Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
From the death of Stephen there arises a grievous persecution of the Church; whence the faithful are scattered, and they convert Samaria, and in it Simon Magus: but he, wishing to buy the power of giving the Holy Spirit, is rebuked by Saint Peter. Finally, in verse 26, the Eunuch of Queen Candace is baptized by Philip.
Vulgate Text: Acts 8:1-40
1. And on that day there was a great persecution against the Church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all dispersed through the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the Apostles. 2. And devout men took order for Stephen's burial, and made great mourning over him. 3. But Saul made havoc of the Church, entering in from house to house, and dragging away men and women, committed them to prison. 4. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went about preaching the word of God. 5. And Philip going down to the city of Samaria, preached Christ unto them. 6. And the people with one accord were attentive to those things which were said by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. 7. For many of them who had unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, went out. 8. And many, taken with the palsy, and that were lame, were healed. 9. There was therefore great joy in that city. Now there was a certain man named Simon, who before had been a magician in that city, seducing the nation of Samaria, giving out that he was some great one: 10. To whom they all gave ear, from the least to the greatest, saying: This man is the power of God, which is called great. 11. And they were attentive to him, because, for a long time, he had bewitched them with his magical practices. 12. But when they had believed Philip preaching of the kingdom of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13. Then Simon himself believed also; and being baptized, he adhered to Philip. And being astonished, he wondered to see the signs and exceeding great miracles which were done. 14. Now when the Apostles, who were in Jerusalem, had heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John. 15. Who, when they were come, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit: 16. For He was not as yet come upon any of them; but they were only baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17. Then they laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Spirit. 18. And when Simon saw, that by the imposition of the hands of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, 19. Saying: Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I shall lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him: 20. Keep thy money to thyself, to perish with thee, because thou hast thought the gift of God may be purchased with money. 21. Thou hast no part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. 22. Do penance therefore for this thy wickedness; and pray to God, that perhaps this thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee. 23. For I see thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bonds of iniquity. 24. Then Simon answering, said: Pray you for me to the Lord, that none of these things which you have spoken may come upon me. 25. And they indeed having testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel to many countries of the Samaritans. 26. Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying: Arise, go towards the south, to the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza: this is desert. 27. And rising up, he went. And behold a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch, of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge over all her treasures, had come to Jerusalem to adore; 28. And he was returning, sitting in his chariot, and reading Isaias the prophet. 29. And the Spirit said to Philip: Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. 30. And Philip running thither, heard him reading the prophet Isaias. And he said: Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest? 31. Who said: And how can I, unless some man shew me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. 32. And the place of the Scripture which he was reading was this: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb without voice before his shearer, so openeth he not his mouth. 33. In humility his judgment was taken away. His generation who shall declare, for his life shall be taken from the earth? 34. And the eunuch answering Philip, said: I beseech thee, of whom doth the prophet speak this? of himself, or of some other man? 35. Then Philip, opening his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached unto him Jesus. 36. And as they went on their way, they came to a certain water; and the eunuch said: See, here is water: what doth hinder me from being baptized? 37. And Philip said: If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest. And he answering, said: I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. 38. And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch: and he baptized him. 39. And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord took away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more. And he went on his way rejoicing. 40. But Philip was found in Azotus; and passing through, he preached the gospel to all the cities, till he came to Caesarea.
Verse 1: There Was a Great Persecution
1. AND ON THAT DAY (that is, at that time, by synecdoche) THERE WAS A GREAT PERSECUTION IN THE CHURCH — ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, that is, against the Church, upon the Church. So the Zurich version. Dorotheus relates that two thousand Christians were slain together with Stephen, as I said a little earlier. Certainly Paul indicates that many were then slain, in Acts xxvi, 20, when he says: "And when they were put to death, I brought the sentence." This therefore was the first general persecution of the Church, which the Jews, her enemies, then stirred up, and from that time on were always most hostile. So Eusebius, in his Chronicle.
Many hold that at this time S. Magdalene, together with her sister S. Martha, her brother Lazarus, Maximin, Marcella, and Joseph of Arimathea (who afterwards crossed over to Britain, and preaching Christ there, rested in peace) were placed by the Jews on a ship without sails or oars, and by the guidance of God landed at Marseilles, and there propagated the faith of Christ. So Baronius, from the Acts of S. Magdalene and the Vatican History, in vol. I of his Annals and in the Martyrology on July 22 — although Lucius Dexter in his Chronicle holds that this happened later, namely in the year of Christ 48, and adds: "In the year of Christ 48, Mary Magdalene, illustrious for her miracles, wonderfully devoted to divine praises and contemplation, migrates into Gaul." So also many others write that she, in advanced age, departed from life in her eightieth year. For after she had completed her apostolate and converted the Massilians to Christ, by divine inspiration she withdrew to a mountain, to be for all coming ages an example of penance and contemplation; there for thirty years she lived an angelic life in prayers and tears. For this S. Michael the Archangel had foretold to her, saying: "God, whom you, O Magdalene, so greatly desire and always possess, wills you to water this place with abundant tears, that you may forever be an example of penance to coming ages." And again the angel who had led her through the places of Purgatory, replacing her by the cross in Baume, declared and foretold: "As long as your love and ours, Jesus, lived on earth for your sake, so long shall you too dwell in this cave;" as she herself, appearing to the anchorite Elias who dwelt in her Baume, related, as Sylvester Prierias of Bactara testifies, in Surius, on July 22. Indeed the Jews appear to have at once vented the venom of their hatred upon Magdalene above all others, and her family, on account of her singular love for Christ, and the marvelous grief which she had shown standing by the cross at the death of Christ.
AND THEY WERE ALL DISPERSED THROUGH THE REGIONS OF JUDAEA. — "All," namely the faithful who belonged to the Church just spoken of: therefore it was not only the elders who were dispersed, as Eusebius seems to wish in book II of his History, ch. 1, but the rest as well; nevertheless some who had powerful friends, or hid themselves in places of concealment, or offered themselves to dangers and prison, remained. "All" therefore understand suitably as those who could readily flee, that is to say, very many, the greater part, were dispersed, in Greek διεσπαρμένοι, that is, "they were sown abroad, as if sowing grain for making the supercelestial bread; and traversing the whole world, they disseminated the powers and efficacy of life-giving doctrine," says S. Athanasius, in the homily On Leaven.
Behold how great a good God draws out of evil — how great an enlargement of the Church and conversion of the Gentiles He brings out of persecution: thus "virtue grows greater when assailed by adversity." Hence Gregory of Nyssa, in his homily On S. Stephen, teaches that the persecution of S. Stephen made the Gospel known throughout the world. For on account of his slaying the disciples were scattered into other regions and converted them; and S. Stephen from heaven obtained their conversion by his prayers, and especially that S. Paul, once converted, should go about evangelizing the world. For thus, by the very efforts of the impious by which they try to hinder the works of God, God advances and accomplishes His own works, as I showed at chapter IV, 28. First therefore they were scattered "through the regions of Judaea and Samaria;" but soon they spread far beyond. Witness Luke, ch. xi, 19: "And those indeed," he says, "who had been scattered by the tribulation that had happened on account of Stephen, traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch." Whence at Antioch, as the number of the faithful grew, the disciples were first called Christians: he says the same in verse 26. Hence Baronius conjectures that the number of the dispersed reached fifteen thousand, and adds that they are the very ones to whom S. Peter and S. James address their epistles, saying: "To the strangers of the dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, etc.;" or: "To the twelve tribes which are in the dispersion, greeting."
Lucius Dexter agrees in his Chronicle, which he dedicates to S. Jerome (for he was his contemporary); for he has this: "In the year of Christ 35, after Stephen had been stoned, a great persecution arose at Jerusalem and its borders: more than fifteen thousand men who, at the preaching of the Apostles, had believed in Christ, were put to flight. Some come to Asia, others to Europe. Of these, more than five hundred, set forth from Cyprus by ship, reach the port of Carthago Spartaria of Spain: divided through the Spains, they announce the death and resurrection of Christ, and the life of Mary, to whom there was a frequent pilgrimage from Spain; and they fill the entire province on every side with wondrous and unheard-of tidings. From these were chosen the first Bishops and Pastors of cities by blessed James. It is doubtful whether they were all Jews. The Spanish Jews especially send legates to the Apostles, asking that some one of them come to them as soon as possible, who may instruct them more truly and more fully about the things related concerning Christ." Whence presently he adds that S. James set out for them in the year 37 of Christ, which was the third from His ascension into heaven: "S. James," he says, "the Apostle, son of Zebedee, having traversed the cities of Spain, and erected many Churches, and made Bishops from among the newcomers, left Peter as Bishop of Braga; and at her command and presence raised the first oratory to the Blessed Virgin upon the column at Saragossa." Yet the same Dexter adds shortly after that most of the other Apostles departed later for the provinces that had fallen to them, namely in the year of Christ 41. For so he says: "Returning from Spain, James visits Gaul, and Britain, and the towns of the Venetians, where he preaches, and returns to Jerusalem to consult the Blessed Virgin and Peter on most grave matters. James is present at the setting out for preaching of several of the Apostles; namely Matthias, Thomas, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, Jude, and Matthew, who under God's guidance set out this year, when in the same year he wrote his Gospel. In the same year John the Theologian, accompanied by the Blessed Virgin, sets out for Ephesus." And he adds that in the following year, which was 42 of Christ, James, returning to Jerusalem, was there slain by Herod.
Furthermore it is established that the Apostles were not dispersed in this persecution of S. Stephen. For Luke says, "except the Apostles." From this Bede here rightly refutes Pseudo-Melito, in his book On the Departure of the Blessed Virgin, who asserts that in the second year from the ascension of Christ the Apostles were dispersed and set out into their provinces. For by God's counsel and protection the Apostles remained at Jerusalem, that they might there found and establish the Church begun by Christ and by themselves, lest the Jews charge them with having scattered and overthrown her; but rather that she herself might in that very place succeed the Synagogue, and bury her. Hence again some find it scarcely probable, what certain authors in Baronius, in the Martyrology of July 25, hold — that in this dispersion S. James set out for Spain, and there evangelized not Gentile Spaniards but Jewish ones only: for he too was one of the Apostles whom Luke says were not dispersed. Unless you say that this one James is here excepted. Surely at Veroli in Italy S. Mary Salome, mother of S. James, is greatly venerated, whom they say then fled to that place from Jerusalem, and broken with toil and age, fell asleep there piously in the Lord; so Baronius and Ribadeneira in the Life of S. James. But of this I shall say more at chapter XII.
Verse 2: Devout Men Took Order for Stephen
2. AND THEY TOOK ORDER FOR STEPHEN. — The Syriac: they placed him in a coffin and buried him. The Greek κομίζω means to take care of, to carry, to bear, and is sometimes a funereal word, signifying to carry out and bury the dead. For this reason our Latin renders it, as more general so also more full, by curaverunt (took care of). For to take care of the funeral and body of the deceased is to wash it, lay it out, anoint, clothe, place in the bier, carry forth, bury, perform the funeral rites, and arrange every solemnity of the funeral. Furthermore the Greek συνεκόμισαν, that is, "they cared for it together," or "jointly," as Pagninus and the Zurich version translate, signifies that the devout men by unanimous consent and combined effort arranged the funeral. Cajetan interprets less correctly that they took care of S. Stephen's funeral together with the persecution. Others render it: "they bore him together," "they carried him forth together," as we see funerals borne out with many bearing them on their shoulders at once.
DEVOUT MEN — εὐλαβεῖς, that is, pious, religious. So Pagninus and the Zurich version. For "fear of God" in Scripture is the same as piety, religion, and worship of God: and "to fear God" is to venerate and worship Him devoutly. The chief of these was Gamaliel: for as he himself revealed to Lucian (who writes the same in the Invention of S. Stephen), the Jews cast the body of Stephen out into the field, that it might be devoured by beasts and birds; wherefore for a day and a night it lay there unburied, and untouched by beasts and birds at God's command; but Gamaliel on the following night sent faithful and religious men to convey it secretly to his own villa, which from his name was called Caphargamala, twenty miles distant from Jerusalem, and there he laid him in a new tomb, making mourning for him for 70 days.
