BY THE VERY REV. H. D. M. SPENCE-JONES M.A., D.D. DEAN OF GLOUCESTER PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR AND TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS SECOND EDITION METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON TO EDGAR SUMNER GIBSON, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER A GREAT SCHOLAR AND A WARM FRIEND...

Of the five Books which make up this work, the First Book relates generally the history of the fortunes of the Church in Rome in the first days. The foundation stories of the Roman congregations were laid largely by the Apostles Peter and Paul—Peter, so with one accord say the earliest contemporary writers, [1] being the first apostle who preached in Rome. Paul, who taught many years later in the Capital, was also reckoned as a founder of the Roman Church; for his teaching, especially his Christ

At the beginning of the first century of the Christian era the Jewish colony in Rome had attained large dimensions. As early as B.C. 162 we hear of agreements—we can scarcely call them treaties—concluded between the Jews under the Maccabean dynasty and the Republic. After the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, B.C. 63, a number more of Jewish exiles swelled the number of the chosen people who had settled in the capital. Cicero when pleading for Flaccus, who was their enemy, publicly alludes to thei

The Roman Church in the year of grace 61 was evidently already a powerful and influential congregation: everything points to this conclusion: its traditions, we might even say its history, and, above all, the notices contained in S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans written not later than A.D. 58. Virtually alone among the Churches of the first thirty years of Christianity does S. Paul give to this congregation unstinting, unqualified praise—very different to his words addressed to the Church in Cori

A flood of light is poured upon the early history of Christianity in the correspondence which passed between the Emperor Trajan and his friend and minister Pliny the Younger, who had been appointed to the governorship [18] of Bithynia and Pontus, the district lying in the north of Asia Minor. The letter of Pliny, containing his report of the trial and inquiry into the matter of the accused Christians of his province, and asking for direction, was written to the Emperor Trajan in the autumn of A.

Some four years after his correspondence with Pliny on the subject of the Christians in Bithynia, the Emperor Trajan died somewhat suddenly in the course of his Eastern campaign, at the Cilician, town of Selinus ( A.D. 117). Trajan was succeeded by his kinsman Hadrian, who had married the Emperor’s great-niece Julia Sabina. The circumstances of Hadrian’s succession are somewhat confused. It was given out generally that he had been adopted by Trajan as his successor. It is certain, however, that

The scene of the following sketches of the life of a Christian of the first days is, generally speaking, laid in Rome; but much of what belonged to the Christian of the Roman congregation was common to the believer who dwelt in other great cities of the Empire. The sketches in question deal with the following subjects: 1. The numbers of believers in the first two centuries which followed the death of Peter and Paul. 2. The assemblies or meetings together of the Christian folk in those very early

There is really no doubt but that in the period of which we are writing in this Third Book, roughly stretching over some hundred and sixteen years, with very short intervals of comparative stillness, the Christian sect constantly lived under the veiled shadow of persecution; the penalties exacted for the confession of the Name were very severe—the confessors were ever exposed to confiscation of their goods, to harsh imprisonment, to torture, and to death. This state of things, which existed in t

We read in the pathetic and interesting study De Laude Martyrii (On the Praise of Martyrdom) by an anonymous writer—a study which usually follows the works of S. Cyprian—how some Roman officials who were assisting in the torture of a dying Christian saint said one to another: “This is really marvellous, this power of disregarding pain and agony! Nothing seems to move him; he has a wife and little ones, but even the love of these touches him not. What is the secret of his strange power? It can su

Considerable stress has been laid in the preceding pages on the question of the duration of the periods of persecution and the consequent number of martyrs who suffered in these periods. It has commonly been assumed that after the death of Nero a lengthened period of quiet was enjoyed by the Church of Rome as in the provinces, and that the sect of Christians was generally left unmolested during the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and indeed of Domitian, until quite the last years of his life. It

An absolutely reliable source of information respecting the secret of the inner life of the Church in the early Christian centuries is the faithful record of the thoughts, the hopes, the aspirations of the congregations of the Church of the metropolis of the Empire, carved and painted on the countless graves of the subterranean corridors and chambers of the Catacombs of Rome. “The popular, the actual belief of a generation or society of men cannot always be ascertained from the contemporary writ

Since the date of what may be termed the rediscovery of the Catacombs in the vineyard on the Via Salaria in 1578 [120] the work of excavation and research in the streets of the City of the Dead which lies beneath the suburbs of Rome has been slowly and somewhat fitfully carried on, exciting generally but little public interest, and until the last fifty years, roughly speaking, has been most mischievous and destructive. It is probable that more destruction and havoc have been wrought by the well-

Baronius, followed by Bishop Lightfoot of Durham and others, calls attention to an etymological difficulty which exists in attempting to derive Petronilla from Petros, which at first sight seems so obvious. These scholars prefer to connect the name “Petronilla” not with Petros but with “Petronius.” Now, the founder of the Flavian family was T. Flavius Petro. Lightfoot then proceeds to suggest that “Petronilla” was a scion of the Flavian house, and became a convert to Christianity, probably in th

Out of the many pages of Catacomb lore, the story of the Crypt of S. Cecilia and its recent discovery, and the identification of the burial-places of S. Felicitas and her seven sons, have been selected to be told here as specially interesting examples of the historical and theological importance of these investigations among the forgotten cemeteries of subterranean Rome. Allard’s words in his edition of Northcote and Brownlow’s exhaustive résumé of a portion of De Rossi’s monumental work, deserv

In this section we will give at some length what these (same) catacombs tell us of the thoughts of the early Christian congregations on some of the more important problems dealing with death and with the life beyond the grave, and incidentally with the early Christian view on the question of the communion of saints. The scanty remains of the literature of this early period, as we have already hinted, valuable though they are, partake rather of the nature of scholars’ researches and conclusions.

The wish to be buried in the immediate vicinity of a saint or confessor, though perhaps especially marked in the subterranean cemeteries of Rome, was not peculiar to the Christians of the very early centuries. Many other instances could be quoted, from the days of the old prophet of Bethel who wished his bones to lie beside the bones of the man of God who came out of Judah (1 Kings xiii. 31) down to King John, who is said to have requested that he might be interred at Worcester directly between

Among all the various evidential arguments adduced in support of the truth of Christianity, many of them of a most weighty character and capable of an almost indefinite expansion, the history of the Jewish people, their wonderful past and their present condition, their numbers, their books, their ever-growing influence in the world of the twentieth century, must be considered as the most striking and remarkable. The Christianity of the first century was surely no new religion; it was closely kni