Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Paul at Malta shakes a viper from his unharmed hand, heals the father of Publius and others; then after three months, sailing on, he arrives at Rome. There, having called the Jews together, he announces the cause of his coming, and for two years living in a free imprisonment, as though in a guest-lodging, he intrepidly preaches the Gospel.
Vulgate Text: Acts 28:1-31
1. And when we had escaped, then we knew that the island was called Melita. But the barbarians showed us no small courtesy. 2. For kindling a fire, they refreshed us all, because of the rain that threatened, and because of the cold. 3. And when Paul had gathered together a bundle of sticks, and had laid them on the fire, a viper coming out of the heat, fastened on his hand. 4. And when the barbarians saw the beast hanging on his hand, they said one to another: Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, who though he has escaped the sea, vengeance does not allow him to live. 5. And he indeed, shaking off the beast into the fire, suffered no harm. 6. But they supposed that he would begin to swell up, and that he would suddenly fall down and die. But expecting long, and seeing that there came no harm to him, changing their minds, they said that he was a god. 7. Now in these places were possessions of the chief man of the island, named Publius, who receiving us, for three days entertained us kindly. 8. And it happened that the father of Publius lay sick with a fever and dysentery. To whom Paul entered in: and when he had prayed and laid his hands on him, he healed him. 9. Which being done, all who in the island had diseases, came and were healed: 10. who also honored us with many honors, and when we were setting sail, they laid on us the things that were necessary. 11. After three months we sailed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the island, whose sign was the Castors. 12. And when we had come to Syracuse, we stayed there three days. 13. From there, skirting the coast, we came to Rhegium: and after one day, the south wind blowing, we came on the second day to Puteoli, 14. where, finding brethren, we were entreated to stay with them seven days: and so we came to Rome. 15. And from there, when the brethren had heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. When Paul saw them, giving thanks to God, he took courage. 16. And when we had come to Rome, Paul was permitted to dwell by himself, with a soldier that guarded him. 17. And after the third day he called together the chief of the Jews. And when they had come together, he said to them: Men, brethren, I, having done nothing against the people, or the custom of the fathers, was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans, 18. who, when they had examined me, would have released me, because there was no cause of death in me. 19. But the Jews opposing it, I was constrained to appeal to Caesar, not as having anything to accuse my nation of. 20. For this cause therefore I have asked to see you and to speak to you. Because for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain. 21. But they said to him: We neither received letters concerning you from Judea, nor did any of the brethren come and report or speak any evil of you. 22. But we desire to hear from you what you think; for as concerning this sect, we know that it is everywhere spoken against. 23. And when they had appointed him a day, many came to him at his lodging; to whom he expounded, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them concerning Jesus, out of the law of Moses and the prophets, from morning until evening. 24. And some believed the things that were said: but some did not believe. 25. And when they did not agree among themselves, they departed, Paul speaking this one word: Well did the Holy Spirit speak to our fathers through Isaiah the prophet, 26. saying: Go to this people, and say to them: With your ear you shall hear, and shall not understand: and seeing you shall see, and shall not perceive. 27. For the heart of this people has grown gross, and with their ears they have been dull of hearing, and their eyes they have shut: lest perhaps they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. 28. Be it known therefore to you, that this salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear. 29. And when he had said this, the Jews went out from him, having much disputation among themselves. 30. And he remained for two whole years in his own hired lodging: and he received all who came in to him, 31. preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, without prohibition.
Verse 1: Melita; Seven Privileges Conferred on Malta by St. Paul; The Barbarians
1. Melita. — So the Roman [Vulgate] and Greek [texts]: wherefore some wrongly read Mitylene, others Miletus. Two islands are called Melite. One is in Illyria: the Illyrians contend that St. Paul landed on it from the shipwreck, and with them the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his book to his son Romanus, On the Administration of the Empire, chapter XXXVI. Philip Cluverius sets forth and refutes their arguments, book II On Ancient Sicily, chapter XVI. The other is near Sicily, commonly called Malta; this is the one understood here, which is of a mild climate, with healthful waters, a kind and fruitful soil, praised for the excellence of its honey, and from this, as it seems, named Melita. This island is now the unconquered bulwark of the Knights of Malta against the Turks: where there is a famous memory of Paul from this his landing upon it, and devotion toward him, so much so that near the city a cavern is shown with two altars, in which Paul is said to have been lodged with the other prisoners. The earth, or rather the rock, of this cavern, is with great reverence dug out and carried away by the natives and by visitors, and is effective against poisons and serpents: from it at Rome a portion was given to me, as a rare and signal gift.
Whence note here seven outstanding benefits and privileges which St. Paul conferred upon Malta and the Maltese; so much so that God seems to have ordered and procured his shipwreck to the end that it might happen near Malta, for the salvation and advantage of the Maltese, which He had from eternity destined to bestow upon them by this means.
The first was the conversion, faith, and salvation of the Maltese. For soon after Christ, at the very beginnings of the Church, the Maltese above other islands and peoples received the preaching of the Gospel from St. Paul, and, believing him as he preached and worked miracles, first obtained from him as their bishop St. Publius, their fellow-citizen, nay, their chief.
The second is, that among them he baptized the 276 companions of his voyage and shipwreck. One mile from the port where Paul disembarked, there are still to be seen various ruins of ancient buildings, among which stands a chapel designated by the name of St. John the Baptist Telcheres, that is, "among the ruins," where it is the common tradition of several neighboring villages that St. Paul baptized the aforesaid 276 persons. An indication of this is that a few years ago, when this chapel was being restored, a baptismal font of hard stone was found under the ground. Near the chapel stand corners and long and large walls, skillfully cut and elaborated, where it is thought was the country house and home of St. Publius.
The third is, that St. Paul tarried at Malta for three months. They relate that, together with St. Luke, Aristarchus, Trophimus, and his other companions, he lived in a certain suburban crypt of the old city, which accordingly they hold in great veneration, insomuch that next to it they built a church, which for many centuries was the mother and episcopal church of the whole island. Around the crypt is a huge cemetery, in which not only the Maltese but also very many foreign Nobles, for the sake of devotion, have directed in their wills to be buried and to be brought there, especially because long ago a plenary Indulgence was granted to those procuring to be buried there, such as there is for those buried at Rome in the Campo Santo: wherefore in the same many little chapels are to be seen; in this cemetery there is a place distant from the crypt by a bow-shot, in which it is reported that St. Paul preached: in memory of which thing they have erected in the same a stone cross.
The fourth, that at Malta scorpions and serpents, whether born there or brought in, lay aside their venom: indeed, the Maltese earth heals bites of any poisonous creatures, even of rabid dogs, if it be taken in a drink or placed upon the wound; and this not only in men, but also in beasts, so much so that some Sicilian physicians prefer it to terra sigillata. For it avails not only against poisons, but also against malignant fevers, dysentery, smallpox, and even toxic substances, especially of sublimate, whether drunk by accident or of set purpose: concerning which grave men, eye-witnesses of them, have related to me illustrious examples and miracles.
The fifth, that St. Paul has often protected Malta from the incursion of enemies. To pass over other things, about the year of the Lord 1470, when the Moors with a fleet of eighteen thousand soldiers were invading it, and were already disposing their artillery to shake the old city, on the third day St. Paul appeared in a star-spangled robe, of the kind in which he is seen depicted in the Cathedral church, and, brandishing a sword and seated on a horse, surrounded by a countless multitude, was seen to attack the Turkish ranks: and when the Turks shot many arrows at him, they all rebounded upon the Turks themselves and struck back, and wounded and destroyed them. Likewise two other patron saints of the island were seen, St. George and St. Agatha — of whom the tradition is that she, fleeing the Sicilian persecution, hid there, and wove that famous veil that restrains the fires of Etna; and that, like Penelope, by such an art, that what she had woven by day she unwove by night, because when her mother urged her to marriage, she, declining it, answered that first this veil must be woven through for her. Wherefore at that time they had placed a marble statue of St. Agatha in the wall, but with its face averted from the Turks and turned toward the city: but it, by its own power, turned its face toward the Turks with as great a crash as that of the greater cannon, so much so that the Turks, struck by the same, raised the siege and gave themselves to flight.
The sixth, that in Malta there exist three images of the Blessed Virgin painted by St. Luke, who, as I said before, as the companion of St. Paul, wintered and dwelt with him there for three months. Wherefore, having distributed them throughout the three principal regions of the island, they venerate them with great devotion.
The seventh, that Malta, from the time of St. Paul until now, has never fallen away from the faith received from St. Paul, even though the Moors occupied and held it for a hundred and more years. The same has been granted by God to Cologne Agrippina on account of the merits of the Theban Martyrs, and of the eleven thousand Virgins who rest there. Whence it is sung of her:
From the time you received the faith,
You have not relapsed,
Most noble city.