Note here that it is the proper work of the pious to bury the dead, for which in Scripture Tobias is praised, and the inhabitants of Jabes Galaad for burying Saul, 2 Kings ii, 4. There is celebrated in the Martyrology on December 8 S. Eutychianus the Pontiff, because with his own hands he buried 342 martyrs. The same regarding the martyrs was decreed by Pius I, Pontiff and Martyr, in the year of the Lord 166, in his second epistle to Justus, Bishop of Vienna, which exists in the first volume of the Bibliotheca of the Holy Fathers: "Take care," he says, "of the bodies of the holy Martyrs, as members of God, as the Apostles took care of Stephen." And he adds: "Visit the prisons of the Saints, lest any grow cool in the faith. Test the holy martyrdoms by the Holy Spirit. That they may persevere in faith, be at hand as an exhorter. Let the whole people be protected by your sanctity. Know, most blessed colleague, that it has been revealed to me that I shall soon make the end of this life:" for in the following year he was crowned with martyrdom.
AND THEY MADE GREAT MOURNING OVER HIM. — The Syriac: they bewailed him vehemently. You will ask, who and of what sort was this mourning? I answer first, it was grief and tears. "For who," says Chrysostom, "would not have wept, seeing that gentle lamb stoned and lying dead?" For the pious mourn their dead, not as though they had wholly perished, as worldly men do, who, when the body is extinguished, believe it is all over with their salvation, whom the Apostle reproves, 1 Thess. iv, 1; but out of love and the affection of charity, because they see themselves bereft of their presence, help, and consolation. They mourn Stephen, says Œcumenius, because they perceived themselves deprived of so great an advance, so great a patron, so great a teaching, and so many signs. Thus Martha and Magdalene mourned Lazarus, and indeed Christ Himself did, John xi. Thus Joseph mourned Jacob, Gen. l. The Israelites Moses, Deut. last chapter, and Joshua, last chapter. This is what the Wise Man warns, Eccli. xxii, 10: "Weep over the dead, for his light has failed, etc. Weep but a little for the dead, for he is at rest, etc. The mourning for the dead is seven days: but for a fool and an impious one, all the days of their life." Wherefore in no way to feel for the dead, nor to grieve, is misanthropy, Timonian and beastly; but to grieve excessively is womanish and pagan; to mourn with moderation is human and pious. Furthermore the Jews in funeral mourning bewailed not only with mournful voice and tears, but also with gestures, clapping their hands, gripping their arms, beating their breasts, etc. And this is what the Greek κοπετός properly signifies, from κόπτω, that is, I strike, I beat. Hence they employed flute-players, who, modulating a sad song, would stir up wailing and lamentation, as is evident from Matt. ix, 23.
Second, this mourning signifies the funeral pomp — namely, dark garments (for at a funeral all things were dusky; whence even the word funus, according to Festus, took its name), spices and ointments with which they anointed the body; the censing, the throngs of mourners, the funeral torches, the obsequies, the distribution of alms to the poor, the funeral banquet, etc.; and beyond these, prayers and sacrifices for the deceased. But Stephen did not need these things, since he was a martyr: "For he does an injury to the martyr who prays for the martyr, by whose prayers we ourselves ought to be commended," says S. Augustine, tract 84 on John. "Thus there was great and strong mourning of all Egypt for Jacob: Egypt did not command long tears, but displayed the ornament of the funeral," says S. Jerome to Paula, consoling her on the death of her daughter Blesilla, where he also adds: "Great piety toward one's own — that is, tears too excessively shed — is impiety toward God."
Third, this mourning signifies the procession with lighted candles, the chanting of psalms and hymns, both of the clergy and of the people, customarily employed at a funeral, even of the Saints. Whence Nicetas, in the oration On the Martyrdom and Invention of S. Stephen, relates that the Apostles themselves, with a great gathering of the faithful, with psalms and hymns translated and buried Stephen, making great mourning for forty days. So also S. Jerome, epistle 53 to Riparius, writes that the Apostles bestowed care upon the body of Stephen: for this funeral was not that of any ordinary believer, but of a martyr, and indeed the first and most illustrious. Therefore this mourning signifies a religious pomp, but a glorious one, owed and bestowed upon the triumph of a martyr. Wherefore S. Jerome rightly urges this passage for the veneration of holy Relics in his Against Vigilantius, in the epistle already cited: "Then are the relics of the martyrs unclean? And what did the Apostles suffer, that they should escort the unclean body of Stephen with such pomp of funeral, and make great mourning for him, that their grief might be turned into our joy?" To the pomp of this mourning belongs the martyrium, that is, the tomb and monument of the martyr, to which the faithful are accustomed to gather for the sake of prayer.
Thus in the Acts of S. Laurence, who was the equal and likeness of S. Stephen, both in the diaconate and in fortitude and zeal and in the glory of martyrdom, we read that, when on the gridiron he was breathing out his soul to God, S. Justin the priest, Hippolytus, and other faithful — especially the poor, among whom by command of S. Sixtus the Pontiff he had distributed the wealth of the Church — gathered, and mourned him with weeping, and with funereal and solemn pomp bore his body forth to the Veranus field, and erected there an honored tomb for him, beside which all stayed for three days in fastings, nightly vigils, and prayers, asking that by his help benefits be given them from the Lord God: when these were finished, S. Justin celebrated Mass, at which all communicated; and so he dismissed them, lest they be seized by the persecutors, because the rumor of this gathering and pomp was already spreading.
Similar were the mournings and funeral pomps of other martyrs, as may be seen in their Acts. Finally, to this belongs the annual memorial and celebration of S. Stephen and the holy Martyrs, instituted and sanctioned by the Apostles for the faithful, as S. Clement testifies, in book VIII of the Constitutions, ch. xxxiii. You will read similar things of S. Polycarp and the Martyrs of Lyons, in Eusebius, book V of his History, ch. xv, and book V, ch. 1 and following. Note these things against heretics, in favor of the cult of the Saints and of their relics. Cajetan must also here be read with caution, who thinks that this funeral and mourning for Stephen was merely Jewish. For from the Acts this is plainly false.
Again, from this passage Baronius rightly traces the origin and rite of the funerals of Christians: "By the example," he says, "of the Apostles, the praiseworthy custom remained in the Church of God of caring for the bodies of the deceased, that they should be embalmed first of all with spices; whence Tertullian: If the products of Arabia are sought, let the Sabaeans know that their wares are more abundantly and dearly expended for the burial of Christians than for the fumigations of the gods. Gregory of Nyssa has these things at the funeral of Meletius: Clean linens, and silken cloths, an abundance of ointments and spices, the bounty of an adorned and honorable woman, etc. Gregory Nazianzen buried his brother Caesarius not without myrrh. Of which ancient custom Prudentius too treats in these verses:
"It is the custom to spread out linens shining with bright whiteness, / and the body, sprinkled with the myrrh of Saba, / is preserved by the medicament."
And at the end: "We will cherish the safe bones / with violets and abundant foliage, / and the inscription and the cold stones / we will sprinkle with liquid fragrance."
Furthermore, that the funeral procession was wont to be accompanied by lighted candles and chant, by ancient custom received among Christians, is testified by many examples; such as what Pontius the Deacon has of the funeral of S. Cyprian the martyr in these words: "From there with candles and scholars he was buried with great triumph in the courtyard of a certain procurator named Candidus." Which moreover Gregory of Nyssa relates as having been done at the funeral of Meletius, when he says: "In what manner on either side, as it were all fiery from the torches they bore, in continuous and perpetual flow, they extended as far as the eye is wont to see at its longest." Gregory Nazianzen, of his own mother bearing torches at the funeral of her son Caesarius, has this: "With manifold chant of hymns she is led forth, and with crowded pomp is brought to the seat of the martyrs, and is honored by the holy hands of her parents, the mother bearing lighted torches." He has plainly the same when he treats of the funeral of Constantius, in the first oration Against Julian the Apostate. The same Gregory of Nyssa above attests this also when he mentions the funeral of S. Macrina his sister. The same Eusebius does at the funeral of Constantine; and so too Jerome of the funeral of S. Paula has this: "Borne by the hands of the Bishops, who set their necks beneath the bier, while other Pontiffs led candles and lamps, others choirs of chanters, she was placed in the midst of the church of the cave of the Saviour." Athanasius felicitously expounds and proves the same when he says: "If anyone shall depart this life, even though he be exposed in the air unburied, do not omit to light oil and wax at the tomb, having invoked Christ as God: for they are accepted by God, and bring back with them very great recompense: oil and wax are a holocaust; and the oblation of unbloody victims is a propitiation." What of Chrysostom? "What," he says, "pray, do the burning lamps mean? Do we not accompany them as athletes? And what of the hymns? Do we not glorify God, and give Him thanks, because He has now crowned the deceased, and, having lifted him beyond uncertainty, keeps him with Himself?" And elsewhere he often commends as most praiseworthy the Christian custom in celebrating the obsequies of the dead. That the deceased were also accustomed to be honored with the burning of incense, and that to have omitted this was reckoned a grave offense, the Acts of the holy Council of Chalcedon sufficiently declare: where there is recited the bill of accusation against Dioscorus, presented by the deacon Ischyrion, in which among other things it is reckoned a crime that, by his avarice, at the funeral of Peristeria, a most pious woman who had bequeathed her goods to holy places, the offering of incense (so far as concerned him) was omitted.
Furthermore, after 380 years, namely in the year of Christ 415, which was the 14th of Pope Innocent I, the 21st of the Emperor Honorius, the relics of S. Stephen were found, through the revelation of Gamaliel appearing to Lucian the presbyter, who recorded the matter at length, and from him Bede, Marcellinus, Gennadius, Nicephorus, and Baronius, in the year just named. Lucian adds: "John, Bishop of Jerusalem (to whom, as to the Bishop of the place in which the tomb was, Gamaliel had ordered Lucian to entrust the translation of the body of S. Stephen, who was buried) took with him two other Bishops, Eleutherius of Sebaste, and Eleutherius of Jericho, and they came to the place. When they had opened the case of the lord Stephen, immediately an earthquake occurred, and such sweetness and fragrance of odor came forth from it as no man remembers ever to have heard or perceived; so that we thought we were placed in the pleasantness of paradise. For a multitude of people was present with us, among whom were very many sick with various ailments. And in that very hour, from the odor of his sweetness, seventy-three souls were cured: by some demons were put to flight; in others the flow of blood was stanched; others were freed from scrofula and boils; others were healed of the strangury, others of tertians and quartans; from some the fever departed, from others the royal sickness; some were cured of headache and migraine; some were freed from hidden pain of the bowels; and many other healings men experienced, which it would be long to enumerate. Kissing the sacred relics, they closed them again. And then with psalms and hymns they bore the relics of Blessed Stephen into the holy church of Sion, where also he had been ordained Archdeacon, etc. There was then a continuous and unending drought; but at that same hour great rain came down, and the earth was abundantly drenched." Thus Lucian. S. Augustine mentions the same in sermon 31 On Divers Subjects: "His body lay hidden," he says, "for so long a time: it came forth when God willed, it has enlightened the lands, has done such great miracles: dead, he raises the dead to life, because he is not dead." For the same S. Augustine, in book XXII of the City of God, ch. viii, relates that through the relics of S. Stephen six dead were called back to life. For Paulus Orosius, when he was making a pilgrimage in the Holy Land, fell upon the time of the invention of S. Stephen, and brought his relics to S. Augustine in Africa, who distributed them through various Churches. Another part Orosius took with him to Minorca, his third island; and into his own Spain: thence they were distributed into Lusitania and France, where they shone forth with many miracles, as Gregory of Tours testifies, in the book On the Glory of the Martyrs, ch. xxxiii, and in book I of his History, ch. xxxi.
