{ 1 } LIBER DECIMUS Letter XCVI (96) C. PLINIUS TRAJANO IMPERATORI Pliny to Trajan | ||
[This letter is esteemed as almost the only genuine monument of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immediately succeeding the Apostles, having been written at most not more than a half-century after the death of St. Paul in A.D. 62. It was preserved by the Christians themselves as clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their doctrines, and is frequently appealed to by the early writers of the Church against the calumnies of their adversaries. Note that the Latin (not Greek) adjectival suffix -ian- was often used at the time not only in personal names such as Vespasianus, but also to refer to political factions such as the Othoniani Othos men, or Vitelliani followers of Vitellius, as found in Tacitus Histories of the same period. Plinys worry here is that this new group of Christiani might be some new hetæria (ἑταιρείᾱ brotherhood; political club) which was not just a religious but covertly a political party which could threaten Roman sovereignty. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia (capital: Nicomedia) in what is today northern Turkey, whereas the name Christian (Christ + -iani) was probably assigned to the suspicious new religion by the Roman governor in Antioch, northwestern Syria, south of modern Turkey, where the name first arose (Acts 11:26). The name was composed of Greek, Χρῑστός Anointed One, i.e., king, Messiah, Christ (later abbreviated to ☧) + Latin -ian political followers of.] | ||
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[It was one of the privileges of a Roman citizen, secured by the Sempronian law, that he could not be capitally convicted except by a vote of the people; which seems to have been still so far in force as to make it necessary to send the persons here mentioned to Rome.] | ||
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[These women, it is supposed, exercised the same office as Phoebe mentioned by St. Paul, whom he styles deaconess of the church of Cenchrea. Their business was to tend the poor and sick, and other charitable offices, and also to assist at the ceremony of female baptism, for the more decent performance of that rite, as Vossius observes upon this passage.] | ||
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{ 2 } Letter XCVII (97) TRAJANUS PLINIO Trajan to Pliny | ||
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[If we impartially examine this prosecution of the Christians, we shall find it to have been grounded on the ancient constitution of the state, and not to have proceeded from a cruel or arbitrary temper in Trajan. The Roman legislature appears to have been early jealous of any innovation in point of public worship; and we find the magistrates during the old republic frequently interposing in cases of that nature. Valerius Maximus has collected some instances to that purpose (L. I. C. 3), and Livy mentions it as an established principle of the earlier ages of the commonwealth, to guard against the introduction of foreign ceremonies of religion. It was an old and fixed maxim likewise of the Roman government not to suffer any unlicensed assemblies of the people. Hence it seems evident that the Christians had rendered themselves obnoxious not so much to Trajan as to the ancient and settled laws of the state, by introducing a foreign worship and assembling themselves without authority.] |
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Dies immutationis recentissimæ : die Mercurii, 2019 Novembris 14 |