All these things concerning Malta our Maltese Fathers, grave and learned men, constantly affirmed to me at Rome by living voice and set down in writing, and the same our Octavius Cajetan has transmitted in his Isagoge, chapter XIX.
See here the munificence of St. Paul, by which he recompensed with such great bounty the hospitality and the hospitable welcome of the Maltese: evidently the Saints do not suffer themselves to be surpassed by us in generosity, but for one slight gift they return a huge one, sevenfold, indeed a hundredfold. So great a thing is it to receive Saints with hospitality, to do good to them, to have them present, to venerate and invoke them. For by this divine benefit St. Paul recompensed the hospitable barbarians and their kindness, so that they who had put off their barbarism toward him might have their native vipers stripped of poison and rendered harmless toward them; indeed, they might possess their own clods of earth as it were antidotes against poisons. Wherefore all Malta is consecrated to St. Paul, and may rightly be called the patron-island of St. Paul: for he often delivers it from plague, famine, and war.
Barbarians. — The inhabitants of Malta, that is the Maltese, who in Paul's time were barbarians both in language and in manners. Whence they are the more praiseworthy in that they showed themselves so humane toward Paul and the shipwrecked, so Chrysostom.
Verse 3: Of Sticks; Viper; Fastened On
3. Of sticks (sarmentorum). — Sarmenta properly are the cuttings of vines: thence, however, they signify the cuttings of any kind of wood or twig: for these in Greek are called φρύγανα, that is, combustible woods, which the Latins call cremia, from φρύγω, that is, "I roast."
Viper. — Many think vipera is so called as if vi pariens ("giving birth by force"), because the offspring of the viper gnaw through the womb of the mother, while in being born from it they come forth into the light. But experience teaches that this is false, as I have shown elsewhere. Whence more truly Theophrastus, and following him Aelian, book IX On the History of Animals, chapter XXXI and XXXII, holds that vipera is so called as if vivipara ("viviparous"), because she brings forth a living animal, not eggs, like other serpents. Moreover, the viper is so poisonous and pestilent that by its hiss and the breath which it puffs out alone it stupefies a man and inflicts upon him death or an almost lethal disease. I saw at Rome a certain man of our Society who, while striking a viper, was so blasted and as it were thunderstruck by its hissing that for many years he labored under stupor and an almost incurable disease. The Arabs call the viper Therion, from the Greek θηρίον, that is, "wild beast." Whence the medicine against the bites of vipers and serpents, made from the flesh of the viper itself, is called Theriaca: the composition of which, under the Emperor Nero (who killed his mother, as the viper is said to kill her mother), Andromachus the physician discovered, as Galen relates, who lived shortly after under the Emperor Antoninus, volume V, book On Theriaca to Piso, chapter V. But before Andromachus, Antiochus Philometor, king of Asia, made a theriac, which he used against all poisons, from wild thyme, anise, opopanax, millet, trefoil, dill, fennel, ammi, parsley, vetch, and generous wine, mixed and made up into pastilles, as Pliny relates, book XX, chapter XXIV, and Galen, in the book cited.
Fastened on (invasit). — The Syriac: "bit," as serpents are wont to do when they attack someone: for it was hanging from his hand. So Œcumenius and Lyra here, and Tertullian, in the Scorpiace, chapter I, and Ambrose, book VI of the Hexameron, chapter VI.
Verse 4: Vengeance
4. Vengeance (ultio). — The vindication of the Deity. For this above all others is wont to pursue murderers as criminals, according to that saying of Christ, Matthew XXVI, 52: "All who take the sword shall perish by the sword." Thus the vengeance of God everywhere pursued Cain the fratricide, Genesis IV, 7 and following. I have recounted many examples of this vengeance at Deuteronomy XXI, 4. For "ultio," in Greek it is δίκη; the Syriac translates it "justice;" others, "judgment;" others, "vengeance." These barbarians seem to suppose vengeance to be a goddess, whom Hesiod in his Works makes the daughter of Jove and Themis, as also other Poets do, who call her Astraea. Whence Ovid, book I of the Metamorphoses, treating of the iron age of the wicked:
"Astraea, the last of the heavenly ones," he says, "left the earth."
Whose effigy Gellius thus paints from Chrysippus, book XIV, chapter IV: "Justice," he says, "is painted with a virginal form and figure, with a vehement and formidable countenance, with sharp gleams of the eyes: neither humble nor atrocious, but with the dignity of a certain venerable austerity. From the likeness of this image he wished it to be understood that the judge, who is the priest of justice, must be grave, holy, severe, incorruptible, unflattered, and toward the wicked and harmful, unmerciful and inexorable, upright and lofty and powerful, terrifying by the force of the majesty of equity and truth." See Lilio Giraldi, On the Gods of the Gentiles, syntagma I.
Verse 5: And He Indeed Shook Off the Beast
5. And he indeed shook off the beast. — Excellently Œcumenius: "The viper," he says, "when she had cast her teeth into the Apostle's hand, and had found in him no softness or laxity of sin, immediately (shaken off by him) leapt back, and threw herself into the fire, as though she had exacted from herself a penalty for having attacked a body that pertained nothing to her. But we fear the beasts, because we are not at all fortified by the armor of virtue. For Adam in his innocence could not be harmed by beasts and serpents, indeed he ruled over them. Whence the Saints who approach his primeval innocence often obtain the same dominion from God, as did St. Paul, St. Antony, St. Macarius, St. Francis, and the like, as I said at Genesis IX, 2. Therefore this viper by her voluntary death gave to herself the punishment of rashness, and to Paul the encomium of innocence. For Paul did not die of being bitten by her, but obtained a reputation of immortality, indeed even of divinity. For those who were present, seeing nothing evil happen to him, "said that he was a god," verse 6. Whence excellently the Lord Chrysostom on Psalm XCV: "Paul," he says, "struck by the viper, displayed the power of the Holy Spirit which dwelt in him, using the viper as a witness;" as if the viper had been to the Apostle not a deadly plague, but a witness for glory; and, wishing to pour deadly venom into the Apostle, drank it for herself. Truly Arator says of Paul here:
Fastening his limbs to the cross of Christ,
He knows not how to die from a serpent.
Hence the promise of Christ is fulfilled, Mark XVI, 18: "These signs shall follow those who believe, etc.; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them." Whence Tertullian, in the Scorpiace, chapter I: "In this manner," he says, "we often come to the help even of pagans, having been endowed by God with that power which the Apostle dedicated, when he scorned the bite of the viper."
Moreover, from that time when Paul shook off the viper at Malta, it has been divinely granted to that island that all serpents in it are devoid of venom, and however much they may bite anyone, they bring forth no harm at all; and the islanders call this "the grace of St. Paul," who in this way has abundantly recompensed them for the merit of their hospitality and welcome. At Malta, therefore, no harmful kind of serpent is born, nor does one brought in from elsewhere harm anyone; indeed the Maltese clod is an antidote against poisons, so much so that the Maltese themselves are as it were a terror to serpents: thus Thomas Fazellus, On Sicilian Affairs, Decade I, book I, chapter I; Baronius, Gagneius, and others. Thus of St. Phocas the martyr, in the Roman Martyrology, on the 5th of March, we read this: "How he triumphed over that ancient serpent is even today declared to the peoples by this miracle: that if anyone has been bitten by a serpent, when he has reached, in faith, the door of the Martyr's basilica, immediately, the power of the venom being emptied out, he is healed."
There are in Italy those who boast that they are of the kindred and family of Paul, and who handle serpents with impunity. But Delrio convicts them of imposture, book I on Magic, chapter III, Question IV, and from him Lorinus here, on the ground that it has been ascertained that they fortify themselves beforehand against the bite by antidotes. Lorinus adds that the Marsi and the Psylli are untouched and unharmed by serpents, not through any natural antipathy, as some think, but by enchantments and magical arts. Indeed, Delrio holds suspect the Salutatores, who heal various diseases by words, and the Ensalmatores, who do so by their breath, and notes many things in them full of suspicion and peril; although Navarrus, in the Manual, chapter XI, number 36, excuses the Salutatores and supposes the gift of healing in them to be a grace freely given by God for the good of the commonwealth.
Moreover, some wish this immunity from poisons to be natural to Malta, just as Bede records that it is natural to Ireland, book I of the History of the English, chapter I; and Solinus Polyhistor records the same of Sardinia, chapter XXXV; but they are mistaken. For the inhabitants of Malta marveled that St. Paul, when touched by the viper, neither swelled up nor died, as they had seen happen to others. Therefore before St. Paul, Malta was liable to poisons. To Paul therefore it owes this immunity, and willingly acknowledges that it received it from him.