Again in the year of the Lord 439, which was the 32nd of the Emperor Theodosius the Younger, Eudoxia his wife, having gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, brought with her relics of S. Stephen back to Constantinople, and placed them in the martyrium, that is, the temple, of S. Laurence the martyr. So Baronius from Marcellinus and others, who also adds from Cedrenus: "When the relics of the right hand of S. Stephen had been brought to Chalcedon, on that very night Pulcheria Augusta (sister of the Emperor Theodosius) saw S. Stephen saying to her: Behold, you have obtained what you sought by your prayers, and I have come to Chalcedon. And so she, taking her brother with her, set out to meet the sacred relics, and when they were brought into the palace, she founded a magnificent temple to Blessed Stephen, and in it deposited the relics." Here is true that which Isaiah foretold of Christ and of Christ's followers, ch. xi, vers. 10: "His sepulchre shall be glorious." And the Psalmist, Psalm cxxxviii: "Your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored."
Furthermore, the relics of S. Stephen, translated to Rome and placed in the monument of S. Laurence, gave to the city and the world a noble pair of archdeacons and martyrs, as if twins, and those most luminous eyes of the Church. So it is recorded in the sacred tables of the Martyrology on May 7, where we read thus: "The translation of the body of S. Stephen the Protomartyr, which, under Pope Pelagius, was brought from Constantinople to the city, and placed in the tomb of S. Laurence the martyr in the Veranus field, is there venerated with great devotion of the pious." They say that the body of S. Laurence, when S. Stephen was coming, miraculously moved itself, and yielded the place to the arriving guest, and received him into its own niche. So Pompeius Ugonius relates in the Roman Stations, station 19; Petrus de Natalibus, book IV, ch. xiii, and others, whom Octavius Pancirolius cites and follows in his Treasures of Rome, second edition, when he treats of the temple of S. Laurence outside the walls. And this is the tradition of the faithful at Rome.
What wonder? S. Stephen has flashed forth with so many miracles throughout the whole world, that S. Augustine, in book XXII of the City of God, ch. viii, after recounting many, at last overcome by their multitude, forbears to recount the rest. "For if," he says, "I should now wish to write the miracles of healings, to be silent of others, which through this Martyr, that is, the most glorious Stephen, have been done in the Colony of Calama and in our own, very many books would have to be made; nor yet could all be collected." A continual and perennial miracle of S. Stephen is this: that his blood, congealed in a glass ampoule, was brought from Africa to Naples by S. Gaudiosus the Bishop, and is now deposited in the church of S. Gaudiosus; as often as it is exposed on the altar during the solemnities of Mass, it liquefies and flows as if newly shed. The citizens of Naples are eyewitnesses.
Finally, when the Christians invaded Jerusalem, S. Stephen seems to have delivered it to them. For as William of Tyre relates, in book VIII of the Sacred War, ch. xvi and following, when the Christians, exhausted by the assault of the city, were withdrawing and falling apart, "Behold, in things desperate divine power was at hand. For from the Mount of Olives a certain soldier (perhaps S. Stephen, or an angel sent by him), who however afterwards did not appear, by waving a splendid and shining shield, gave a sign to our legions that they should return upon the same point and renew the engagement. There was added the oracle of a holy man who, dwelling on the Mount of Olives, had foretold that the city would be captured on that day." Cheered by which sign, the leader Godfrey of Bouillon was the first, with his brother Eustace, to mount the walls; and others following him, at his command immediately broke open the gate of St. Stephen, which faces the Mount of Olives, and through it led the whole army of the Christians into the city. And so by Godfrey and the Christians, Jerusalem was captured in the year of Christ 1099, on July 15, the sixth day of the week, on which Christ formerly, dying in the same place, had triumphed over death and all His enemies, that He might prepare and grant this victory to the Christians over the infidels.
Behold how great a glory in heaven and on earth, by the labor and fervor of seven months (for about that many flowed from his diaconate to the twenty-sixth of December on which he met martyrdom), St. Stephen attained. "Being made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled long times." Truly that one said: "It is better to die as a lion than to live as a donkey:" it is better to live a few years in the fervor and efficacy of heroic deeds than many in lukewarmness or torpor. Christ, evangelizing for only three years, founded the Church to endure through all ages. Preaching for as many years in a vehement spirit, St. John the Baptist crushed the ships of Tharsis, namely the swollen and hard hearts of the Jews, and obtained extraordinary glory. St. Xavier, having performed his apostolate in India for eleven years, with how many and how great peoples did he imbue the faith? How many marvels and miracles did he accomplish? How great a name and eternal honor did he procure for himself? Gaspar Barzaeus, having spent seven years at Goa and Hormuz, how much did he accomplish? How many labors did he endure? How many infidels did he lead to the faith, how many faithful to piety and sanctity? Whoever reads his Life written by Fr. Nicholas Trigault is amazed. On the contrary, how many Saints, fervent at the beginning, grew cold by the length of time — indeed they fell and gave a stain to their glory, as did Solomon, Tertullian, Origen, etc.
Verse 3: Saul Made Havoc of the Church
3. AND SAUL WAS DEVASTATING. — Behold, Benjamin — namely Paul, sprung from Benjamin — like a ravening wolf rages and rampages against the flock of the Lord, to such a degree that he not only ransacks the men but also the Christian women house by house, and drags them off to prisons for torments and death, as he himself when converted confesses in chap. XXII, v. 4. For what we have as "through houses," in Greek is κατὰ τοὺς οἴκους, which the Zurich version translates "household by household"; Pagninus, "through each individual house": he searched, then, every house and corner, that he might find the Christians fleeing the persecution and seeking hiding places, and snatch them off to chains, just as the praetors and lictors of the Catholics in England now do.
Verse 4: They That Were Dispersed Went About Preaching
4. THOSE WHO HAD BEEN SCATTERED WENT ABOUT, EVANGELIZING. — Behold how providently and piously those first faithful, by the prompting of God, sold their goods and laid the price at the feet of the Apostles, chap. iv, v. 34: for otherwise those goods, in this persecution, the Jews would have plundered them; and the faithful, occupied with protecting their possessions, with selling or preserving them, would not have been ready for flight, so as to be scattered abroad to evangelize other nations. But now, with these goods sold, they flee unencumbered and evangelize, and they utter that saying of Bias: "All my goods I carry with me."
Verse 5: Philip Going Down to Samaria
5. PHILIP — not the Apostle, as Polycrates would have it in Eusebius, Book V of the History, chap. xxiv: for the Apostles remained at Jerusalem, as Luke said in v. 1; but the Deacon of chap. vi, v. 5, the first after St. Stephen and his heir, says the Gloss. Hence he could not lay hands on the Samaritans; but for this purpose, in v. 14, the apostles Peter and John are sent. This Philip, however, although a Deacon, is from time to time called Apostle, as by Tertullian, Book On Baptism, chap. viii; St. Augustine, Book I On Christian Doctrine, in the Proem, and others, because he went about the regions evangelizing. Thus also Paul, Barnabas, and others like them are called Apostles, even though they were not of the number of the twelve Apostles. Furthermore, from this evangelization which Philip first carried out in Samaria, he received the name of Evangelist, chap. xxi, v. 8; so Baronius.
Going down. — For Jerusalem was situated in a higher place than Samaria.
INTO THE CITY OF SAMARIA — that is, into the city of Samaria, which was the metropolis of the province of Samaria, just as it was of the kingdom of Israel, that is, of the ten tribes, and accordingly gave it its own name. It is sixteen leagues distant from Jerusalem; it was situated on Mount Someron, from which it received its name, just as the mountain itself received its name from its possessor Semer, III Kings xvi, 24. Afterwards, in honor of Augustus Caesar, to whom Herod the Ascalonite, that is the Infanticide, dedicated it, it was called Sebaste, that is Augusta: for it was magnificent and proud in the construction of its walls, houses, palaces, and likewise in its wealth and delights. In this city are buried the prophets Elisha and Obadiah, likewise John the Baptist, at whose tombs when St. Paula had arrived, she trembled greatly, dismayed by the wonders. For she saw demons roaring with various tortures, and before the sepulchres of the Saints, possessed people howling like wolves, barking with the voices of dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, bellowing like bulls, others spinning their heads and touching the ground behind their backs with their crowns, says St. Jerome in the Epitaph of St. Paula, and on Obadiah chap. 1.
HE PREACHED CHRIST TO THEM. — Christ commanded that, while He was alive, they should not preach to the Gentiles, nor to the Samaritans, Matt. x, 5; but when about to go to heaven He permitted, indeed commanded, the Gospel to be preached to them, Acts 1, 8. The first therefore after the Jews to receive the faith of Christ were the Samaritans, because they themselves were also reckoned among the Jews under the general name, although in faith and religion, as in kingdom, so also in schism they were divided from them by Jeroboam, their first king, who withdrew himself and his people from Rehoboam, son of Solomon. Whence also Christ while living, in passing through, had preached to them for two days and converted many, John chap. IV, 40. That Philip was sent to Samaria to preach by the Apostles, St. Cyprian relates, Epistle 37 to Jubaianus.
Verse 6: They Were Attentive
6. THEY WERE GIVING HEED, — not only by listening, but also by believing. So the Syriac, and it is clear from what follows.
Verse 7: Many Who Had Unclean Spirits
7. FOR MANY OF THOSE WHO HAD UNCLEAN SPIRITS. — So read with the Roman text, that is, many spirits of those having spirits, that is, many spirits of demoniacs, or possessed persons, came out crying out, namely from the demoniacs or possessed persons. The adjective "many" therefore does not refer to the substantive "men having spirits," that is, possessed persons, but to "spirits," which follows; this therefore is here understood, and must be repeated. For the spirit does not come forth from itself, but from the possessed person. Our (version) reads πολλά, namely πνεύματα, that is many spirits in the nominative; now they read πολλῶν, in the genitive, that is "of many," which some think to translate more clearly in this way: "For of many having unclean spirits, they came out crying." Whence Pagninus and the Zurich version translate: "For unclean spirits came out from many who were possessed by them." But the sense of all comes to the same thing. It is a Hebraism: for the Hebrews, often more intent on the matter than on the words, leave some word from those preceding or following to be understood.
Verse 9: Simon, Who Before Had Been a Magician
9. Simon, who before had been (and even now was, as will shortly be evident, but outwardly pretended that he wished to be converted and become a Christian) a Magus in the city. In Greek, μαγεύων, that is, practicing magic, performing magical works, displaying magical illusions and seducing. It is a hendiadys, as if to say: By his magical arts he was seducing many. In Greek it is ἐξιστῶν τὸ ἔθνος, that is, stupefying and as it were carrying the populace into ecstasy. Our (version), in v. 11, translates, "driving mad."
