to be beheaded. She
suffered on the very day upon which, in the preceding year, her
companions gained the crown.* Although this Syrian slave bore
a great resemblance to Lydia in her glowing love for Christ, and
by the conversion of her mistress, still she had another tie upon
her affection ; having been baptized after that saint, whose name,
it will be remembered, she bore till she became a slave in
Athens.
Lydia was seldom so oppressed with sorrow as now, standing
before the tomb of this ranch-tried virgin, who bore the miseries
of slavery to her last breath. She cast a look upon her own interior,
and read therein what her patron must have suffered, and
also the joy she must have experienced when she saw her mis-
tress one of the "True Fold." With what ardor did not she
lha.ik St. Seraphica, for the protection she bad afforded her
through her past life, and recommended not only herself, but
n1ao her newly converted mistress to the powerful protection of
both martyrs.
* Not far from the Snlplce bridge, there was a beautiful church built to St.
Bftbina some hundred years later, and near which the Dominican monastery now
elands, commanding a lovely view of the magnificent city. The erection of the
church ii dated u far back A. o. 430.
Before the tombs of these holy women she took a vow of per-
petual chastity, and resolved as a handmaid of the Lord, to
devote herself to His service.
CHAPTER
LYDIA was now occupied in making preparations for her return
to Athens, as she was receiving letter after letter from Metella,
entreating her to delay her departure no longer; and urged by
this last request, she sallied forth at once, to make inquries on
what day the next ship would sail for Greece. On her way, she
was surprised to meet one whose features were familiar to her,
and on a moment's reflection, she recognized no other than ths
priest Irenffius, whom she last saw on the ruins of Smyrna.
For many years he had preached the Faith in the South of
France, by the side of the aged Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, who
like him, had been a disciple of St. Polycarp. Immediately
after the persecution had commenced in Smyrna, a number of
Christians from Asia Minor, wandered to the south of Gaul, and
Irenteus was one of the number. Trade and traffic had muile
their way between these two distant lands, where as the seed of
Christianity began to shoot, a tempest of persecution threatened
to destroy it forever.
Notwithstanding the Emperor's decree. A. D. 177, in favor of
the Christians, the Roman Governor and the people of Lyons and
Roman
Vienne, still raged against them with dreadful cruelty.
justice, as Church history informs us, was, in the first three centuries
very vacillating, and the immense extent of the Empire,
easily explains how the Emperor's decree was carried out in distant
provinces, with greater or less exactness, according to the
dispositions of whatever Governor was in authority. The position
of a Governor depended more or less on the favor of the
people, who it is well-known, had a downright passion for san-
guinary combats, and that their cry became: "Panem et Cir-
censes." "Bread and the Circus. "During war, Rome stained its
sword in the blood of its enemies, during peace, in that of its
own citizens. These were the gladiatorial combats and the persecutions
of the Christians.
We need not doubt that some Christians were to be found ear-
lier in Gaul, still it is worthy of credit, that no Christian blood
was shed on the soil of France, before the reign of Marcus
Aurelius.
The lights of the new faith were Pothinus and Ireureus.
These two great missioners of Gaul carried the Faith thither
from Asia Minor, where they received it from St. Polycarp and
because Polycarp had been a disciple of St. John, it might with
truth be said, that they received it from the Apostles themselves.
The labors of St. Pothinus were carried on, almost in silence,
and he was already a venerable man of ninety years, when the
persecution commenced. Except in the Church records in
Smyrna, wherein there is an account of the death of St. Polycarp
and his companions, we have not so remarkable a memento of
Christian antiquity, as the famous account which the churches
of Lyons and Vienne have left us, upon I he persecution of the
Church in Asia Minor. It is thought that Irenneus was the writer
of those epistles, and that in the same year in which the persecution
took place 177, he was sent to Rome to impart to the Pope
the minutice of the sanguinary proceedings. Soter was already
dead, and in his place Eleutherius had undertaken the guul
ance of the Church.
It was the custom of the first centuries to read the acts of the
martyrs in all Christian assemblies, for the edification of the
faithful, and what Ireneeus had witnessed with his own eyes, he
wished on his arrival in Rome to deliver verbally to the faithful.
The day on which he was to hold the funeral oration on the
death of forty-eight holy martyrs, was announced in the assein.
blies, and the church of St. Pruxedes, that asylum and oratory
of the early Christians, beneath which the bodies of *K0 mar-