Verse 6: They Supposed That He Would Begin to Swell Up; And Die; Changing Their Minds; They Said That He Was a God
6. But they supposed that he would begin to swell up, — from the burning and inflammation which the viper's bite creates: for this is what the Greek πίμπρασθαι signifies. Whence the Zurich version and Pagninus translate: "but they thought it would happen that he would be inflamed, or fall down suddenly dead."
And die, — that is, would die on the spot, as I have already said from the Greek. Moreover, how quickly serpents, especially vipers and asps, kill a man, Galen teaches, book On Theriac to Piso, chapter VIII, at the end, by the example of Cleopatra: "They say that Cleopatra," he says, "first inflicted a great and deep wound upon her arm with her teeth: then the poison which she had previously prepared from an asp, brought to her in a certain little box, she poured into the wound; and thus, with the poison entering the body, not long after, the guards being unaware, she gently ended her life. For in truth those serpents kill swiftly, as I have often experienced at great Alexandria. For when they wish to dispatch by long torment and delay one condemned to this kind of punishment, they apply asps to their breasts, and make them walk for a little while, and thus quickly destroy them."
Changing their minds (convertentes se), — toward one another, with mind and speech changed: for the Greek μεταβαλλόμενοι signifies all these things. So the Syriac, Chrysostom, the Zurich version, Thomas, Pagninus, Lyra, and others.
They said that he was a god. — See here the sudden change of the Maltese. Out of a murderer they make a god, says St. Chrysostom. So the Lycaonians, seeing the miracle of Paul, cried out that he was Mercury, Acts XIV, 18.
Verse 7: The Chief Man of the Island
7. The chief man of the island. — In Greek, τῷ πρώτῳ, that is, "the first." Therefore Publius was the foremost among the Maltese, says St. Chrysostom; but not absolute prince and lord of Malta: for this island was subject to the Romans. Publius is a Roman name. Whence he himself appears to have been a Roman, who, having held the praetorship or prefecture of Malta, fixed his abode there, having acquired estates. For Malta was subject to the Romans, just as Sicily, and was ruled by the Praetor of Sicily through a vicar, who was called πρῶτος, that is, "first," foremost, the chief prince of the island and of the islanders, and this an ancient inscription teaches: "L. Ca., son of Cyr., a Roman knight, πρῶτος Μελιταίων," that is, "first, or chief of the Maltese," which Philip Cluverius records, book II On Ancient Sicily, chapter XVI. How rich Publius was is clear from the fact that he received these 276 shipwrecked persons in hospitality for three days, on the testimony of St. Chrysostom. His house is said to have been the one which in the city of Malta is the great church dedicated to St. Paul; his estates are thought to have been those which today are called Benuerrat, near the bay where the ship landed, not far from the village of Nazar. So our Octavius Cajetan, Isagoge chapter XIX. Luke is silent here that Paul during the three months he was at Malta preached and converted the Maltese and Publius himself, of whom Arator sings thus:
In three winter months in the region of Malta,
Paul gives manifold help.
So too Chrysostom.
Moreover, that this Publius was created Bishop of Malta by Paul, Ado teaches in the Martyrology, on the 21st of January, and Bede, on the 18th of January: and they add that the same one was afterwards created Bishop of Athens, and that he is that Publius who after Quadratus succeeded Dionysius the Areopagite at Athens in the bishopric, and departed crowned with a noble martyrdom, concerning whom is Eusebius, book IV of the History, chapter XXIII, and St. Jerome in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, under "Quadratus."
Verse 8: He Healed Him
8. He healed him (salvavit eum), — that is, "cured" him, certainly through a miracle, especially because fever and dysentery are opposite diseases, as St. Jerome notes on chapter LVI of Isaiah. St. Gregory notes, book XXVII of the Morals, chapter XI or XIV, that Paul healed the father of Publius because he was an unbeliever, that he might convert him by this miracle and benefit to Christ: but he did not heal Timothy in his sickness, because he was already converted. The disease therefore was left to him for the exercise of patience and for the increase of his crown.
Verse 11: Whose Sign Was the Castors
11. Whose sign was the Castors. — The Gloss wrongly reads castrorum ("of camps"). It was customary, says Sanchez, for sailors to carry tutelary gods on the stern of their ships, that is, their statues and idols, or images. The Phoenicians call these Pataeci, on the testimony of Hesychius, concerning whom Persius writes:
Huge gods upon the stern.
And Ovid, in Tristia I, elegy 3:
Upon the curving stern
The wave leaps up, and lashes the painted gods.
From this Chrysostom too is of opinion that images of the Castors had been painted on the ship. The "Castors" are called the twin brothers Castor and Pollux. For Castor, being the elder, gave his name in common with his younger brother Pollux. These two were born of Jupiter and Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus: whence they are called Tyndaridae, and διόσκουροι, that is, sons of Jove. For the Poets feign that Jupiter took the form of a swan, and from him Leda conceived an egg: from which were born the twins, Castor and Pollux. Whence Horace, in Sermones II, satire i:
Castor delights in horses, the one born from the same egg
In fistfights.
For Castor was an outstanding tamer of horses, but Pollux was a boxer. Both after death were placed among the stars: their constellation is called Gemini, in which the sun resides in June. They were held by the Gentiles as gods, especially by the Romans. Whence even now their huge statues are seen at Rome in the entrance to the Capitol. Hence Cicero too in Against Verres, act 1: "And you," he says, "arbiters and witnesses of all forensic matters, of the greatest counsels, of laws and judgments, situated in the most celebrated place of the praetorium, Castor and Pollux." They were considered gods of the sea, and so painted on ships were invoked by sailors during a storm: either because there are stars in heaven by this name, which if both appear are a sign of clear weather, but if only one, of a storm; or because Castor and Pollux freed the sea from pirates; or because they were Argonauts, sailing with their companions to Colchis; and when a storm arose, while the others feared, two stars were seen above the heads of Castor and Pollux, and immediately the sea began to be calmed: whence the others were persuaded that by their grace they were guarded by the gods, and from then on began to invoke them in similar peril, as Giraldus narrates from Diodorus Siculus and Valerius Flaccus, Synt. v, p. 182. These fables arose from the fact that sailors are accustomed to observe the stars of the Castors, and to believe that if they appear, they preserve those who sail. Whence Horace, in Carmina I:
I shall sing also of Alcides, and of the sons of Leda,
The one famous for excelling on horseback, the other in fists;
Whose white star together having shone for sailors,
The waters tossed about flow down from the rocks,
The winds fall, and the clouds flee,
And the threatening (as the gods so willed) Sea
Reclines its wave.
The same elsewhere:
The constellation of the Tyndarids snatches
Shattered ships from the lowest waters.
Now Christian sailors, after the Blessed Virgin, who is the star of the sea, in peril invoke St. Paul, who was day and night in the depth of the sea, St. Clement plunged into the sea, St. Nicholas, St. Francis Xavier, who in almost perpetual navigation traversed and re-traversed the immense spaces of the Ocean, from Portugal to India, the Moluccas, Japan, and China, and St. Hermes, or St. Telmus. For so by sailors he is called Telmus, or Elmus, from the place; who by his proper name was called Peter Consalvus of the Order of St. Dominic, and migrated to the heavens in the year of the Lord 1246, whose life and miracles Ferdinand Castiglio wrote in his History of St. Dominic, Part I, Book II, chapters xxiii, xxiv, and xxv, and Ribadeneira in his Life, which he has in the Appendix of the extravagant Saints. Moreover, they invoke them, not as gods and divinities, as the Gentiles did, as Calvin objects, but as their patrons and advocates with God, and that in the matter in which they themselves, formerly serving God, merited that they could help others in the same. See Stapleton here in his Antidotes.
Furthermore, the sign of the Castors was thus represented. Castor and Pollux were painted as two young men; to each was given half of an egg, a javelin in the hand, and a white horse, and above shone a star. So Lucian, in his Dialogues of the Gods, at the end.
Verse 12: To Syracuse; Paul in Sicily; The Coast from Pachynus to Pelorus
12. To Syracuse. — It is the greatest and most beautiful city of Sicily, situated under Mount Pachynus, where is the spring Arethusa. There is never so cloudy a day in the year that the sun is not seen there at Syracuse, just as at Rhodes, says Pliny, Book II, chapter LXII. Now it has been ennobled as the homeland and place of martyrdom of St. Lucy. From this it is clear that Paul was in Sicily and benefited the Sicilians. Whence St. Chrysostom: "Furthermore," he says, "the preaching reached even into Sicily."