SAYING THAT HE WAS SOME GREAT ONE, — namely a Prophet, or an angel, or a demigod, indeed God and the Son of God. Hence St. Jerome, on chap. xxiv of St. Matthew, says that this Simon broke forth into such pride that he said: "I am the Word of God, I am the comely one, I am the Paraclete, I am almighty, I am all things of God." And St. Augustine, Book On Heresies, chap. 1, says that he called himself Christ and Jove, that is the Messiah of the Jews and the God of the Gentiles, that he might be regarded as God by both. St. Augustine adds: "He said, he claims, that on Mount Sinai he had given the Law of Moses to the Jews in the person of the Father; in the time of Tiberius he had appeared seemingly in the person of the Son; afterwards he himself had come upon the Apostles in tongues of fire as the Holy Spirit; but that Christ had neither come, nor suffered anything from the Jews." Note here that he said some of these things after the Gospel had been heard and baptism received. For before that he did not know, since he was a Jew and a Samaritan; indeed, he had not even heard the name of the Paraclete, or of the Word or speech of God; but he had learned both from Philip and the Apostles evangelizing, by whom he was baptized, and became an apostate and heretic — indeed a heresiarch, and the first of all who arose after Christ. Hence by St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Trallians, he is called the "firstborn of Satan;" and by St. Augustine, Epiphanius, Philaster, and others who write on heresies, he is placed in the first rank among heresiarchs. Therefore let Luther, Calvin, and the rest of the heresiarchs glory in that Magus, who had dealings with a demon, as their leader and chorus-master — they who likewise had familiar demons, partly visibly, partly invisibly, and from him drew their dogmas, as I have shown on I Tim. chap. IV, 1. Hence also that magic was cultivated by the early heretics, the followers of Simon, namely Mark, Menander, Basilides, the Carpocratians, the Gnostics, St. Irenaeus testifies, Book I, chap. viii; Epiphanius, Against the Gnostics; Tertullian, Book On Prescription, just as the same is praised and defended by our moderns. Indeed Luther, the father and prince of the heresies of this age, in his book On the Corner Mass, written in Saxon, openly professes that the evil spirit is known and familiar to him, and that he has eaten more than a peck of salt with him. Jacobus Lingaeus relates the same in the Life of Luther.
Note again here that pride is the source of heresy; for this drove Simon to vaunt such and so great things about himself, and to make himself God. The same drove the other heresiarchs to mix in new errors, that they might be regarded as the inventors of them, and might draw after them throngs of disciples. The proper sign therefore and as it were brand of a heretic is pride; just as that of an orthodox man, especially of a teacher, is humility. For he follows St. Peter and Paul, who were most humble, indeed Christ, who "when He was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal to God," that is, He did not seize divinity, as Simon did; "but emptied Himself, made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man," Phil. II, 7. Finally, see here the hatred of the devil against Christ and the Church, and on the contrary Christ's power overcoming all his weapons. For the devil raised up enemies against Christ — Annas, Caiaphas, the Scribes and Pharisees — and rivals: Theudas in Judaea, Judas the Galilean in Galilee, this Simon in Samaria, Apollonius of Tyana in Asia; but all these Christ and His Apostles supplanted by their wisdom, sanctity and miracles. Let the holy and zealous man who undertakes great things look to this same thing, let him reckon that he has provoked the devil and all hell to a duel: for the companion of virtue is envy, both of the devil and of malevolent men. Where Baronius rightly notes that the demon is the ape of Christ. For just as Christ first created Simon — whom He afterwards called Peter — as His Apostle, so the devil set against him first as antagonist his pseudo-apostle, Simon Magus; and therefore Simon Peter was sent by Christ and the Apostles to Samaria, that he might rout Simon Magus.
Symbolically: Simon Magus, namely the proud and foolish man, boasts himself to be someone, while he is no one and nothing. On the contrary, the humble and wise man says he is nothing and no one, while through God he is all things. So thought the prudent Ulysses, who by calling himself No-One escaped the hands of the Pelopides. For, as Homer narrates, Odyssey IX, Ulysses with his companions was captured by Polyphemus the Cyclops, and seeking from him the favor of returning freely to his homeland, when asked by Polyphemus "what his name was?" he answered: Οὖτις, that is, "I am called No-One." To whom Polyphemus said: "I will eat No-One last of his companions, but the others first: take this as our gift." Ulysses then made Polyphemus drunk and blinded him while drunk. Awaking, he cried out and called the other Cyclopes, saying: "Help, No-One has blinded me by trickery." To whom they said: "If no one is doing violence to you when you are alone, you cannot escape the disease of great Jove," as if to say: If no man, but Jupiter strikes you, we are unwilling to fight against Jove to bring you aid. Thus Ulysses escaped covered by a ram's skin. In a similar manner the humble man escapes the hands of the Cyclopes, that is, of demons. Hence St. Anthony, when he had seen the whole world up to heaven full of the snares of demons, and anxiously asked, "Who shall escape these snares?" he heard, "Humility." So St. Athanasius, in his Life.
Verse 10: This Man Is the Power of God
10. THIS IS THE POWER OF GOD, WHICH IS CALLED GREAT. — The Zurich version, "that one is that great power of God," as if to say: Simon is the power of God, not just any sort, but the greatest and most sublime. Hence Theodoret, Book I On Heretical Fables, asserts that Simon called himself an infinite power, that is, almighty God. And Clement of Rome, Book II Recognitions, "An exalted power above God the Creator." Hear Tertullian, Book On Prescription, chap. xlvi: "Simon Magus, he says, dared to call himself the highest power, that is, the highest God: but the world was instituted by his angels, etc. After him Menander, his disciple, likewise a Magus, saying the same things as Simon himself: whatever Simon had said himself was, Menander said he himself was, denying that anyone could have salvation unless he had been baptized in his name." And Irenaeus, Book IX, chap. xx: "He (Simon Magus) has been glorified by many as God, and taught that he himself is the one who among the Jews indeed appeared as the Son of God, in Samaria descended as the Father, but among the rest of the Gentiles came as the Holy Spirit. And that he is the most sublime power, that is, He who is the Father over all things. He led around with him a certain Selene, saying that she was the first conception of his mind, through whom in the beginning he conceived in mind to make Angels and Archangels," etc. See here the disposition of heresiarchs, namely how carnal and womanizing they are. Irenaeus continues regarding Simon's teaching: "Since the angels were governing the world, because each of them desired the principate, he had come for the correction of things, and had descended transfigured and made like to the virtues, powers, and angels, that even among men he might appear as a man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judaea, though he had not suffered. And that the prophets had spoken prophecies inspired by the angels who fashioned the world: wherefore those who have hope in him and his Selene need no longer concern themselves with these, and may freely do what they wish: for according to his grace men are saved, but not according to just works." These things he did after receiving baptism, and substituted himself for Christ Himself. This pride Simon learned from his father the devil, concerning whom St. Anthony in St. Athanasius: "I once saw, he says, a devil lofty in body, who dared to call himself the power and providence of God, and said to me: What do you wish to be given you by me, Anthony? But I, redoubling spittle with the greatest force into his mouth, hurled myself at him entirely armed in the name of Christ; and immediately that one of lofty appearance vanished from between my hands."
Verse 11: On Account of Which
11. ON ACCOUNT OF WHICH, — that is, because, on this account that: it is clear from the Greek.
Verse 12: Of the Kingdom of God
12. Of the kingdom of God. — The kingdom of God is the Church, both militant, in which God reigns through grace in the faithful; and triumphant, in which God reigns in the same through glory. Philip and the Apostles preached both.
THEY WERE BAPTIZED IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST. — So the Roman text, as if to say: They were baptized with a baptism, not of John, not of the Pharisees, but of Christ, in which among the other persons of the Holy Trinity, the name of the Son of God, namely Jesus Christ, is invoked. See what was said on chap. II, v. 38.
The modern Greek codices read and punctuate this differently, namely: "But when they had believed Philip evangelizing concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized": so the Zurich version, Pagninus, and others. So also our Latin version can be taken and punctuated, if you put a comma before "they were baptized." For then the sense will be, as if to say: When they had believed Philip evangelizing concerning the kingdom of God — namely that it must be acquired in the name, that is through faith and invocation of the name of Jesus Christ — they were baptized.
Verse 13: Then Simon Himself Believed
13. He believed, — note, that is, he pretended to believe, both that he might not be deserted by his own disciples who believed Philip, and that he might receive the power of speaking various tongues and working miracles, as he saw Philip and the faithful had received it in baptism. Hear Eusebius, Book II of the History, chap. 1: "Simon craftily insinuated himself into the religion of Christ, and so cunningly feigned faith in Christ until he was washed by the laver of baptism," and he adds that the same was wont to be practiced even in his own time by his Simonian followers. Hence St. Augustine, treatise 6 on John, says that Simon entered the Church like a raven. The same is the opinion of St. Jerome, writing on chap. xvi of Ezekiel; Irenaeus, Book I, chap. xx; St. Gregory, on the iv penitential Psalm; Ambrose, Book II On Penance, chap. iv; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 3; Chrysostom, homily 60 to the People, who says Simon approached the faith and the Church, just as Judas at the Last Supper approached the Eucharist.
Note: Scripture often speaks in the manner of men, for it accommodates itself to them: for men judge and speak of things and persons as they outwardly appear, since they cannot see through the inner and hidden things of the heart. Thus then Simon is here said to have believed, because outwardly he professed to believe; granted that he was feigning this, and that in truth inwardly in his heart he did not believe.
MIRACLES (POWERS), — δυνάμεις, that is powerful and miraculous works. See what was said on chap. II, v. 22.
HE WAS AMAZED, — both because Philip did greater things than Simon himself; and because the miracles of Philip were true and real, while most of Simon's were illusions by which he deceived the eyes of men, so that he might seem to do what he really did not do; and finally because he saw at Philip's baptism the Holy Spirit visibly descending upon the baptized in the form of fire, tongues, etc. Which truly, as something new and divine, was supremely amazing and venerable. For what is more wonderful, what of greater dignity, what more desirable, than that almighty God should descend into a man, dwell in him, speak, work?
Verse 14: They Sent Peter and John
14. THEY SENT. — Peter is sent here, not as an inferior, who is commanded; but as head and superior, who is asked to undertake this so holy and arduous journey, for the glory of God and the propagation of the Church, in the way that the commonwealth asks the king to set out on an embassy of the greatest moment: as when St. Leo the Pope, to satisfy the prayers of the faithful, set out to Attila, and turned away his fury from the Roman Church. Thus the Father sent the Son into the world, and with Him sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; granted that all three persons in the Divinity are equal in authority and glory. Hence Cajetan: "The Apostles, he says, send Peter not by command, but by fraternal charity and impulse, as many brothers sometimes send the elder; and chapter members send the Bishop to the Pope, or to the Emperor." Furthermore Peter rather than another is sent, both that as pastor of the Church he might receive that external nation; and that as head of all, he might unite the Samaritans with the Jews, from whom they had previously been separated by an implacable schism; and that he might set himself in opposition to Simon Magus, the first future heresiarch.
Verse 15: They Prayed for Them
15. THEY PRAYED FOR THEM, — namely that they might suitably dispose themselves for the sacrament of Confirmation, and that in it the Holy Spirit might visibly descend upon them.
THAT THEY MIGHT RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT, — namely the fullness of the Holy Spirit, through the visible sign concerning which we shall speak shortly: for otherwise they had already in baptism invisibly received the Holy Spirit, through sanctifying grace. Hence follows:
Verse 16: He Had Not Yet Come Upon Any of Them
16. FOR HE HAD NOT YET COME UPON ANY OF THEM. — In Greek ἐπιπεπτωκώς, that is, He had fallen upon, namely through a visible sign: for although the Holy Spirit fell visibly in baptism upon the first believers, at the first sermons of St. Peter, chap. II, v. 41, and chap. iv, v. 4, and upon Cornelius and his household, as soon as he believed, before baptism, chap. x, v. 44, yet this was not proper to baptism, and was therefore rare, and perhaps granted only to St. Peter on account of the height of the primacy. Hence neither here in the baptism of the Samaritans, nor in v. 38 in the baptism of the Eunuch, nor elsewhere do we read that in baptism the Holy Spirit was given visibly; but this is reserved to the sacrament of Confirmation, inasmuch as in it is conferred the strength and fullness of the Holy Spirit, for freely professing and preaching the faith of Christ, as is clear from the following verse, and chap. xix, v. 5 and 6.
Epiphanius notes, Book 1, heresy 9, that the heresy of the Samaritans was that the Holy Spirit does not exist, and so Peter is sent there to root it out, not so much by arguments as by the very deed, through the sacrament of Confirmation, by visibly conferring on them the Holy Spirit.
Verse 17: Then They Laid Hands Upon Them
17. Then they laid hands upon them, — conferring on them the sacrament of Confirmation. So everywhere the Doctors against Calvin, who denies that Confirmation is a Sacrament, and says that this laying on of hands was a mere ceremony of praying for someone. See Bellarmine on this Sacrament. And it is clear: because through this laying on of hands they received the Holy Spirit, who is the effect of the Sacrament.
