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THE ROMAN GENERAL (part-1)
Before introducing to our reader the extraordinary records that have
come down to us regarding the great St. Eustachius and his martyred
family, it may be well to contemplate for a moment a grand and consoling
feature of triumph which Almighty God vouchsafed to His servants in the
days of persecution. Although hundreds of martyrs have gone to heaven
from the arena of the Coliseum, yet few have been killed by the wild
beasts. This strange fact is a beam of sunshine amid all its horrors of
cruelty and bloodshed. He who knew how to change the ferocious nature of
those animals which prowl through their native mountains and deserts in
search of food, so that they became the projectors and even companions
of His hermits and solitaries, made them (instead of being the
instruments of the most awful death) the defenders of the chastity of
His virgins, and the witnesses of the sanctity of His saints. The Great
Creator of all things intended the dumb animal to be the servant of man,
and, with a few exceptions. He refused to allow it to be the
executioner of the innocent.
One of the most consoling pages in the history of these terrible
times, is the often repeated miracle of Daniel in the lion's den, not,
however, in the silence and darkness
of the gloomy cavern into which the youthful prophet was cast, but under
the noonday sun, in the great amphitheatre of the capital of the world,
and before 100,000
spectators. Miracles have been destined by God to be the handmaids of
truth and the medium of conviction.
In the visible interposition of His power in preserving His servants
from the fury of the beasts in the Coliseum, He presented to the pagans
of Rome an incontestable proof of the divinity of Christianity, and a
mercy they knew not how to appreciate. If the old walls of the Coliseum
could speak, they would tell us some consoling scenes of the triumph of
the martyrs and their wonderful preservation. St. Eusebius, who was
eye-witness to some of those terrible scenes, describes with eloquence
and feeling how the furious wild beasts were unable to harm the
Christians, and would turn on the pagans with destructive rage. "
Sometimes," he says, " they rushed on the naked and defenseless
champions of Christ, but checked as if by some divine power, they
returned to their dens. This happened repeatedly, and excited the wonder
of the spectators ; at their demand the first wild beast having been
abashed, a second and third were sent against the same martyr, but to no
effect.
"You would have been filled with admiration," he continues, "at the
steadfast intrepidity of those holy champions, and at the immovable
fortitude displayed by persons of the most tender years. You might have
seen a youth who had not yet completed his twentieth year, standing
motionless in the midst of the arena with stretched forth in the form of
a cross, as he prayed with fervor to God, and not shrinking from the
spot in which he stood, even when the bears and leopards breathing forth
rage and death, almost touched his very flesh with their jaws. Again,
you might have seen others thrown before an enraged bull, which attacked
the pagans who came near him, tossing them with his horns into the air,
and leaving them to be taken away half-dead. But when with rage and
bellowing he rushed upon the martyrs
he could not approach them, but stamping on the ground with his feet,
tossing his horns to and fro, and breathing forth rage and madness, by
reason of his being irritated by red-hot goads, the infuriated animal
was, in despite of all, held back by an invisible hand. Other wild
animals having been tried to no purpose, the Christians were at last put
to death by the sword, and their relics, instead of being interred, were
co-signed to the surges of the deep" (Eccles. Hist., book viii).
The scenes described by Eusebius were frequent all over the Empire.
Wherever the name of Christian was found the persecution raged. It would
seem that Almighty God adopted this means to give His infant Church
publicity and a sign of the stamp of divinity. Hence in His mercy and
goodness He made the persecutions the fruitful harvest of souls.
Baronius mentions (An. 307) that in the persecution of Diocletian, when
the slain were counted by thousands daily, the holy Pope Marcellus had
to appoint twenty-five new parishes in the city, to baptize and instruct
the people who multiplied beneath the sword. The hideous and execrable
character of the barbarities to which the Christians were subjected,
with a view not only to force them to apostatize, but to deter others
from embracing the proscribed belief, had the very contrary effect. As
to the martyrs, persons of both sexes, and of the tenderest and most
infirm age, not only bore their sufferings with superhuman fortitude,
but hailed them, with joy, as tending to the greater glory of God and the
conversion of the pagans. Their very persecutors were forced to applaud
the heroism of those whom they so bitterly hated, and to feel disgusted
and afflicted at the atrocities they were once so vociferous in
demanding.