Our Father Octavius Cajetanus wrote a work on the saints and matters of Sicily with great labor and study, drawn out and elaborated from the ancient monuments of the Sicilians, but prevented by death he could not bring it to light. Therefore Father Alfonsus Cajetanus undertook to publish it posthumously, and is hastening the work, that he may satisfy the eager and long expectation of many: meanwhile, excerpts from his Isagoge concerning the arrival and fruit of Sts. Peter and Paul in Sicily, he sent from Palermo to me at Rome; to whom therefore with thanksgiving the candid Reader may return these things received with me. I shall here insert them in summary, inasmuch as they greatly illustrate the present history of St. Luke, and add and supply many things which St. Luke omitted out of zeal for brevity. From which you may clearly see the ancient benevolence of Sts. Peter and Paul toward the Sicilians, and in turn the kindled zeal of the Sicilians toward the Apostles.
These things therefore the Isagoge writes about St. Peter, chapter XVIII. It is certain that Sicily first received the faith, the churches, and the first bishops from St. Peter. Whence Innocent I, in his Epistle to Decentius, constantly affirms that no one in Sicily established churches except those whom the Venerable Apostle Peter or his successors appointed. Metaphrastes, in his oration On Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29, hands down that St. Peter, sailing from Syria to Rome, landed at Tauromenium in Sicily; and turned aside to Pancratius the Bishop, whom while previously at Antioch he had sent ahead to that place; which happened in the second year of the Emperor Claudius. Constantinus Lascaris confirms in his notes — which we read in the Treasury of the city of Messina — that the same was written by St. John Chrysostom. Vincent of Beauvais, William of Speyer, Peter Calesinus, and Cardinal Baronius confirmed the testimony of the most learned man Metaphrastes for the year of Christ 44. To Sicily together with St. Peter, as Metaphrastes says, came his disciples: Mark the writer of the Gospel; Apollinaris, afterwards sent to Ravenna by St. Peter; Martial, sent away by him then to Gaul; Rufus, made Bishop of Capua; the Menaea add Beryllus. While St. Peter was at Tauromenium, he baptized Maximus, well instructed in the catechism, and ordained him bishop, and appointed him to succeed Pancratius. The same gave Marcianus as bishop to Syracuse, and Beryllus to Catania, as the Roman Martyrology and the Menologies of the Greeks have it. These therefore are the three first churches of Sicily erected by St. Peter. Next to these is Agrigentum, whose first bishop the writers record as St. Libertinus the martyr; but in what year this was done, escapes us. The Syracusan encomiast of St. Libertinus, worthy of trust, makes him a contemporary of St. Peregrinus the martyr, who was a disciple of St. Marcianus, Bishop of Syracuse, instituted by St. Peter.
The Isagoge however, in chapter xx, reports that St. Paul was received at Syracuse with incredible joy by Bishop Marcianus (whom some years before St. Peter had sent thither and ordained Bishop of the city), and by all the Christians of his Church coming forth with their zeal and offices to meet the renowned Apostle triumphing in chains. It is certain to me that those three days he stayed in the same lodging with Marcianus; that in that cave, which he had consecrated to Christ after expelling the demons, the holy Paul performed the sacred rites; that he offered to God the Church of Syracuse as the firstfruits of the West; that he converted many to Christ, refreshed that Church by his sight and conversation, and inflamed it in the love of God. We believe that he also visited the places and villages near Syracuse: for although he was being led bound to Rome, yet by the humanity of Julius the centurion, by whose custody he was held, much reverence was given to the Apostle. For at Sidon he was permitted by him to go to his friends and take care of himself, at Melita to lodge three days with Publius. Beyond the humanity of the centurion was added the piety and Christian religion which all professed who had been companions of the navigation of the holy Paul, and their love toward the Apostle, inasmuch as by his benefit they had escaped shipwreck and believed in Christ; for in Paul's favor of all who were borne in the ship, not only their bodies snatched from shipwreck, but their souls from infidelity, we have shown above from the Acts of the Apostles and the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom. From these things we do not doubt that the doctor of the Gentiles was permitted to act freely at Syracuse, to preach the kingdom of God, and even to visit the neighboring villages of the city. Indeed, far from Syracuse about eight thousand paces, in the field whose name is Solarino, there is a church marked with the title of the holy Paul the Apostle; and the architecture is truly ancient: in which is seen a well, by whose water drawn and the sick washed, with the invocation of the Apostle Paul, many miracles are wrought daily, and the votive offerings and tablets hanging there bear witness to the benefits conferred by the most holy Apostle on mortals. Among the Syracusans there is an old tradition that the holy Paul the Apostle, when he came to Syracuse, ran out to that place, and that a church was built by the Christians in memory of that fact: in that very tract are found the vestiges of an ancient habitation; perhaps in that age there was a town there which the Apostle in his charity visited.
The Isagoge however, in chapter xxi, teaches that St. Paul traveled along the coast of Sicily from Pachynus to Pelorus, and recounts the monuments left by him in those places. The voyage, he says, from the island of Melita to Syracuse, was slow, as not a few prove: for before he, borne by ship, put in to the harbor of Syracuse, we judge that he descended to the coast on this side of the promontory of Pachynus and surveyed the neighboring places. There is an old tradition among the Hetini and the inhabitants of Pachynus that the Apostle Paul reached that coast, and penetrated four miles inland into the region of Elorus: in which place a church was built by later generations near the river Elorus, dedicated to the holy Paul, which still remains, in memory of his coming; nor far from it is a well held in highest veneration, whose water those who drink, or wash themselves, are delivered from various diseases, and it is most powerful against wounds and the harmful bites of beasts. In the same field, whose name is Biliscalis, there is another well, at which by the virtue and grace of the same Apostle many miracles are wrought.
Furthermore, from the approach of the holy Paul to these places, this is altogether certain, that his navigation along that coast of Sicily was slow, not without the great providence of God, that the Apostle might survey Sicily, and lead to Christ those whom he could by his preaching; but St. Luke also teaches that the Apostle, having departed from Syracuse, sailed around the island.
Therefore, after the ship of Paul left Syracuse, having sailed past the maritime coast of Sicily, it again turned aside from its course to the shore, between Tauromenium and Messana, where now there is a temple sacred to Paul the Apostle. There is an ancient report among the inhabitants of the place that the holy Paul, when he was traveling along the coast of Sicily, put in at that bay over which the monastery of St. Placidus stands on a high hill, and that he stayed on that shore, which is ten thousand paces distant from the city of Messana; on that very shore and place trodden by the feet of the Apostle, the Christians then, when the faith of Christ grew up, built a small but indicative-of-great-piety church, sacred to the holy Paul, which would testify to the descent of the Apostle on that shore, and would transmit the memory of the matter to posterity. From that maritime coast the Apostle set sail for Rhegium, and this matter, handed down to us by our forefathers, is not at variance with the navigation of the holy Paul. For its witness and writer, the holy Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, says that, sailing from Syracuse, having traversed the maritime coast of Sicily, he came to Rhegium. It is likely that the ship, sailing around the shore of the island, put in there, where, with the tide and the winds against it, or with the night pressing on, it stopped, until the tide and winds were favorable, or the day dawned, lest that strait, infamous for shipwrecks and dreaded for the whirlpools of Charybdis, should be crossed in the dark night, and especially by those for whom there was enough fear from the recent shipwreck near Melita. But that bay, into which the report has it that the Apostle descended, seems made by nature for that purpose; nor is there a more convenient stretch of sea for those setting sail for Rhegium from the Mamertine coast; but also the ships for which the way from the East is through Sicily into the West, having sailed past the island, regularly cross over to Rhegium from that bay which is now ennobled by the temple of the holy Apostle Paul.
The Isagoge, in chapter xxii, shows that St. Paul, sailing the Sicilian Strait, beheld Messana, but did not approach it, as Constantinus Lascaris contends: but that he did approach it after, freed from the first Neronian chains, he again traversed the provinces and Sicily (as it seems and as St. Chrysostom intimates). For it is a tradition of the Church of Messana that St. Paul appointed Bacchylus as Bishop over the people of Messana. Indeed, every year in that city solemn processions are held on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, in memory of Bishop Bacchylus, set over the Church of Messana by St. Paul: and it is an old custom in that Church to lead the relics of St. Paul through the city. So our Octavius. Others add that, in the territory of Avola, which many judge to be Hyble or Hybla, in which there is an abundance of thyme and willows, whence bees pastured make the best honey, and from there are called Hyblean bees and Hyblean honey, of which Martial in Acres writes:
When you have given honeycombs from the hills of middle Hybla to Sicilians,
You may say they are Cecropian.