Note here first, that it belongs to the Bishop alone to confer this Sacrament. Hence Philip the Deacon could not do it, but for this purpose he called the Bishops, namely Peter and John. So defines the Council of Florence in the formula for the union of the Armenians; and Trent, Session VII, canon 3. Yet in necessity the Supreme Pontiff can authorize a priest and make him a minister of the sacrament of Confirmation, as we read St. Gregory did, Book IV, epistle 33. See Francisco Suarez, On the Sacrament of Confirmation. Furthermore, in three Sacraments hands are imposed, namely in Order, Penance, and Confirmation; that the discussion here is about this last is clear from the fact that it was being conferred on the recently baptized.
Note secondly: It is doubtful whether Peter and John here used chrism, or whether they conferred this Sacrament by the laying on of hands alone. Either is probable: some Doctors lean toward the view that they did not use chrism, with God dispensing in this case, on the grounds that then in place of chrism there was the visible sign itself, through which the Holy Spirit fell upon those being confirmed. So St. Thomas, Bonaventure, Scotus, Durandus, Gabriel, Richard, Paludanus, and Soto, on IV, dist. VII, Suarez, and others. The Council of Florence seems to favor this, when it says the sacrament of Confirmation succeeded in place of the Apostolic laying on of hands.
But it is far more probable, indeed almost certain, that the Apostles never administered this Sacrament without chrism, as Hugh of St. Victor teaches, Book II On the Sacraments, part VII, § 2, and Waldensis, vol. II, chap. cxiii. And it is proved first, because in the other Sacraments they did not have such liberty, nor did they administer the other Sacraments without their ordained matter. Secondly, because none of the ancients says that they administered this Sacrament in various ways, that is, sometimes by the laying on of hands alone, sometimes by chrismal anointing, whereas many do say that they used chrism, such as St. Dionysius, chap. IV Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; Clement of Rome, Book VII Apostolic Constitutions, chap. XLIV; Pope Fabian, epistle 2; and finally St. Thomas himself, Part III, Question LXXII, art. 2. Thirdly, because under the name "laying on of hands" we very conveniently include also the unction, even if it is not expressed, as Hugh and Waldensis above teach. For he who anoints lays on hands: since "to lay on hands" in Hebrew idiom means "to touch." Hence Mark III, 2, when some had asked the Lord to lay hands on a lunatic, He did it by touching the man's tongue and ears with His finger. See Pagninus on the word samach, which means to anoint, to lay on, to confirm, to support, to stabilize, or to touch in order to support. So it is said in Wisd. viii, 12: "They will lay their hand to their mouth," that is, will put it to. Fourthly, because the Fathers who in one place say that the Holy Spirit is given by the laying on of hands, the same in another place say that He is given by chrismal unction: as if regarding these two as the same thing, or understanding one in the other by a kind of shorthand, as is clear in Tertullian's testimony soon to be cited, where he mentions unction, signing, and the laying on of hands. The same author, however, in Book I Against Marcion, expresses only the unction; Cyprian, epistle 70, mentions only the unction; in epistle 72 he calls it the laying on of hands; and yet he means the same thing. Add to this that the Apostles could easily have had oil and balsam, inasmuch as it is grown in Judaea and is proper to it: for chrism is made from oil and balsam. Why then would they have omitted what was sanctioned by Christ, when no cause or necessity urged it? It is otherwise concerning the Book of the Gospels: for they could not use this in the ordination of the first Deacons, because it had not yet been written. Fifthly, because the Fathers, when they say that only Bishops give the Holy Spirit through the unction of chrism, prove it from this passage of Acts viii and xix, where only the Apostles laid on hands: therefore they openly signify that in that laying on of hands the unction of chrism was included. See Cyprian, epistle 73; Innocent, epistle 1, and Damascene, epistle 4. Sixthly, because it is familiar to Scripture to summarize many things customarily joined together by a shorthand, with only one expressed, as in Acts viii and xix Luke says the Apostles baptized in the name of Christ, leaving us to understand the other persons; Acts viii, he says the Eunuch was baptized by Philip when he had said "I believe Jesus is the Son of God;" yet it is not to be doubted that the Eunuch was questioned about many other things.
You will say: The Council of Florence, in the Instruction for the Armenians, says that in place of the laying on of hands of the Apostles, Confirmation is now given in the Church; and Innocent III, chap. Cum venisset, tit. On Holy Unction, says that by the chrismation of the forehead the laying on of hands of the Apostles is designated. I answer, these do not distinguish a rite from a rite, but only one mode of speaking from another mode of speaking: for they only want to say that what the Apostles did when they were said to lay on hands is the same thing the Bishops now do when they are said to confirm: for what was then called the laying on of hands is now called Confirmation; although it is altogether the same Sacrament. That this is what they mean is most clear, if the passages are inspected: otherwise they would be saying that in the time of the Apostles there was no sacrament of Confirmation.
AND THEY RECEIVED THE HOLY SPIRIT. — For in the sacrament of Confirmation is given the fullness of the grace received in baptism. Hence St. Cyprian, epistle 73 to Jubaianus, calls it the "Lord's seal by which Christians are made perfect;" that those who before were faithful might now become soldiers, athletes, and fighters of Christ. And St. Melchiades, epistle to the Spanish Bishops: "In Baptism, he says, we are reborn to life, in Confirmation we are armed for battle." And St. Urban, in the Decretal Epistle: "All the faithful, he says, ought through the laying on of hands of the Bishops to receive the Holy Spirit after baptism, that they may be found full Christians." Wherefore St. Cornelius the Pope, in the epistle to Fabian of Antioch, in Eusebius Book VI of the History, chap. xxxiii, dealing with Novatus: "He was not, he says, made perfect by the seal of chrism; whence neither could he merit the Holy Spirit." And St. Dionysius, Eccl. Hier., chap. II, p. 3: "That unction, he says, by perfecting, makes (one) perfect." But Tertullian beautifully, in his book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chap. VIII, summarizes in few words the whole rite of this Sacrament, namely the unction, the sign of the cross, and the laying on of hands: "The flesh, he says, is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed, that the soul may be fortified; the flesh is overshadowed by the laying on of the hand, that the soul may be illumined by the Spirit."
In the sacrament of Confirmation the Holy Spirit is given: First, because there is given an increase of the grace received in baptism, and consequently of all virtues. Hence Eusebius of Emesa (or whoever the author is, he is certainly ancient and weighty), homily On Pentecost: "The Holy Spirit, he says, who descended upon the waters of baptism with a saving descent, in the font confers fullness for innocence, in Confirmation grants increase for grace."
Secondly, because there is given in it the fullness of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and especially mighty strength for wrestling with the devil. Hear St. Cyprian (or whoever the author is), treatise On the Cardinal Works of Christ: "By the benefit of this unction, both wisdom and understanding are given us divinely, counsel and fortitude come down from heaven; knowledge and piety and fear are poured in by inspirations from above. Anointed with this oil we wrestle with spiritual wickedness." Hence the form of the sacrament of Confirmation is this: "I sign you with the sign of the cross and confirm you with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Wherefore in histories we read often of the possessed having been freed from the demon at the reception of this Sacrament. The same is also testified by Nazianzen, oration against Julian; Lactantius, Book IV, chap. xxvii; Prudentius, in the Apotheosis. Indeed St. Bernard too, in the Life of St. Malachy, writes thus about his preceptor, Bishop Malchus: "A boy seized in mind from among those they call lunatics, in the act of being confirmed by the sacred unction he cured." On the contrary, Eusebius, Book VI of the History, chap. xxxv, or according to another edition, xxxiv, writes that Novatus, who rejected this Sacrament, was seized by the demon; and although he was a presbyter, in persecution out of fear he denied that he was a presbyter. Again, Gregory of Tours, Book I On the Glory of the Martyrs, chap. XLI, narrates that the magical arts, through the presence of a certain Christian who had been confirmed with chrism, were nullified and dispersed.
Thirdly, there is given courage and fortitude to profess the faith intrepidly, especially in persecution and martyrdom. Hence by its power the Martyrs triumphed over tyrants, torments and death: about which thing among others a famous example is that of Apronianus, who, when he was an officer of the records, and was presenting the Deacon Sisinnius for examination by the magistrate, heard a voice from heaven: "Come, blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world;" converted by which voice, he was baptized by Sisinnius, and confirmed by Pope Marcellus, called to martyrdom, he bravely underwent its agony, as his acts in Surius for January 16 have it.
St. Boniface, apostle of the Germans in Frisia, while he was preparing to fortify with the sacrament of Confirmation those he had baptized, was slaughtered by the Frisians, and having himself first been confirmed by it, he confirmed their faith with his own blood. So has his Life in Surius on June 5.
Fourthly, often God through this Sacrament has worked miracles, which are works of the Holy Spirit and of graces given freely. Besides those I have already recounted, St. Rembert, the second Archbishop of Bremen, 800 years ago, when he had set out for Sweden and there had anointed a blind man with the sacred chrism in pontifical manner, restored sight to him. So his Life in Surius for February 4 has it.
Thus also Faro, Bishop of Meaux, by confirming a blind boy enlightened him, as his Life in Surius for October 5 has it.
Memorable is what Optatus of Milevis writes, Book II Against the Donatists, namely that a flask of holy chrism, impiously violated by the Donatists and hurled through a window, was caught by angels lest it be broken or damaged.
Therefore let the faithful in good time take care that their children be confirmed, that they may receive these gifts of the Holy Spirit; let the Bishops in turn be diligent, that they may impart it to their own, and by it seal and confirm their — indeed Christ's — sheep. A famous example is that of St. Maurilius, Bishop of Angers, who, called to confirm a certain dying boy, by delaying a little found the boy already dead. Wherefore he mourned this negligence of his, as he himself said, for many years, and leaving the bishopric, secretly fleeing, he undertook a long and burdensome pilgrimage, as Venantius Fortunatus relates in his Life.
Verse 18: When Simon Had Seen
18. When he had seen. — From this St. Chrysostom rightly infers that the Holy Spirit then descended upon the confirmed faithful by a visible sign, namely fire, fiery tongues, a dove, or something similar: whence visible, that is sensible, effects of His emanated, such as that they were speaking various tongues, prophesying, exulting, singing psalms, preaching above the capacity of men, as if driven and impelled by the enthusiasm of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore Simon Magus wished with money to buy this very thing from the Apostles, namely so that not only might he himself receive the Holy Spirit, but might also be able to communicate, indeed to sell, the same to others, certainly at far greater price both in money and in honor and glory. So Œcumenius and St. Cyprian, sermon On Fasting and Temptation. For many would have given him a great price, if by laying on of hands conferring the Holy Spirit, he had likewise conferred on them the gift of speaking various tongues, of revealing hidden things and the future, of explaining Holy Scripture (for many strive after these and esteem them greatly), as the Apostles were doing.
Hence it follows that Simon was at least implicitly (perhaps even explicitly) ambitious and wished to buy the Episcopate: because it belongs to Bishops alone to lay on hands, and by this laying on to confer the Holy Spirit in the sacraments of Confirmation and Orders; and this power of conferring the Holy Spirit Simon wanted to buy. Again, the proud Simon desired to excel and stand out among his Samaritans as a prophet and divine man, as he had hitherto excelled by his magical arts. Wherefore he seems to have wanted to be made by St. Peter Hierarch and Bishop of Samaria; whence from him today those who buy bishoprics and benefices are called Simonians or Simoniacs. So Bellarmine, Book IV On the Marks of the Church, chap. XIII: "It is clear, he says, from Acts VIII, that Simon was ambitious for Episcopal authority, and wished to buy it for money: but when he was excluded, he devised a new heresy, that he who could not in the Church might at least bear principality outside it." For in similar manner Arius, Valentinus, Marcion, Montanus, Novatian, Luther, and the other heresiarchs, because they were rejected from the bishopric, or similar office and rank which they sought, devised new dogmas and heresies, and erected for themselves new chairs outside the Church, as I will show on II Peter II.
