apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

520 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
members of the family were converted to Christianity in the second century, so that
Cfficilia was a Christian from her cradle, as the Acts state ;
that these Christian
Caecilii made over the subterranean vaults for the purposes of Christian burial, and
consequently they themselves were laid here ; that this was the origin of the Cemetery
of S. Callistus, or at least of parts of it ; that, inasmuch as we find a member of the
family bearing the name Prastextatus, we not improbably have here an explanation of
the name of a neighbouring Cemetery, Coemeterium Praetextati (comp. Bull, di
Archeol. Crist. 1872, p. 47 sq), and of the circumstance that her husband is said to
have been buried in this Cemetery ; that the main outlines of the story are true ; that
they were preserved by tradition in the family; and that some member of it dressed
up the tradition with the usual exaggerations, embellishments, and distortions, not
before the end of the fourth century, in the form which is presented in the extant
Acts.
This is a mere outline of De Rossi's theory, which ought to be considered in all
its subsidiary details before justice can be done to it. Without pledging ourselves to
every point in it, we may allow that (granting the preservation of a body under such
circumstances for so long a period of years, and this after all is the real difficulty) it
seems to explain all the facts of the case. We may therefore accept it provisionally,
until some better explanation is offered. Yet Aube most unaccountably (p. 352 sq),
though he devotes between 60 and 70 pages to the subject and even criticizes De
Rossi's opinion respecting the date of the martyrdom, entirely ignores both the history
of the supposed remains and the recent discoveries in the Cemetery of Callistus.
Lipsius (p. 181 sq) does indeed refer to these points; but he is far from doing justice
to the theory and does not examine it as a whole. Renan [Marc-Aurele p. 453 sq)
only touches the subject, so far as to question whether the Csecilii of the Christian
inscriptions bore the name '
by right of blood '.
But the question still remains. Granted that Ctecilia was a real person, when
was she martyred The Latin Acts, as we have seen, place the martyrdom under
Alexander Severus ;
the Greek IMensea (Nov. 22) under Diocletian. De Rossi (11.
p. I47 sq) falls back on a notice in Ado, who writes 'passa est autem beata virgo
Marci Aurelii et Commodi imperatorum temporibus ', i.e. A.D. 177
— 180, when father
and son were joint-emperors. This date had also been adopted, though hesitatingly,
by Tillemont {Mcmoires iii. pp. 260, 689 sq), who however suggests Sicily as the
place of martyrdom on the strength of a line in Venantius Fortunatus, Miscell. viii. 6
(p. 271 Migne), 'Caeciliam Sicula profert, Seleucia Teclam '. This date agrees with
the plural, which occurs several times in the Acts, 'domini',
'
imperatores ',
'
principes ',
and points to a divided sovereignty. Nor is there any force in the
objection of Aube (p. 402) that under M. Aurelius ' a high functionary of State ' would
not have used such an expression as ' domini nostri invictissimi imperatores ', these
adulatory forms only commencing to be used under the Severian dynasty and not
becoming common till towards the end of the 3rd century. For (i)
it is not asserted
that the Acts were contemporary or nearly contemporary documents, or that they
preserve the exact expressions used. The contention is that though the Acts were
written down in their present form some two or three centuries later, yet they have
preserved the tradition of a divided sovereignty. But (2) Fronto addresses
Antoninus Pius as 'sanctissime imperator' (p. 169), while his common expression
of M. Aurelius and L. Verus is 'dominus mens'. Still fuller testimony may be
obtained from the inscriptions. Have we not a sufficiently close parallel in such
language as C. I. L. vi. looi 'Optimo maximoque principi et cum summa benignitate