Near Hybla, I say, going toward Syracuse, there is a well like that one of Elorus which received its name from St. Paul, of the same virtue and veneration: at which, because many serpents come to drink, hence near it many vipers and serpents are seen dead, killed by drinking this water. Similar in both name and virtue is a well near Syracuse, whose water cures many infirmities.
I received this from our Sicilian Fathers as eyewitnesses. Here see how great the dignity and merit of St. Paul was, how great also his goodness and beneficence, which never allowed him to be idle and empty, but compelled him to scatter the seeds of his virtue and his vital rays everywhere like the sun, that he might imitate Christ, "who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil," as St. Peter says, Acts X, 38. Truly of St. Paul one may say what the Ecclesiastical Office sings of St. Cecilia: "Cecilia your handmaid, O Lord, served you industriously like a bee."
Finally, Paul, lingering three days at Syracuse, by evangelizing converted the greater part of the inhabitants (and through them, the neighboring Sicilians, so that Sicily owes its faith to St. Paul) to Christ, as Hieronymus Marasiotus narrates in the Chronicles of Calabria, Book I, chapter xx.
Verse 13: Rhegium; The Conversion of the Rhegines and the Burning Column
13. Rhegium, — a city of Calabria lying opposite and near Sicily. So called ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥηγνύναι, that is, "to break," because it was broken off by an earthquake or a flood of the sea from Sicily, to which previously it adhered and was contiguous, indeed continuous. So also they would have it that Sicily was so called as if Sicilita, that is, cut off from Italy, to which previously it adhered. So Pliny, Book III, chapter viii: "Sicily," he says, "was once joined to the Bruttian field, but soon, with the sea flowing between, it was torn away, by a strait of twelve thousand in length, and one thousand five hundred in breadth, near the Rhegine column." And Isidore more clearly, Book XIII of the Origins, chapter xviii: "A strait," he says, "is so called because there the sea always boils: for a strait is narrow and as it were boiling. For Varro says straits are called as it were 'fervid,' that is, boiling and having the motion of boiling. The Strait of Sicily, which is called Rhegium, Sallust writes is so called for the following reason, saying that of old Sicily was joined to Italy, and while it was one land, the middle space was either broken open by sinking through low ground, or cut through by narrowness; and from there it was named ῥῆγος, because in Greek what is broken off is called by this name." The same, almost word for word, has St. Jerome in his On Names of Acts of the Apostles, and from him Bede here. Therefore this strait is rightly called Rhegium, and from there the city adjacent to the strait is likewise called Rhegium, because this space had previously been an isthmus, which the sea is said to have broken through. Moreover Thucydides, Book IV, calls this strait Charybdis: so also Mela, Book II, chapter viii: and Pliny, Book XIII, chapter xviii: "Because," he says, "with hidden whirlpools it absorbs ships. Three times in a day it lifts up the waves, and three times absorbs them: for it receives the waters, that it may vomit them; it vomits, that it may again receive them." See Philip Cluverius, Book I On Ancient Sicily, chapter v.
Furthermore Rhegium is an ancient and noble city of Calabria, about which Hieronymus Marasiotus has many things in the Chronicles of Calabria, Book I: "Rhegium," he says, "the first city of Italy, was once one of the four Republics of Greater Greece, the metropolis of Calabria, as is clear from the fact that, since there are four Archbishoprics in Calabria, the most ancient is that of Rhegium, which has ten Suffragans, the Cosenza four, that of S. Severina five, the Rossano none."
Luke is silent here about many things, and especially about the conversion of the people of Rhegium by Paul on the one day on which he stayed among them: which I shall here transcribe from the records of the Church of Rhegium written in Greek in that same age, and afterwards translated into the Latin tongue, and preserved in the Archiepiscopal archive, and sent to me at Rome by learned and chief men of Rhegium, because they bear on the present history, so that from them may be clear both the primitive faith and devotion of the people of Rhegium toward Christ and Paul, and the love of St. Paul toward them, and at the same time his insatiable thirst and ardor, even in the midst of journeys and chains, of evangelizing everywhere, as also his energy and fruit. Thus then they have it in the life and martyrdom of St. Stephen, who, as the companion and disciple of St. Paul, was first appointed by him bishop of the Rhegines: "This holy martyr Stephen was from the city of Nicaea: but when the Apostle Paul was making for Rome, he accompanied him as far as the city of Rhegium of Calabria. But when the Apostle found the city worshiping idols, he preached in it the word of the Lord; and as good ground returns the seed received a hundredfold, so also the inhabitants of that city received the word of God: whom when Paul had instructed, and most of them he had baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, he made for them Stephen as bishop: who, well feeding the flock entrusted to him, converted many to the faith of Christ by his teachings. But when he had stayed in this city seventeen years, and had ordained bishops and presbyters, and the church had been increased by the grace of God, afterwards, when persecution against the Christians was stirred up, the Saint was captured by Hierax the leader, as a chief man of the Christian faith, and was forced to deny Christ and offer sacrifice to idols: but he himself would not allow this, but rather, intrepidly confessing Christ as God and maker of all, asserting moreover that the idols of the Gentiles are wood and stones lacking sense, the works of the hands of men and inventions of the devil, therefore he is unceasingly beaten together with Bishop Socra, and their faces are also crushed with stones, and cast into a furnace of fire they came out unharmed. Hence many believed in Christ and shouted out, saying: Great is the God who is preached by the bishops Stephen and Socra. Among whom were the modest women called Agnes, Felicitas, and Perpetua, disciples of the divine Stephen, who intrepidly before Hierax the leader confessed the name of Christ God, preaching Him as the true Creator of all; then the leader, full of wrath, ordered them, together with the bishops Stephen and Socra, to be cut down by the sword: which being done, immediately they handed over their holy souls to the Lord, giving thanks and exulting, that they had been made worthy to die for Christ." There were added elegant trophies and Greek-Latin antiphons, that is, antiphons, verses and hymns in praise of St. Stephen, taken from a very old Vatican manuscript codex, no. 1543, called the Menaion, which the Church of the Greeks uses in reciting the divine offices, in which St. Stephen is called Hierarch, Hiero-martyr, τοῦ Παύλου ὁμόζηλος, that is "emulator and of like zeal with St. Paul;" and his martyrdom is marked on the 5th of July, on which day likewise the people of Rhegium celebrate his feast in the whole diocese: which, lest I be longer than is fair, I omit. Hieronymus Marasiotus adds, in the Chronicles of Calabria, Book I, chapter xx, that for this reason the Rhegine cathedral church has been distinguished with the title and seat of an Archbishopric, and that all the churches of Calabria were once subject to it, because she first among the Calabrians received as bishop St. Stephen from St. Paul, and because St. Stephen gave and ordained bishops, presbyters, and deacons for other cities of Calabria.
Furthermore there is a constant and most ancient tradition among the Rhegines that St. Paul converted the Rhegines by this means and miracle: when the ship that was carrying Paul was putting in to Rhegium, the Rhegines ran together to the shore for the sake of seeing it, especially that they might venerate in it their own deities of Castor and Pollux, which the ship bore. Soon Paul, beginning according to his custom to preach the Gospel to them, when he was not heard by them, inasmuch as they were idolaters, asked that they would lend their ears to him preaching even for a little while, that is, for as long as a tiny candle would burn. This being granted, he lit a little candle and affixed it to the column to which ships putting in used to be tied: and when straightway the candle was consumed and went out, immediately by a miracle the column itself began to burn, by which portent the Rhegines, struck and pricked, listening to Paul as a divine man, were led by him over to Christ. As proof and memorial of this thing, the column was transferred into the church of St. Paul (which has been erected on the shore), and honorably placed above the high altar: where it is venerated with marvelous reverence and shines with many miracles, as is clear from this hymn of the Rhegines about it, of which they have sent me a printed copy:
Hymn on the Rhegine Column of St. Paul the Apostle
Hail, noble column,
Richer than amber and gold,
And more fortunate than that fiery
Column of Moses.
What Paul preaches with his mouth,
He confirms by your blazing:
While you burn, Rhegium
Embraces the faith of Christ.
The languid palm, touching you,
Felt heavenly healing:
And the dust drawn off, immediately
Bestowed health on the sick.
Therefore, Rhegine column,
As the Israelite column led the Hebrews
Into the best land,
So do you lead us to the stars.
To the highest Father be glory,
And to the only-begotten Son of the Father,
And to the Paraclete divinity,
For all ages of ages. Amen.
℣. Paul the Apostle came to Rhegium. Alleluia.
℟. And he sowed the word of God. Alleluia.
Prayer.
"O God, who at the preaching of the Apostle Paul, when by divine power a column of stone burst into flame, illuminated the people of Rhegium with the light of faith; grant, we beseech You, that we may merit to have him as our intercessor in heaven, whom we had as the herald of the Gospel on earth."