Behold for you, after the promulgation of the Gospel, the first (for before it there were simoniacs — Balaam, willing to sell for a price his oracles, blessings and curses, Num. xxii, 7; and Esau, selling the right of the firstborn, and the priesthood annexed to it, to his brother Jacob, Heb. xii, 16; and Gehazi, who from Naaman) and therefore they ought to be given freely; he sells or buys for his own gain, with that same Simon judging that the gift of God can be possessed for money, etc., since Simon's principal intention was nothing but avarice for money, that is, idolatry, as the Apostle Paul says."
Hence again Emperor Henry II, in the year of the Lord 1047, having been deserted by the Holy Spirit because of the stain of simony, professed that for three whole days he had seen hostile demons hurling flame into him through a tube so persistent that our fire compared to it might be considered a joke and to give no heat at all; but that he had been delivered by a half-burnt young man, namely St. Lawrence, whose church he had restored. Thus Baronius, vol. XI, year of Christ 1047, reports from William of Malmesbury and Matthew of Westminster.
Verse 20: Thy Money Be With Thee Unto Perdition
20. THY MONEY BE WITH THEE UNTO PERDITION. — Here Peter curses Simon, out of zeal for justice, not for revenge, as a judge and avenger of the crime, namely simony, for the example and terror of others. He did this therefore out of charity, and from zeal for religion, that the first Christians might learn how great a wickedness was that of Simon and of simony, as if he said: Perish and be damned, O sacrilegious one, with your sacrilegious coins. For he pronounces a just sentence upon the crime, and inflicts on him the deserved penalty; understood: Unless you do penance and amend yourself. Hence shortly after he exhorts him to do so, saying: "Do penance therefore." He says it therefore more by way of threatening than of striking, as if he said: You are worthy to perish by death present and eternal: I threaten you, and on God's behalf I declare to you, that you will perish and go to hell, unless you repent of this crime. For otherwise, if this sentence of Peter had been absolute and efficacious, and not threatening, he would surely have killed Simon at once and thrust him into Tartarus, just as he killed Ananias and Sapphira in chap. v, who nevertheless had sinned far less than Simon. But God willed that Simon be preserved for the greater contests and triumphs of St. Peter with him at Rome before Nero.
Bede and the Gloss add that these words of Peter are not so much an imprecation as a prophecy and prediction, namely that Simon would perish and be damned in this and other crimes of his; even though out of his office he exhorts him to penance, v. 22. Thus the Psalmist curses the wicked from the same zeal, Ps. LXVIII: "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living." Thus Christ also curses the same, not by threatening but by striking on the day of judgment, saying: "Go, ye cursed, into eternal fire." Furthermore, Peter curses not only Simon, but also his money — not insofar as it is money: for so it is God's creature, and consequently a good thing; but insofar as it was the price of simony and the material of his crime. For thus this money was impious and sacrilegious, and worthy to perish, just as was its impious and sacrilegious dealer Simon. Hence St. Jerome, on chap. III of Micah: "He condemned the money offered together with the one offering it." And St. Chrysostom explains thus: "May your sin be unto perdition." And St. Bernard, ep. 237, having cited these words of Peter, exclaiming says: "O voice of thunder, O voice of majesty and power, at whose terror let all who hate Sion be confounded and turned back!" On cursing and how it is lawful to curse a creature, see St. Thomas, II II, Quest. LXXVI.
Wherefore simony is properly a sin against the Holy Spirit. Hence Peter Damian relates, ep. 5, chap. VII, that a certain simoniac who made light of his crime, when ordered to pronounce the doxology of the Most Holy Trinity, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit," was unable to say, "And to the Holy Spirit;" but only, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son," even though, repeating the same a second and third time, he tried to add, "And to the Holy Spirit," but in vain. For, as Damian adds: "Deservedly, by buying the Holy Spirit, he lost Him, so that he who had been excluded from the soul should consequently also be far from the tongue."
Furthermore Pope Urban II, in the year of the Lord 1099, in order to repress the plague of simony rampant in that age, wrote against it a decretal letter to Lucius, provost of St. Juventius at Ticinum, in which among other things he teaches that it is simony to buy or sell an ecclesiastical benefice or another sacred thing, because Simon did the same thing here. Hear him: "It is asked whether to sell an ecclesiastical thing is simoniacal? That this is simoniacal is plainly gathered from the fact that the blessed Apostle Peter said to Simon: Thy money be with thee unto perdition, because thou hast thought the gift of God may be purchased with money. For the gift of God is the Holy Spirit, and the gift of God is the offered property of the Church itself. And if you observe carefully, Simon Magus, who came to the faith feignedly, willed to buy not the Holy Spirit on account of the Spirit — an act of which he himself was unworthy (since it is written: The Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the feigned) — but he willed to buy as far as in him lay so that from the sale of the signs which were performed through Him, he might gain back the money he had offered, multiplied. Nor did the Apostle abhor the buying of the Holy Spirit, which he well knew could not be done, but the ambition of such gain, that is, avarice, which is the service of idols, in this same Simon, and he struck him with the dart of malediction. Whoever, therefore, sells or buys ecclesiastical things, which are gifts of God — since they are given by God to the faithful, and by the faithful to God, and are received from Him freely unto perdition." Some add that by this word St. Peter expelled Simon from the Church, and that this is why simoniacs are excommunicated by Canon Law. So Torres, bk. I Constit., chap. xi. Indeed St. Peter, in the Apostolic Canons, canon 28, says: "If any presbyter, etc., shall have obtained this dignity by money, etc., let him be cut off from communion in every way, just as Simon Magus was cut off by me Peter."
It is memorable what St. Jerome writes in the Life of St. Hilarion, namely that, when he miraculously healed very many people, he was never willing to accept anything offered him out of gratitude, and would set against them this saying of Christ: "Freely you have received, freely give." And when Orion, a leading man whom he had freed from a legion of demons, came to him as if to render thanks, bringing gifts, the Saint said to him: "Have you not read what Gehazi and what Simon suffered, of whom the one received a price and the other offered one, so that the former might sell the grace of the Holy Spirit and the latter buy it? And when Orion weeping said: Take it, and give to the poor, he answered: You can better distribute your own goods, who walk through cities and know the poor: I, who have left my own, why should I covet what belongs to others? And when he lay sad on the ground he said: Do not be saddened, my son: what I do, I do for myself and for you. For if I were to accept these things, both I would offend God, and the legion would return to you." Learn here how much God wills His gifts to be given freely, and that His Saints, especially wonder-workers, should be pure of avarice and free from accepting gifts.
BECAUSE THE GIFT OF GOD. — It is a proper name of the Holy Spirit that He is the Gift, because He is the first uncreated and notional Gift: for He proceeds from the Father and the Son as the love of both: and love is the first and best gift of the giver, in which the one to whom it is given rejoices, and from which all other gifts flow abundantly, and the more abundantly the greater the love. Thus St. Thomas, drawing from St. Augustine, in I part., Quest. XXXVIII, art. last, and there all the Scholastics to a man. Simon therefore wanted to buy the Holy Spirit so that he might sell to others, namely the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, not so much sanctifying as freely given (gratiae gratis datae): for these produce ostentation, glory, and gain among men; such as speaking with tongues, prophesying, curing diseases, etc. So Urban II, whose words I cited shortly before.
Verse 21: Thou Hast No Part Nor Lot in This Matter
21. THOU HAST NEITHER PART NOR LOT IN THIS MATTER, — that is, in this thing; the Zurich version translates, in this affair, namely in the receiving and giving of the Holy Spirit. It is a metonymy. For "word" is put for the thing which Simon had expressed by his word, just as Peter did. The Syriac reads, You have neither part nor lot in this faith; Clement, bk. VI Constit., chap. VII: "You have no part in this word, nor lot in this faith." So also read St. Augustine, tract. 6 on John, and Ambrose, bk. II On Penance, chap. IV, as if to say: You do not have the true faith of Christ, but pretend to have it, and therefore you are not a sharer in the Christian religion and Church, and consequently you are not capable of receiving the Holy Spirit.
Again, Vatablus takes "word" properly for preaching, as if to say: Our preaching does not concern you at all: for you are not of the number of those who truly believe; or, you are not worthy to be admitted into the company of the Evangelists, whose office it is to confer the Holy Spirit.
Verse 22: If Perhaps It May Be Remitted
22. IF PERHAPS IT MAY BE REMITTED. — You will say: Does Peter then doubt whether the sin should be remitted to Simon if he truly repents? I answer: By no means. For first, the word "perhaps" is not that of one doubting, but an expletive particle of one confirming: for in Greek it is ἄρα, which means not only "perhaps" but also "assuredly," "certainly," "indeed," and is often an expletive particle in Homer, as Gaza notes, bk. II of his Grammar. Thus Christ says, Matt. XI, 23: "If in Sodom had been done the works which have been done in thee (O Capernaum), perhaps they would have remained even until this day;" where the "perhaps" is not of one doubting (for Christ knew determinately what would have happened in this case), but of one confirming: for in Greek it is ἄν, that is, "assuredly." St. Ambrose demonstrates this with many examples, bk. II On Penance, chaps. IV and V, where he teaches that no sin is so grave that penance does not blot it out. Secondly, the "perhaps" signifies the doubtful event and effect of remission, on account of the doubtful cause: for although it was certain that Simon, if he did penance, would obtain pardon, yet because it was uncertain and doubtful whether he would do penance, hence it was equally uncertain and doubtful whether he would obtain pardon. For he was of free will, and could freely repent or not repent; and Peter seems through this "perhaps" to imply here that he would not do penance, and therefore he would not obtain pardon, as in fact he did not do penance, nor obtain pardon. So perhaps the Latins use the word in things that have happened but with uncertain cause; for forte is the same as "contingently," "by chance," and as it were "by lot." Thus Terence in the Andria: "Perchance," he says, "I catch sight of the soldier, and accost the man." And Livy, bk. I: "It happened by chance." And below: "So it had chanced to happen." Thirdly, the word "perhaps" signifies a fortuitous remission, not of fault if he repent, but of penalty, e.g. of temporal death: for God often, even though He pardons the guilt of the penitent, does not pardon the penalty, as appeared in the penitent David, II Sam. XII, 14: "Thou shalt not die, nevertheless, etc., the son who is born to thee shall surely die." It was similar in the case of the Ninevites, to whom Jonah thundered: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown;" for they did penance, though they were not certain that through it they would escape destruction. Hence St. Augustine, on Ps. L, 8: "The Ninevites," he says, "did penance for an uncertain outcome, and found a certain mercy."
THE THOUGHT. — ἐπίνοια, that is, plan, conception, devising, contrivance; the Syriac, deceit.
Verse 23: In the Gall of Bitterness
23. FOR I PERCEIVE THOU ART IN THE GALL OF BITTERNESS, — that is, in most bitter gall. Now first, by this gall can be understood anger and envy: for the seat and material of anger is gall, as if to say: I see you vehemently angered with a bitter and envious heart, because you see yourself despised by your own followers, and your own disciples crossing over from you to us: you envy us therefore our excellence, both of graces and of authority and esteem. So Vatablus.
Secondly, by this gall can be understood hypocrisy. For just as gall is similar to honey in color but most dissimilar in taste, so hypocrites have a honeyed mouth but a gall-filled heart, as if to say: You feign goodness, and seek the dove free of gall, that is, the most sweet Holy Spirit and His gifts; but inwardly you are full of malice and impiety: you have therefore a honeyed and dove-like mouth, but a gall-filled and serpent-like heart.
