St. Eustacius/ Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Eustacius and his companions, as well as commemorating the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. Almost nothing is known about St. Eustacius. The Breviary recounts the story of a man who was a soldier, but who refused to renounce Christ and sacrifice to idols, and was martyred in the early second century. Doubts have been raised about the historicity of the legend about him in the Breviary. It has to be said that, though he has been venerated as a martyr from early times, almost nothing can be known about him, save that he was one of the numerous early Christian martyrs.
Some of the martyrs whom we commemorate in our liturgical calendar were the most prominent leaders of the Church in the early ages such as St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian, whose feasts we recently celebrated. For others, such as St. Eustacius, only their names have been preserved for us. But they were all witnesses (and the word martyr means witness) of the faith of the early Church. What they all have in common is that, when challenged to renounce their faith and sacrifice to idols, they stood firm and were prepared to die as martyrs rather than renounce their faith. The fact that this is the stuff of which legends were made shows how important their witness was in the life of the Church. For legend is the product of the life of the community, and the material it preserves in legend testifies to what it values the most. The fact that the earliest Christian legends focus on the martyrs, that their relics were carefully preserved, and that in subsequent ages of faith, great churches were often built in their honour on the site of their relics, shows how important their witness was in the life of the Church. That is why it is good to remember the names not only of the most well known and best attested martyrs, but also the names of those of whom virtually nothing else is known, save that they died as martyrs for the faith.
But why were early Christians persecuted? Why did so many die as martyrs? Was not the Roman Empire a relatively tolerant society? In answer to the last question, on the whole it was, and the religions of the various peoples within the empire were respected and allowed to continue. The Romans realised that it was best to respect the religions of their various subjects in return for their allegiance to the Emperor. By this means, the civil peace could be preserved. However, these were pagan and syncretistic religions, so it was relatively easy for them to recognise each others gods. They were local and national deities and none of them demanded exclusive allegiance. The exception was the Jewish religion. The Romans never really understood it because the Jews worshipped only one God and would not participate in the worship of any other god or participate in the cult of the Emperor. However, Judaism was granted the status of a recognised religion, on the grounds that it was the religion of a particular nation that clearly had a long history and tradition behind it, however disagreeable the Romans found it that the Jews rejected the worship of other gods as idolatry.
Initially, the early Church would have seemed to the Romans merely a subset of Judaism. But, as the Church expanded it won more and more Gentile converts (we can read about this in the accounts of St. Paul’s missionary journeys in the Acts of the Apostles). They were told that they did not need to convert to Judaism (in other words be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses), but they were told that they must renounce idolatry. While this was the basis of early Christian expansion and enabled the Church to spread beyond the bounds of Judaism, as far as the Roman Empire was concerned it placed Christians in no man’s land. They adhered to a religion that was not a recognised religion like Judaism, but it fully shared the Jewish rejection of paganism. Their pagan neighbours disliked the fact that they did not worship their gods, but the biggest problem of all was that they refused to acknowledge the cult of the Emperor. The imperial cult was then the fastest growing religion. The Emperor seemed to represent the pinnacle of civilisation. He was the head of the army that brought peace and stability to the diverse peoples of the Empire. Recognition of him as a divine personage seemed reasonable, as it was the basis on which the civilised world rested. Who were these people who were a growing movement throughout the Empire, but yet were neither Jewish nor pagan (indeed they called themselves the third race)?
In the early second century the Roman governor of Bithynia, Pliny the younger, wrote to the Emperor Trajan about his problems dealing with a new “superstition”. Many temples were practically deserted. There was a slump in agricultural markets because people were no longer buying beasts for sacrifice. He was credibly informed that it was all the fault of the Christians, a secret society which was disloyal to the empire since it refused to offer sacrifice to the god emperor. A number of Christians were arrested and brought to trial. Though the examination failed to find evidence of any criminal activities it showed clear evidence of a “degraded and extravagant superstition” who deserved to be punished for their “inflexible obstinacy”. Pliny also found out about the practices of Christianity. He discovered that they met on a fixed day early in the morning, that they sung hymns to Christ “as to a god”, that they bound themselves by a solemn oath to keep the moral law (not to criminal activity as he had expected). They also took a meal together, though this again appeared to be harmless. It is clear that what he is describing is the early Christian Eucharist, though he seems confused about what actually happened.
Pliny would have been astonished to know that what was in his time only a marginal movement, a “superstition”, would within a few centuries have become the religion of the Empire. Yet this is indeed what happened. It happened because the followers of this “degraded and extravagant superstition” who deserved to be punished for their “inflexible obstinacy” had the courage to refuse to worship the Emperor and endure martyrdom and death. They struggled, they were tempted, some of them lapsed under persecution, but enough of them endured for the religion to prevail. Eventually, the Empire itself succumbed and became Christian. The Church, though it later included in the liturgical calendar other saints who were not martyrs, never forgot that the first and greatest witnesses to the faith were the early martyrs. As Tertullian put it, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
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