Moreover, John Angelus Spagnolus, Canon of Rhegium, in his On Rhegine Matters, Book IV, chapter 1, relates that it is commonly believed that, while Paul was preaching, fish came out from the shore and listened to him, as they listened to St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua. And he adds that some say that the cicadas, ordered by St. Paul to be silent, never thereafter appeared in that place; but he himself does not believe it.
Verse 14: Puteoli; And So We Came to Rome; The Brethren; As Far as Appii Forum; He Took Courage
14. Puteoli. — A city of Campania near Naples (so the Syriac), famous for the martyrdom of St. Januarius. Hence the Neapolitans relate and boast that St. Paul turned aside from his journey to Naples. They are called Puteoli, from the stench of the hot water bubbling there, says Festus; or, as others say, from the multitude of wells made on account of these waters. This was also called Dicaearchia, from the administration of justice; founded by the Samians, as Eusebius would have it, at that time when the Tarquins were expelled from Rome by Brutus. In like manner the Neapolitans relate, and Cardinal Baronius, in the year of Christ 44, that St. Peter, sailing to Rome, put in at Naples and celebrated mass there.
And so (that is, not by sea, as before, but by land on a foot journey) we came (that is, we began to come and to go on) to Rome, — whence on foot we came first to the Forum of Appius, then to the Three Taverns, finally to Rome, as Luke explains shortly, verse 16. Whence Cajetan less rightly understands by "Rome" the Roman port, or the Tiberine mouths, where namely the Tiber flows into the sea, which is twelve Italian miles distant from Rome. For between the Roman port and Rome there does not lie the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns, where Luke says Paul came first. Others better understand by "Rome" the Roman countryside, especially because of old the Roman suburbs extended very far in every direction. Finally, this can be a recapitulation, in which Luke first says generally that Paul came to Rome from Puteoli, and then in detail recounts the intermediate journeys by which he made for and came to Rome, namely by the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns, where the faithful Romans met him and led him to Rome. For this is frequent among the Hebrews, as can be seen in the books of Kings and elsewhere.
15. And when (perhaps from the letters of the Christians of Puteoli) the brethren had heard, — namely Christians, that Paul was approaching the city.
As far as Appii Forum. — Pliny, Book XIV, chapter vi, places this in the Setine field, named from Appius Claudius, who is the author of the Appian Way. Ortelius in his Theater judges, with Blondus and others, that it is Fossa Nova, where St. Thomas Aquinas died. Baronius is added, who thinks the Forum of Appius was near the Pontine Marshes, and that it is distant from Rome by fifty-one thousand paces, but the Three Taverns thirty-three, and that they today are called Cisterna, which is a little town near Velletri, the homeland of Augustus Caesar. For Cicero teaches that they were opposite Antium, which now is called Nettuno, in Letter to Atticus, Book II, epistle 29: "We emerged," he says, "conveniently from Antium into the Appian Way, at the Three Taverns." Furthermore Isidore of Pelusium, Book I, epistle 337, and from him Œcumenius here, hands down that this Forum is called of Appius, because it had been distinguished by a statue of Appius: for the Romans called those places "fora" in which the statues of kings and princes had been placed. So is called Forum Cornelii, which today is called Imola; Forum Claudii, today Tolsa; Forum Julii, today Fréjus; Forum Livii, today Forlì; Forum Sempronii, commonly Fossombrone; Forum Segusianorum, commonly Bourg en Bresse; Forum Tiberii, commonly Schwyz, a city among the Helvetians.
He took courage, — θάρσος, that is, confidence, spirit, boldness, as if to say: He took greater spirit for preaching at Rome, and a greater hope of converting the Romans, both because he saw the Roman faithful so disposed and devoted to him; and because from them he gathered the kindly, friendly, docile disposition of the Romans; and because he was going to have them as cooperators and helpers in his preaching.
Verse 16: When We Had Come to Rome; By Himself
16. And when we had come to Rome. — The Greek adds: "the Centurion handed over the prisoners στρατοπεδάρχῃ," that is, to the commander of the army; thus was called the Praetor, or Prefect of accused men, of prisoners, and of prisons; just as now at Rome he is called Bargellus, who leads after himself a troop of bailiffs, or attendants, like an army. Whence a learned man judges that Bargellus is so called from the Hebrew Barzel, that is, "iron," because he goes about surrounded by iron and arms and armed soldiers.
Furthermore, Paul entered Rome in the year of Christ 57, says Eusebius in his Chronology; St. Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, in "Paul"; Baronius and others. Bede, Ado, Usuardus, and Onuphrius in their Chronology add that he entered on the sixth day of July. Baronius however, and our Lorinus, think that it took place earlier, and rightly think it, if Paul, as Arator would have it, set sail from Melita at the beginning of spring. But this is uncertain. Rather one should believe the ancients: Bede, Ado, Usuardus. See what was said at chapter xxvii, verse 9. For the ancients here agree among themselves.
To remain by himself, — in his own lodging, as if to say: He was not led into prison with the other prisoners, but was permitted to remain in his own house; yet so that he wore a chain, as is clear from verse 19, and had a soldier guarding him, so that he could not flee or escape. This honor seems to have been shown to Paul because the Centurion and the others judged him a great man, and, as Chrysostom says, an admirable one, both from the meeting and the reverence which they saw shown to him everywhere by Christians; and from his lofty spirit, wisdom, and virtue.
Verse 17: After the Third Day; Not as Having Anything to Accuse My Nation Of
17. And after the third day. — For the first three days Paul gave to rest, inasmuch as he was tired from so long a journey, and from arranging his lodging and accommodating other matters. Gagnaeus adds from Œcumenius that during these days he investigated whether the Jews had laid any plots for him at Rome, or had sent letters against him to their fellows living at Rome; and when he had learned that they had done nothing of the kind, he summoned the chief men of the Jews. See here the care and charity of Paul toward the Jews, from whom he was suffering such great things, and these very chains: he everywhere greets them first and is eager to greet them.
Not as having anything to accuse my nation of. — Not as if I have anything of which to accuse my nation: so the Tigurine version; he removes the suspicion and fear of the Jews, lest they think that he had come to Rome to accuse the Jews before Caesar, and so they themselves should arm themselves against him. For many such came to Rome from Judaea, in order to accuse the Pontiffs, Scribes, and Jews before the Emperor, as is clear from Josephus.
Verse 20: For the Hope of Israel I Am Encompassed with This Chain
20. For for the hope of Israel I am encompassed with this chain. — "Hope" is put metonymically for the thing hoped for. For he calls Christ the hope of Israel; because the Messiah, or Christ, just as He was promised by God to the Israelites from the time of Abraham, so was constantly expected by them through three thousand years, and is even now expected and shall be expected until the end of the world. For the Jews in so many of their hardships hope for nothing else, pray for nothing else, cry out for nothing else than that the Messiah may come, who may free and save them. Now Christ is called "the hope of Israel," because through Christ the true Israelites hoped, and hope, for justice, grace, salvation, resurrection, felicity, and everlasting glory. For the Prophets promised that these things were to be hoped for and expected from Christ. The sense therefore is, as if to say: I, Paul, am bound with this chain because I preach that Jesus is the Christ, and from Him is to be hoped for and sought the remission of sins, grace, and salvation. The Jews therefore have bound me, because I have brought to them their own hope. But you, receive your hope, namely Christ, whom I announce to you, and on account of whom I am bound, and believe in Him, that you may attain eternal salvation. So the Apostle, Colossians I, 27, calls Christ "the hope of glory," and 1 Timothy I, 1, "our hope," because He is the object and cause of our hope: for through Him we obtain the hoped-for goods, namely grace and glory. Hence those ardent prayers and cries of the Prophets concerning Christ: of Isaiah, chapter xlv, verse 8: "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Saviour." And chapter lxiv, verse 1: "Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens, and wouldst come down: the mountains would melt away at thy presence;" of Jacob: "I will look for thy salvation, O Lord," Genesis xlix, 18; of Moses: "I beseech thee, Lord, send whom thou wilt send," Exodus iv, 13.
Tropologically: Christ is "the hope of Israel," that is, of him who has dominion with God and sees God, or rather is going to see Him; because the faithful hope for nothing else than to see God and Christ in heaven, and to be made blessed by His presence and glory and to enjoy them, according to that of Apocalypse xxi, 23: "The brightness of God hath enlightened it (the heavenly Jerusalem), and the Lamb is the lamp thereof." And that of the Church:
Jesus, our redemption,
Love and longing,
God the Creator of all,
Man in the end of times.