Thirdly, by gall can be understood simony: for this was Simon's proper sin. For simony is called gall, because it is itself a gall-bitter sacrilege, that is, the worst and most bitter. Furthermore Simon seems not only to have wished to buy and sell the Holy Spirit, but also pertinaciously to have held that this was lawful, which is heresy. He was therefore himself a heretic, as is held in I, Quest. V, canon Petrus. Heresy therefore is the gall of bitterness.
Fourthly, gall signifies any sin, which embitters the conscience and provokes God and the Holy Spirit, who is wholly sweet and honeyed. Hence in Scripture sinners are said to provoke God by their sins, to embitter Him, to give Him gall and vinegar to drink, as is clear in Ps. LXVIII, 22; Hosea XII, 14, and Deut. XXXII, 32, and especially Deut. XXIX, 18: "Lest perhaps, etc., there be among you a root bringing forth gall and bitterness," to which St. Peter alludes here. As a symbol of this thing the gall-bitter Jews offered Christ on the cross gall and myrrh, Matt. XXVII, 34. The sinner therefore has a gall-filled heart, that is, very badly disposed toward God, toward the law, toward virtue and honesty, for he hates all these things.
Note: For "gall," in the cited places the Hebrew is רֹאשׁ (rosh), which signifies both poison and gall. Sin therefore is gall and poison: first, killing the very soul which sins; for "the soul that sinneth, the same shall die," Ezek. XXVIII, 20; secondly, harmful, hateful and abominable to God and men, and so much so that it is deicide and christicide. For if God could be slain and killed by any poison or weapon, He would be killed by nothing other than sin, as in fact Christ was killed by the same. Hence in turn God toward sins and sinners gall-filled toward Him is gall-filled, and offers them the gall of His wrath and vengeance to drink, according to that of Job XX, 14: "His bread in his belly shall be turned into the gall of asps within him." And Jer. VIII, 14: "He hath given us water of gall to drink." And chap. XXIII, 15: "I will feed them with wormwood, and give them gall to drink." And Lam. III, 5: "He hath compassed me with gall and labour." This gall of hell is far more bitter than every gall of earth, which compared to it is only painted and feigned. Let the gluttonous and sinners think on this salt, who here sip a little honey of their lust, and let them say: I do not buy at such a price the need to repent; I will not be so insane as for a little honey to bring upon myself eternal and most bitter gall.
Finally, for "in the gall of bitterness," the Greek is, εἰς χολὴν πικρίας, that is, "into the gall of bitterness I see thee to be": "into gall," that is, "in gall," as our translator renders. For often εἰς is put for ἐν, since both correspond to the Hebrew beth, that is, "in"; unless you supply τρέχοντα, that is, "running" or "rushing." Whence our Lorinus suspects that Peter through divine revelation saw and knew that Simon would be reprobate and consigned to eternal punishments, into which by this gall of his crimes he would willingly rush, and which are the gall of all bitterness. Whence he also adds:
AND IN THE BOND OF INIQUITY. — Greek εἰς σύνδεσμον, that is, in a binding-together, as if to say: I see you bound on every side by many sins, as it were by ropes and chains. The Syriac, I see you in chains of iniquity. He signifies that Simon was tied up in many sins and obstinate in them; namely immersed in pride, avarice, envy, magic, hypocrisy, simony, sacrilege, etc. Against such Isaiah thunders, chap. V, 18: "Woe to you that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as the rope of a cart." See what is said there. Behold with how sharp a censure simony in its author, Simon, was struck and condemned by St. Peter: which therefore preachers may with equal reason and right hurl against his followers, namely simoniacs. Finally our Mariana takes "by gall and bond of iniquity" to mean the punishment, not the guilt, as if to say: I see you destined for gall and the bond, that is, for grave punishment and chains: for since you are entangled in sins, hence I see that gall and punishment await you.
Verse 24: Pray You for Me
24. PRAY YE [FOR ME]. — Simon pretends to repent, that he may escape punishment; for he feared that he would be punished with death, just as Ananias had been punished by the same Peter, whom he saw and feared as terrible in signs and a wonder-worker. For after the departure of the Apostles he seduced many Samaritans and turned them away from the faith of Christ, as Irenaeus indicates, bk. I, chap. xx. St. Clement reports, bk. VI Constit., chap. VII, that St. Peter again encountered Simon at Caesarea, conquered him in disputation, and forced him to flee to Italy. Then setting out from there he forestalled Peter, and circumvented Nero, with whom he was held in admiration on account of his sleights of hand, so much so that on the Tiber Island, where there is now the church of St. Bartholomew, a statue was set up to him with this title: "To Simon the holy God," as Eusebius testifies, bk. II Hist., chap. XIII. But finally contending with St. Peter, and flying through the air, by his prayers cast down and dashed against a rock, he broke his legs, as Epiphanius testifies, heresy 22. For which reason Nero, taking it ill that his curious delights in Simon were snatched from him, condemned St. Peter together with St. Paul to death, as his Acts have it.
Verse 25: Having Testified and Preached
25. AND THEY INDEED, HAVING TESTIFIED, — διαμαρτυράμενοι, that is, confirming by their testimony those things which had been preached about Christ by Philip, saying that they themselves had seen and heard the same from Christ, and that they were witnesses not only by ear but also by eye. So in court and tribunal διαμαρτυρῶν was said of one who affirmed and testified something not in his own cause, but in another's, in which intending an exception he offered himself to the suit, by which act he made the suit his own by testifying; and if convicted of lying, was condemned by the crime of ψευδομαρτυριῶν, that is, of false testimony, says Budé in his Commentary.
AND TO MANY REGIONS. — Greek, κώμας, that is, towns, villages, fortresses; the Syriac, hamlets; Pagninus, villages: for in Samaria there were not many regions, that is, provinces; but it itself was one whole region, or province. It is therefore an Apostolic thing to go around villages and hamlets evangelizing, and to teach country folk the things of faith and salvation. For this is what St. Peter and John did here; indeed Christ Himself, saying: "The poor have the gospel preached to them," as St. Chrysostom rightly observes.
Verse 26: Go Toward the South
26. GO TOWARD THE SOUTH. — Go toward the south, so the Zurich version and Pagninus. For Samaria, from which Philip was coming, was to the north of Gaza.
THIS IS DESERT. — "THIS," namely not the way, as the Syriac translates; but the city Gaza. Luke adds this for distinction. For there was a double Gaza: one in Persia, so called because in it, as being most fortified, Cambyses had heaped up all his wealth, says Curtius, bk. XIII; the other of the Philistines, which was completely overthrown and devastated by Alexander the Great, as Curtius testifies, bk. IV, and therefore is called Deserta. So Bede, Hugo, Cajetan, Gagné and others.
Beza is therefore wrong in thinking that the words "this is desert" crept into the text and ought to be deleted, as if there were only one Gaza, namely the fifth Satrapy of the Philistines, which had never been completely destroyed, so that it could be called deserted. For this is false. Hear Adrichomius in his Description of the Holy Land, on Gaza: Alexander the Great, immediately after he had stormed Tyre, occupying Gaza after a two-month siege, turned it into a perpetual tomb: whence on that account it is called deserted. The new Gaza however, built not far from the old, in the time of the Maccabees, Josephus, and Jerome, flourished greatly: whence near it lived St. Hilarion; just as long ago Samson too, in old Gaza, while living, displayed the wondrous glory of his strength by carrying off its gates, and while dying showed it by overthrowing and killing the house with three thousand men by the dashing-down of the columns, Judges XVI, 21 and 29. What and what kind and how great Gaza was, I have said on Jer. XLVII, 1.
Verse 27: An Ethiopian, an Eunuch
27. AN ETHIOPIAN, — An Abyssinian: where Prester John now reigns. Whence it is clear that he was a Gentile by birth; whether also by religion is doubtful. Bede, Hugo, Cajetan, our Lorinus and Sanchez affirm it. More truly Irenaeus, bk. IV, chap. XL; Baronius, the Carthusian and others deny it, and judge that he was by religion a Jew, namely a proselyte, both because he was reading Isaiah, and because he had come to worship in Jerusalem, and because to the first Gentile, namely Cornelius the Centurion, St. Peter preached the Gospel, Acts X; and because there was great familiarity between the Ethiopians and the Jews, and agreement in religion, as Strabo testifies, bk. XVII. Whence they were also circumcised just as the Jews, as Josephus testifies, bk. VIII, chap. IV, especially because the kings of Ethiopia write themselves sons of Solomon and David, as descended from the queen of Sheba by Solomon, as Damianus Goes narrates at length in his book On the Customs of the Ethiopians.
Here was fulfilled that of Ps. LXVII, 32: "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God:" shall soon, that is, shall come first, shall first stretch out, her hands, that is, her own (as is clear from the Hebrew), to God, namely to faith, obedience, covenant, and to offer Him gifts. Whence St. Jerome translates, "Let Ethiopia hasten to give her hands to God"; Pagninus, "She shall make her hands run to God," is necessary. It is similar at John XII, 20; Zeph. II, 11, and elsewhere.
Mystically St. Augustine: By believing "she shall stretch out her hands beforehand," that is, her works; for faith precedes good works. For through this Ethiopian prince, just as a little later through St. Matthew the Apostle sent thither, Ethiopia received the faith of Christ. So St. Hilary, Basil and others on Ps. LXVII, and St. Jerome on Obadiah.
EUNUCH, — that is, prince, master of the queen and the women's quarters: for because the chastity of royal women was entrusted to eunuchs, hence they became chief men of the court, so that "eunuch" was the same as "prince," as I said on Daniel, chap. I. For, as Aristotle testifies, although other animals become tame if castrated, man alone becomes more fierce thereby. Whence Euthymius, on Ps. CXVII [LXVII], writes that this Eunuch was first in the kingdom of Ethiopia after the queen.
CANDACE'S. — Nazianzen, oration on Holy Baptism, and Euthymius, on Ps. LXVII, judge this to be the name of the Eunuch. But all others judge it to be the name of the queen of the Ethiopians: for they were ruled by women as queens, whom they called "Candaces." So Pliny, bk. VI, chap. XXIX; Strabo, bk. XVII, and Eusebius, bk. II Hist., chap. I. For after the queen of Sheba, who came to Solomon, it seems to have been accepted that queens should rule, says Mariana. Thus "Pharaoh," and later "Ptolemy," was the common name of the kings of Egypt; "Antiochus," of the kings of Syria; "Caesar," of the Roman Emperors. The Ethiopians relate that this Candace, or queen of Ethiopia, was called Indich, and that she, having been converted by the Eunuch to Christ, likewise converted Ethiopia. For so they say in Damianus Goes, chap. XVI, On the customs of the Ethiopians: "We almost before the rest of the Christian peoples received baptism from the Eunuch of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, whose name was Indich." The same Ortelius reports in his Theater of the World, on Abyssinia, who for Indich says she was called Judith.
WHO WAS OVER ALL HER TREASURES, — who was set over the royal treasury, as it were the queen's treasurer, just as at Rome there was the dignity of the quaestorship and of the quaestors, who were set over the treasury of the republic.
HE HAD COME TO ADORE IN JERUSALEM, — namely the true God of the Jews, both by prayer and adoration properly so called, and by sacrifice. For this by the prescription of the law could be performed nowhere except in the Temple at Jerusalem; whereas prayer and adoration could be made in Ethiopia and any other place. So "to adore" is taken for "to sacrifice" at John IV, 20. "Our fathers adored on this mountain, and you say that at Jerusalem is the place where one ought to adore."
Verse 28: Reading Isaias the Prophet
28. AND READING ISAIAH THE PROPHET. — He seems then to have known the Hebrew language, says Hugo and the Gloss, as a proselyte; unless you say that Isaiah had been translated into the Ethiopic language. St. Chrysostom notes the diligence and devotion of this Eunuch, who even on his journey in his chariot was reading Isaiah. And St. Jerome, ep. 103 to Paulinus: "He left," he says, "the royal court, and was so great a lover of the law and of divine science, that even in his vehicle he was reading the sacred Letters." So in this age Cardinal Hosius, President of the Council of Trent, that he might lose no time on the road, was accustomed to read in his carriage, and notably he used to read the paraphrase of Osorius on Isaiah, which had recently appeared, says Protonotary Reschius in his Life.
