apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

PERSECUTION OF TRAJAN. 67
over to stripes and lacerations and to bitter inflictions of all kinds of
tortures, and should afterwards receive the sentence of death by the
sword. And when this edict arrived at the city of Edessa of the Parthians,
it was the great festival on the 8th of Nisan, on the third day of
the week.'
[Sharbil is the chief priest of the heathen gods ; Barsamya
is the
Christian bishop. The Acts go on to relate how Sharbil was converted
by Barsamya and arraigned in consequence before the judge
Lysanias.
He confesses himself a Christian. He is in consequence subjected to
the most excruciating tortures. He i§ scourged with thongs
is ; hung
•
up and torn on his sides and face with combs is bent backward and
bound hand and foot with straps and scourged on the belly while in
this position; is hung up by his right arm until it is dislocated;
is burnt
with fire l)etween his eyes and on the cheeks ' until the stench of the
cautery rose in smoke'; is hung up, and torn with combs on his former
wounds, salt and vinegar being rubbed in is burnt
; again with lighted
candles 'passed about his face and the sides of his wounds'; has nails
of iron driven in between his is
eyes ; hung head downward and beaten
with whips ; is thrown into an iron chest and scourged with thongs
'until there remained not a sound place in him'; has pieces of wood
placed between his fingers and pressed
till the blood spurts out ;
with
several other tortures of a like kind. Between each torture there is an
altercation between him and the judge. At length sentence is
given
'that he be sav/n with a saw of wood, and when he is near to die, then
his head be taken off with the sword of the slayers.' Accordingly he
is executed with every aggravation of cruelty. His sister Babai catches
up his blood. She is seized by the executioners and dies in their hands.
The bodies are stolen by the brethren and buried ' on the fifth of Ilul
and on the sixth day of the week.' The document then proceeds as
follows ;]
'I wrote these Acts on paper, I Marinus and Anatolus, the notaries;
and we placed them in the archives of the city,
where the charters of
the kings are placed.'
'
But this Barsamya the bishop converted Sharbil the high-priest.
But he lived in the days of Fabianus [v. 1. Binus] bishop of Rome, etc'
Acts of Barsamya p.
63 sq.
'In the year 416 of the Kingdom of the Greeks, which is the fifteenth
year of the reign of the Autocrat, our Lord Trajan Caesar, in the Consulship
of Commodus and Cyrillus, in the month Ilul, on the fifth
day of
5—3