And that of Isaiah xxvi, 8: "O Lord, your name and your remembrance are the desire of the soul." And that of the Psalmist, Psalm xv, 5: "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup; you are He who shall restore my inheritance to me. What have I in heaven, and from you what have I willed upon the earth, O God of my heart, and my portion, O God, forever?"
Verse 22: We Beseech You to Hear from You What You Think; Concerning This Sect
22. And we beseech you to hear from you what you think, — concerning the hope of Israel which you spoke of, namely concerning the Messiah, whether He has come, or is yet to come.
For concerning this sect (of Christ and of Christians, which believes that Christ has already come, and which you, O Paul, seem tacitly to have commended, and on that account to have been bound by the Jews) it is known to us that everywhere it is contradicted. — They say this in order to forestall, weaken, and turn aside Paul's mind from preaching Christ, as if to say: You, O Paul, secretly seem to follow and preach the sect of Christ; but you seem deceived: for everywhere wise men, among whom we ourselves are, contradict it. Therefore assent to them and to us, lay aside your mind and affection toward Christ, and proceed with us to worship Moses and the religion sanctioned by him.
Morally learn here that the sign of Christ and of Christianity is contradiction and persecution. For these things Simeon foretold, saying: "Behold this child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted," Luke ii, 34. Truly St. Jerome on Ezekiel, chapter xlvii: "The possession begins," he says, "from Thamar, namely from the palm and the victory over the vices, even unto the waters of contradiction. For virtues are always contradicted." And having cited these words of the Jews, he adds: "All contradiction belongs to holiness, which is interpreted Cades, as the Psalmist says," Psalm xxviii, 8: "The Lord shall shake the desert of Cades." This is what Paul says: "All who would live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution," 2 Timothy iii, 12. See what is said there.
Verse 23: Testifying the Kingdom of God; From Morning Until Evening
23. Testifying the kingdom of God, — by many testimonies of Moses and the Prophets showing that the kingdom of God is the Christian Church, and that it is the way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the full and glorious kingdom of God. See what was said in chapter II, 40.
From morning until evening. — This therefore was a lengthy lecture or sermon of Paul; but indeed he was never sated with speaking of Christ, nor did he grow weary in preaching Him; his zeal and thirst for the salvation of the Jews stripped from him all memory of bodily thirst and hunger. For if merchants on market days do business all day long, and remain fasting into the night, and feel no hunger because of their thirst for earthly gain, much more did Paul, seeking the gain of souls, forget all food, drink, labor, and weariness.
Verse 25: One Word
25. One word, — fitting, notable, and illustrious. Thus Ennius said of Fabius Maximus: "One man by his delaying restored the state for us." One, that is, distinguished and outstanding.
Verse 26: With the Ear You Shall Hear
26. With the ear you shall hear. — These are the words of Isaiah VI, 9, where I have explained them: therefore I shall not repeat them here.
Verse 28: This Salvation of God Has Been Sent to the Gentiles
28. This salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, — that is, this salvation of God, namely Christ the Savior, whose Gospel, grace, and salvation I preach. For the Septuagint, which St. Paul follows, translates the Hebrew יְשׁוּעָה (yeshu'ah), that is, salvation, by σωτήριον, that is, the means of salvation, to indicate that this salvation is Christ the Savior. So St. Basil, on Psalm LXV, and St. Augustine, book I Against the Adversary of the Law and Prophets, chapter XV.
Verse 29: A Question
29. A question, — ζήτησιν, that is, an inquiry, on account of the scruples about Christ which Paul had cast among them.
Verse 30: He Remained for Two Whole Years; In His Own Hired Lodging
30. And he remained for two years. — Therefore until the year of Christ 61, which was the fifth of Nero.
In his own hired dwelling. — So read with the Romans, Greeks, and Syrians, not "by hire," as some wrongly read: "in a hired place," namely a lodging and house. Thus Cicero takes conductum substantively for "a hired place," in his oration For Cluentius, saying: "For he is wont to have something hired outside the gate." Hence the Syriac translates, "Paul hired himself a house, and was in it for two years." This house, turned into a church, is now called the Deaconry of St. Mary in via Lata, on which is inscribed that it was the lodging of St. Paul, of St. Luke, and afterwards of St. Martial; and that St. Luke painted images of the Blessed Virgin in it: where also Luke wrote and finished this book of Acts. This Deaconry is near the Roman College, in which I likewise composed this commentary on Luke, by his help and as if inspired by the spirit of a neighbor.
Verse 31: Preaching with All Confidence; Notes on the End of the Acts of Paul
31. Preaching, etc., with all confidence, — μετὰ παρρησίας, that is, with liberty, boldness, confidence. It is likely, as Eusebius writes in book II of his History, chapter XXII, that Nero, gentle and easy in the first five-year period of his reign, mercifully received Paul's defense, especially because this question about Christ was being argued against the Jews, whom he himself little regarded. Add that Paul had won over members of Nero's household. For so St. Chrysostom writes here, in homily 54: "He is said to have greeted Nero's cupbearer and concubine," whom Baronius and others judge to have been Poppaea Sabina, of whom Tacitus writes thus in book XIII: "This woman had everything except an honest mind. Indeed her mother, surpassing the women of her age in beauty, had given her both glory and beauty alike. Her wealth was equal to the splendor of her family: her speech was courteous, her wit not without elegance; she made a show of modesty while practicing wantonness, rarely appearing in public, and then with part of her face veiled, lest she sate the gaze, or because it so became her." Wherefore Paul in these first chains converted many from Nero's household to Christ, of whom he himself says in Philippians IV, 22: "All the saints salute you, especially those who are of Caesar's household." Among these, Torpes and Evellius were eminent, whom afterwards Nero, having become more savage, killed and crowned with martyrdom: for they are recorded as Martyrs in the Roman Martyrology, on May 17 and 27.
Note here first: while Paul was in chains, the Philippian Christians consoled him, sending to him their bishop Epaphroditus with money, that they might relieve his needs: for which he himself gave thanks and wrote the epistle to the Philippians. There also came to him from Iconium Onesiphorus, that he might minister to him, as Paul testifies in 2 Timothy I, 16. For all of Paul's companions, except Luke, fearing Nero, had abandoned him, as he himself says there in chapter IV, 16. But the Lord stood by him and strengthened him. From his chains Paul also wrote the epistles to the Colossians, to the Ephesians, to Philemon, and to Timothy. Whence those, more ardent than the others, breathe forth the martyr and martyrdom.
Note secondly: Baronius judges that Nero referred Paul's case, because it was sacred and concerned religion, to the Roman pontiffs; who, since they were Gentiles and hated the Jews, absolved Paul of the charges brought against him by them. And Paul seems to hint at this in Philippians I, 13, saying that his chains and the faith and preaching of Christ had become known throughout the praetorium.
Note thirdly: Once Marsilius of Padua, in the time of Pope John XXII, wrote a book entitled Defensor pacis, in which he contended that St. Paul, not St. Peter, had been Bishop of Rome, on the ground that St. Luke says Paul stayed in Rome for two years, but makes no mention of Peter. In this century Ulrich Velenus and other heretics have followed him, who shamelessly deny that St. Peter was at Rome; whom Bellarmine fully refutes in book II On the Roman Pontiff, chapter I and following. For, to pass over other things, his impudence is refuted by the continuous faith of the Roman and all other Churches, and the tradition of all ages; and besides, by all the Historians and Fathers, whom Bellarmine laboriously cites. St. Peter therefore was Roman Bishop, and to the Roman episcopate he annexed the pontificate of the whole Church, and willed and decreed that succeeding Roman Bishops should succeed him in it, so that whoever should be elected as Roman Bishop, he should likewise be Bishop and Pontiff of the whole Church, as has clearly been done from St. Peter down to the present, by the continuous succession of Bishops and Pontiffs of Rome. Paul therefore by preaching at Rome in chains aided Peter in founding the Roman episcopate and pontificate; and for this reason St. Epiphanius, in heresy 27, calls Peter and Paul Roman Bishops, namely because both as Apostles raised up, taught, founded the Roman Church, and there exercised episcopal duties: but Peter as proper Bishop of Rome; Paul as Peter's minister and helper, especially because Paul did not fix his see at Rome by deliberate intent, but only incidentally and as one passing through, as he himself had written to the Romans in chapter XV, 24, saying: "When I shall begin to take my journey into Spain, I hope that as I pass I shall see you, and shall be brought on my way thither by you, if first I shall have enjoyed you in part."