Verse 29: The Spirit Said to Philip
29. AND THE SPIRIT SAID TO PHILIP, — namely the Holy Spirit through internal inspiration and locution. So Bede, Hugo and Dionysius, although Cajetan and our Lorinus take it as an angel. For He is here called the Spirit of the Lord, v. 39.
Verse 31: How Can I, Unless Some Man Show Me?
31. HOW CAN I, UNLESS SOMEONE SHOWS ME? — Greek ὁδηγήσει, that is, has been guide of the way to me, as Pagninus and the Zurich version translate. He understood therefore the words, not the hidden sense, of which he asks for a guide and interpreter. Let heretics note this, who pronounce sacred Scripture easy of understanding and open to anyone. Let them hear St. Jerome, ep. 103, already cited: "I am no holier than this Eunuch, nor more studious, who, etc., did not know Him whom unknowingly in the book he was venerating. Philip came, showed him Jesus who lay hidden in the letter, etc., that you might understand that you cannot enter the sacred Scriptures without one who goes before and shows the path." The same St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen thought and did, in Rufinus, bk. XI Hist., chap. IX, and St. Augustine, ep. 119, chap. XXI: "In the holy Scriptures themselves," he says, "I do not know much more than I know." The same, bk. XII Confess., chap. XIV: "Wonderful is the depth of Thy words, my God, wonderful depth; it is dread to gaze into it, a dread of reverence and a trembling of love." St. Ambrose, ep. 44 to Constantius: "Divine Scripture," he says, "is a sea in itself, having in itself profound senses and the depth of prophetic enigmas." Wherefore St. Jerome, preface to the epistle to the Ephesians: "Never," he says, "from adolescence have I ceased either to read, or to question learned men about what I did not know, or to consider myself my own master. Recently I went to Alexandria to see Didymus, and to inquire of him about all the doubts I had in the Scriptures." The same say others, whom I have cited in my Prooemium to the Pentateuch.
Verse 32: The Place of Scripture
32. THE PASSAGE OF SCRIPTURE. — The Holy Spirit directed the eyes of the Eunuch to chap. LIII of Isaiah, which is wholly about Christ and His passion, so that from it, with Philip explaining, he might recognize Christ and believe in Him. Whence we learn how useful it is to read pious books, especially Holy Scripture. For into this reading the Holy Spirit, their author, inserts Himself, and instills pious thoughts of the things read into the intellect, and affections into the will, by which a person is converted or advanced to greater holiness. Thus from reading the Life of St. Anthony, those two courtiers of the Emperor were converted, and St. Augustine himself, as he himself reports, bk. VIII Confess., chaps. VI and VII. Indeed when St. Athanasius, fleeing the Arians, had brought to Rome the Life of St. Anthony written by himself, and had given it to be read, many noble Romans, men and women, having despised the world embraced the religious life like St. Anthony: of whom the leader was St. Marcella, as St. Jerome testifies in her Epitaph, ep. 16 to Principia her daughter. Thus the founder of our Society, St. Ignatius, lying down from a wound, when by chance, or rather by God's nod and guidance, he was reading the Life of Christ and of the Saints, was made from a worldly soldier a leader of the sacred and religious militia, as Ribadeneira narrates at the beginning of his Life.
He therefore who is eager for his salvation and perfection, as well as for divine inspiration and grace, let him follow and carry out this maxim of St. Basil, indeed of the Holy Spirit: "Let prayer follow pious reading, and reading follow prayer." And that of St. Augustine, sermon 112 On the Season: "He who wills to be always with God ought frequently to pray and to read. For when we pray, we ourselves speak with God; but when we read, God speaks with us." St. Marcella did this, of whom St. Jerome in epistle 16 already cited says: "Her ardor for the divine Scriptures was incredible, and she always sang: In my heart I have hidden Thy words, that I might not sin against Thee. And that of the perfect man: And in the law of the Lord is his will, and on His law he shall meditate day and night; understanding meditation on the law not in repeating what is written, as the Pharisees of the Jews suppose, but in deed, according to that Apostolic saying: Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of the Lord. And the words of the Prophet, saying: From Thy commandments I have understood, so that when she had fulfilled the commandments, she might know herself to deserve understanding of the Scriptures." St. Ambrose, sermon 35: "That the reading of sacred letters is life, the Lord testifies saying, John VI: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." The same, bk. I Offic., chap. XX: "Why," he says, "do you not employ those times, in which you are free from the Church, in reading? why do you not revisit Christ, address Christ, hear Christ? Him we address when we pray, Him we hear when we read the divine oracles." St. Chrysostom, hom. 35 on Genesis: "Let us with great diligence give ourselves to the reading of the divine Scriptures. For although the teaching of man may fail us, the Lord Himself, entering our hearts from above, illuminates the mind, infuses His radiance into reason, uncovers hidden things, and becomes the teacher of those things which we do not know, etc. Let us then give ourselves to reading with great piety and attention, that we may be led by the Holy Spirit to the understanding of the writings, and may receive much fruit therefrom." He then proves this by the example of this our Eunuch, which he explains at length and presses home.
AS A SHEEP. — See these things explained in Isaiah himself.
Verse 35: Philip, Opening His Mouth
35. AND PHILIP, OPENING HIS MOUTH, — that is, having begun to speak, to teach and to preach Jesus. For this phrase signifies that the thing which someone is about to utter with his mouth is grave and sublime, and that he is to deliver it with weight and authority. Symbolically Bede: Aptly, he says, this opening of the mouth alludes to the name of Philip; for in Hebrew Philip is the same as "mouth of a lamp"; which here illuminates the obscurity of the prophecy of Isaiah and turns it into the light of knowledge. Furthermore Philip here catechized the Eunuch, and taught him the mystery of the incarnation and redemption of Christ, hitherto unheard of by him. Thus also all the Apostles were catechists, and their sermons were catecheses, as Paul says, Gal. VI, 6. Let our catechists therefore glory in these leaders, and let them know that their office is Apostolic. Eagerly and strenuously then let them catechize the unlearned, namely children, common people, country folk. Christ did this, the Apostles did this. See what is said on Gal. VI, 6.
Verse 36: Behold, Here Is Water
36. BEHOLD WATER. — He modestly asks for baptism. As if to say: Baptize me, "the faith is full, water is near, the baptizer is present," says the Gloss. Hence this water was called the Fountain of the Ethiopian, about which from St. Jerome and Salignac hear Adrichomius, in his Description of the tribe of Dan: "The Fountain of the Ethiopian," he says, "is in the middle of the road which leads from Jerusalem to Gaza opposite Bethzur, at the twentieth milestone from the city, bubbling up at the foot of a mountain, and swallowed up by the same earth from which it is born, in which Philip baptized the Ethiopian Eunuch, who while in his chariot rereading the old instrument, found the fountain of the Gospel."
Verse 37: I Believe That Jesus Christ Is the Son of God
37. I BELIEVE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE SON OF GOD. — Many other things must be believed, in order that anyone may worthily receive baptism: such as the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the Catholic Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection, and the rest that are contained in the Apostles' Creed. Wherefore there is no doubt that Philip evangelized these things and that they were believed by the Eunuch. Luke therefore here names only the principal article concerning the divinity of Christ, and under it understands the rest, because this one alone was new and almost incredible to the whole world, and recently accomplished: the Apostles therefore preached and inculcated this everywhere above all other things. Likewise there is no doubt that Philip required of the Eunuch, and that the Eunuch exhibited, signs of sorrow and contrition for sins committed. For this sorrow is required before baptism, that one may be capable of the remission of those sins and of justification. So St. Augustine, Book I On Faith and Works, chapters 8 and 9.
Verse 39: The Spirit of the Lord Took Away Philip
39. The Spirit of the Lord — namely, an angel, who was named in verse 26. So Salmeron, Sanchez, Lorinus, and Jerome hints at this in chapter 63 of Isaiah.
CAUGHT UP PHILIP. — Just as the Spirit suddenly caught up Habakkuk and transferred him from Judaea into Babylon, that he might bring a meal to Daniel (chapter 14, verse 35), so here he suddenly transferred Philip from the Gaza road into Azotus, a city of Palestine situated between Dora and Joppa, which is forty miles distant from Gaza. So St. Chrysostom, Œcumenius and others. And this was done, first, that by this rapture the Eunuch might know that Philip was a wonderful and divine man, says St. Chrysostom; secondly, that he might know that Philip had been sent by God to catechize and baptize him, and that, this being done, he was snatched away by the same God; so Lyranus; thirdly, because otherwise the Eunuch would have detained Philip too long, whom God wished also to evangelize others. So Œcumenius. Moreover, all these things happened a little after the slaying of St. Stephen, as appears from verse 4. Hence the Alexandrian Chronicle asserts that in the second year after Christ's ascension into heaven the Eunuch was converted by Philip, and Cornelius by St. Peter, of whom chapter 10. Gaspar Sanchez thinks the same, tract. 1 On the Preaching of St. James in Spain, chapter IX.
AND HE WENT ON HIS WAY REJOICING. — For joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit which he had received in baptism. Rightly did he rejoice over so great a gift of God, and over so wonderful and special a providence bestowed upon him. Truly St. Augustine in his Sentences, Sentence 90: "No one, he says, can be defrauded of his delights for whom Christ is joy. For everlasting exultation belongs to him who rejoices in the eternal Good." And Sentence 131: "For a Christian, the proper cause of rejoicing is not the present age, but the future." St. Jerome, in chapter 53 of Isaiah, writes that this Eunuch preached Christ in Ethiopia, and was the Apostle of the Ethiopians, and from a disciple became a master. The same is testified by Irenaeus, Book III, chapter 12; Cyril, Catechesis 17, and Eusebius, Book II of the History, chapter 1. He himself is said to have received St. Matthew, sent into Ethiopia, in the city of Nadaber, says Gagneius. Dorotheus adds, in his Synopsis of the Saints, and from him Nicephorus, Book II, chapters 6 and 7, that this Eunuch preached the Gospel in Arabia Felix, Taprobana, and all Erythraea, and was at last crowned with martyrdom and buried in the same place: moreover his cemetery is an insuperable defense for the faithful, putting to flight barbarians and the wicked, driving away diseases, and working healings up to the present day.
Verse 40: Until He Came to Caesarea
40. Until he came to Caesarea. — "Caesarea" is a city of Palestine situated between Dora and Joppa; it was formerly called the Tower of Strato, but by Herod the Ascalonite, in honor of Augustus Caesar, to whom he dedicated it, it was called Caesarea. It was distinct from Caesarea Philippi, which was built by Philip, son of Herod, in honor of Tiberius Caesar, at the foot of Lebanon, whence it received both names; and later by Herod Agrippa it was called Neronias in honor of Nero. Moreover, in this our Caesarea this deacon Philip had a house, in which he also dwelt with his four daughters, who were prophetesses, of whom chapter 21. In this same city, Herod Agrippa the elder, while celebrating quinquennial games and failing to restrain the flatterers who acclaimed him as he was speaking, "The voice of a God, not of a man," was struck by an angel and perished, Acts 12. In this same city Cornelius the Centurion, baptized by St. Peter, is said to have been the first bishop, Acts 10. Here also the prophet Agabus, binding himself with Paul's girdle, foretold his bonds: hence a little later Paul, bound at Jerusalem, was sent to Caesarea, where before King Agrippa and the governor Felix he pleaded his cause, and being detained in chains by Festus he appealed to Caesar, Acts 23 and following. Bishop of this city later was Eusebius, the writer of the Ecclesiastical History, who from this is called Caesareensis; just as St. Basil was bishop of another Caesarea, which is in Cappadocia. So Adrichomius in his Description of the Holy Land.