The reverence which the animals showed the martyrs is touchingly
displayed in a scene we will quota from the Acts of three martyrs of
Tarsus, given in the Annals of
Baronins, under the year 290. They did not suffer in the Coliseum at
Rome, yet their martyrdom took place in another amphitheatre of the
Empire, and the records of their death serve as a sample of what
generally happened in those days of horror. These martyrs, Tharisus,
Probus and Andronicus, had been tortured in a most cruel manner at
Tarsus in Cecilia; they were conveyed thence to Mopsueste, and were
again submitted to the most horrible barbarities, and a third time they
were tormented at Anazobus ; so that being covered all over with wounds,
and their bones being broken and wrenched from their socket?, when the
Governor Maximus wished to have them finally exposed in the amphitheatre
to the wild beasts, it became necessary for the soldiers to press men
from the streets in order carry thither their almost lifeless bodies.
" When we beheld this," say the three devout Christians who wrote the
Acts, and interred the relics of the martyrs, " we turned away our faces
and wept ; but when their mangled frames were cast down from the men's
shoulders on the arena, all the spectators were horrified at the sight,
and began to murmur at the president for this order, and many of them
rose up and left the theatre, expressing their dislike of this ferocious
cruelty; on which Maximus told his guards, who were near him, to take
down the names of all who acted thus, that they might he afterwards
brought to an account. He then commanded the wild beasts to be let loose
on the martyrs and, when they would not touch them, he ordered the
keepers to be scourged. A bear was then let out which had devoured three
men that day , but crouching at the feet of Andronicus, it began gently
to lick his wounds, and continued thus mildly to demean itself,
notwithstanding that the martyr plucked its hair and tried to irritate
the animal. Then the president, in a fury, ordered the lancers to run
the bear through the body
and Terentianus (the editor of the games) dreading the president's
anger, determined to make sure by letting in on the martyrs a lioness
which had been sent from Antioch by Herod, but the lioness, to the
terror of the spectators, began bounding to the place where they were
reclining; and when at length she came to the martyrs, as
it were kneeling down before Theracius, who dragged and annoyed her, she
seemed, by cowering down submissively, to attest her veneration,
conducting herself less like a lioness than a lamb. Shouts of admiration
burst forth from the whole amphitheatre, overpowering Maximus with
confusion , who screamed to the keepers to infuriate and goad on the
lioness. But the beast, with another bound, broke through the palisade
back to her and the Manager, Terentianus, was ordered to proceed,
without further interlude, with the gladiators; directing them first to
dispatch the martyrs with their
swords."
There are on record one or two extraordinary facts where animals
refused to touch slaves who were cast to them; but these were
exceptional cases of recognition and gratitude—a trait of nobility
"often found more practiced in the brute creation than in reasoning man.
Our readers are familiar with the story of Androclus and the Lion.
Seneca also mentions in his 2nd Book, and 9th chap., De
Beneficus, that a lion would not touch one of his keepers who was
condemned to be exposed to the wild beasts. In the life of St. Saba, a
fact similar to that of Androclus is mentioned, and the grateful lion
lived at the monastery with his monks.
These facts, interesting and strange as they may be, were not
miracles. There was no more of the supernatural about them than there is
in the fidelity of a dog, who would lose his life in defense of even an
unkind master. It is only the interposition of the divine power that can
stay the enraged animals in their spring upon a defenseless victim, or
make them crouch at the feet of persons they could never have seen
before, whilst at the same moment the very men who fed them become
victims of their rage. These wonders Almighty God worked in behalf of
His servants; and the great St. Eustachius, with his family, is another
instance of this wonderful preservation.
In the life of this great martyr we have one of the extraordinary
sacred romances of the second century, a conversion more wonderful than
St. Paul's, a life of trial and
affliction like the patriarch Job, and a glorious death by martyrdom,
the most terrible in the annals of persecution. No sensational novel of
modern days ever detailed the imaginary vicissitudes of life more
strange and more interesting than what we have here in reality, and
handed down to us with all the authority of history. There are men
accustomed to doubt of everything strange in history, and they smile
with sarcasm at our credulity in believing some of the most sacred
records of the past, but we will
first give an epitome of the extraordinary events of the life of St.
Eustachius, and then show that we are recording a scene from the pages
of ecclesiastical history, the truth of which there is no reason to
doubt.
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