Note fourthly: Luke here ends the Acts of Paul in the two years of his chains, namely in the year of Christ 61, the 5th of Nero; what was afterwards done by him, neither he himself nor anyone else has recorded with authenticity. For the Acts of Linus, which write of these things, are of suspect credit and apocryphal. This is certain, that Paul was loosed from Nero's chains. For Paul himself testifies to this, 2 Timothy IV, 17: "The Lord," he says, "stood by me and strengthened me, that the preaching might be fulfilled by me, and that all the Gentiles might hear, and I was delivered from the lion's mouth" — that is, from Nero. To which contributed the letters of Festus, governor of Syria, which he sent to Nero concerning Paul, in which he certainly indicated that he had found no crime in him, nor had Felix, nor Lysias. Baronius, from Tacitus book XIV, gives another reason, in the year of Christ 61, at the end: when, he says, with public flattery there was also public rejoicing of all, as for the safety obtained by the Emperor (and perhaps so that he might cover his own cruelty under the appearance of humanity: for in the same year he killed his mother Agrippina), perhaps from that cause it happened that Paul, having now spent two years in prison, was, together with the other prisoners, ordered loosed from chains and free to depart.
Note fifthly: it is the tradition of the Fathers (whom I have cited at Romans XV, 24) that Paul, loosed from chains, went, among other provinces, to Spain, as he had proposed in Romans XV, 24, and there preached, especially in order to supply for the Spaniards, then as it were deserted, the place of St. James, beheaded by Herod. L. Dexter in his Chronicle, in the year of Christ 64, narrates separately some of the things he did there: "L. Annaeus Seneca," he says, "a Spaniard of Cordoba, having sent letters back and forth to St. Paul, thinks well of the Christian cause, and having become a Christian, is believed to have been his hidden disciple, and writes affectionately to Paul while he was staying in Spain. St. Paul coming to the Spains brings with him Philemon, Timothy, and other disciples: he preaches in Libysoca and Laminium, cities of the province of the Arenates; he converts Philip, surnamed Philotheus (who, he asserts, in the year of Christ 91 buried the bodies of his SS. Gervase and Protasius the martyrs at Milan), Probus, and his wife Xantippe to the faith: he leaves presbyters there. St. Paulus (formerly Proconsul of Cyprus, Acts XIII, 7, converted by St. Paul), Bishop of Narbonne, who came with Paul the Apostle into Spain, preaches there." And presently in the year of Christ 66: "The holy women, the virgins Basilissa and Anastasia, Spanish women from the city of Setabis among the Edetani, followed St. Paul the Apostle, and tending the bodies of him and of Peter, obtained from Nero Caesar on this account the glorious crown of martyrdom. St. Paul wrote the epistle to the Hebrews to converted Spaniards." And below, in the year of Christ 100, in Spain he names as Paul's disciples Xantippe, Polyxena, M. Lupus, Philip, Lucius the husband of Candida and a martyr, and adds: "There flourishes Q. Marcella, daughter of M. Marcellus Prefect of Rome, sister of M. Marcellus Eugenius Pontiff of Toledo, whom St. Paul, having seen golden letters on her forehead, converted to the faith at Laminium. Her mother Claudia Xantippe, a Roman citizen, was tall in body beyond just stature, at whom Martial jokes." So says he, about whose credit I have spoken at the end of the Chronotaxis. Others agree with him. For the Roman Martyrology, on September 15, asserts that Paul, going to the Spains, took with him Paul, formerly Proconsul of Cyprus, and left him at Narbonne as Bishop. Ado in the Chronicle adds, in the year of Christ 59, that Paul left Trophimus at Arles, and Crescens at Vienne. The Greek Menology, on September 25, hands down that Xantippe and Polyxena were converted to Christ by Paul in Spain. The same is handed down by Metaphrastes in the Life of St. Paul, who adds, with Isidore and others, that he evangelized through Italy and France. The Spanish and Greek Interpreters of St. Dionysius add that Hierotheus, whom Dionysius the Areopagite, in book On the Divine Names, chapter III, celebrates as a divine man and his teacher, was a Spaniard, and was converted to Christ by St. Paul. Wherefore Lucian, the mocker of Christ, Paul, and Christianity, thus depicts Paul as if heavenly and a heaven-dweller, in his Philopatris: "When that Galilean met me, somewhat bald, with an aquiline nose, who went up through the air to the third heaven, what is best and most beautiful he learned from there; he renewed us through water, made us tread in the footsteps of the blessed, and led us back from the regions of the impious."
With these agrees Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, whom Salmeron cites here, tract 59, who asserts that Xantippe saw inscribed on Paul's forehead these words, "Paul the Apostle preacher of Christ;" upon seeing which she heard him, and received the faith of Christ together with her husband Probus. And St. Anselm, in his epistle on Romans, chapter XV, asserting that Paul preached in Spain, adds: "He went therefore as far as the Spains, and from the Red Sea even to the Ocean ran by preaching, imitating the course of the sun from East to West, so that the earth would fail him before his zeal for preaching." Hence the Church of Dertosa (Tortosa) in Spain acknowledges and celebrates as its first Bishop Rufus, son of Simon of Cyrene who bore the cross of Christ, whom Paul coming into Spain brought with him. Salmeron, volume XII, tract 59, adds and proves that Paul after his first chains visited Syria, Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. For Paul, in the last chapter of Hebrews, writing from chains, says: "Know that our brother Timothy has been set at liberty, with whom, if he comes shortly, I will see you." And to Philippians II, 24: "I trust in the Lord that I myself also shall come to you shortly." And to Philemon, verse 22: "Prepare me a lodging: for I hope that through your prayers I shall be given to you." So Theophylact, preface on the epistle to the Hebrews; Œcumenius on chapter XV of Romans, and others.
Note sixthly: Paul, dismissed from these first chains, lived 8 years longer, in which he traversed the Spains and other provinces evangelizing: these years completed, returning to Rome, and contending with St. Peter against Simon Magus and Nero, condemned by him because he had drawn over Nero's concubines to Christ, and struck with the sword, he crowned his glorious Apostolate with a more glorious martyrdom in the year of Christ 69, the 13th of Nero, on the 29th day of June: but immediately divine vengeance pursued Nero for the blood of so holy a man poured out. For in the following year, in the same month of June, on the tenth day, on which formerly he had killed his wife Octavia, proscribed by the senate and sought for execution, out of despair he stabbed himself in the 32nd year of his age. So Suetonius, Dio, and others in his Life.
Morally St. Chrysostom here, in homily 54, teaches that Paul and the faithful through chains, adversities, and temptations become more glorious: "For it is just as if someone fought with a reed against fire. For here he seems to strike at the fire, but the fire becomes brighter, and the reed is consumed. For malice is the food and fuel of brightness for virtue. Injustice, when God uses it as need requires, makes our affairs more glorious. Again when the devil works some such thing, he makes those who endure more glorious;" as Pharaoh by persecuting Moses and the Hebrews made them more illustrious; and the devil by afflicting St. Job celebrated his patience. "The gymnasium therefore of philosophy and the whetstone of virtue are afflictions and cares." He proves this by examples and similitudes. "Therefore," he says, "the poor are wiser than the rich, inasmuch as they are vexed and exercised by many waves. For the body which is idle and immobile is more subject to disease and is foul; but that which is moved and labors and is exercised by hardships is more shapely and healthier. This also can be found in the soul. And iron indeed, if it lies still, is corrupted; but if exercised, it shines. And similarly the soul which is moved. But the movement of the soul is the very cares; and the arts themselves perish, if the soul is not moved. Contrary things make us strong." The same, in homily 55: "Rome," he says, "received him (Paul) bound, coming from the sea, saved from shipwreck, and was delivered from the shipwreck of errors; as some king after a naval battle and victory ascends into that most royal hall. Rome received him bound, and saw him crowned and celebrated. This was the beginning of a new course, and he joined unconquerable triumphs to triumphs." And presently: "He was a heaven (nay, more sublime than all the heavens), having the Sun of righteousness. To what shall anyone compare his words? to the sea or the Ocean? But nothing is equal to them: his words are more copious, purer, and more profound than that; and thus one would not err if he should call Paul's heart even a sea and a heaven, both for its purity and for its depth. It is a sea, bearing those sailing not from city to city, but from earth to heaven. If anyone shall sail in this sea, he sails with a favorable breeze. There is no wind in this sea, but in place of wind is the Holy Spirit, who bears the souls sailing in it. It is a sea more tranquil and safer than a harbor, having nothing salty; but a sweet and pure liquid, clearer than the sun and more transparent," etc. And calling Paul a "fiery mouth," and concluding, he says: "Let us emulate Paul, and imitate that strong and adamantine soul, that walking in the footsteps of those who so lived, we may be able to sail across the sea of this life, and arrive in port without waves, and obtain the good things promised to those who love God, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father together with the Holy Spirit be glory, dominion, honor now, and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen."
Live for Eternity
Have perpetual care for everlasting glory.
Gregory Nazianzen, in the Sentences.