At least a couple of your patristiblogging friends are quoted in an article on the return of the Tridentine Mass in the Allentown Morning Call.

Faithful have been flocking to traditional rite of Catholic Church.

By Daniel Patrick Sheehan Of The Morning Call

Four decades of change in the Roman Catholic Church have made the Latin Mass, the beloved rite of centuries, a stranger in its own house. So when an under-50 Catholic beholds the venerable ceremony for the first time, it’s with the surprised and wondering eyes of a tourist.

”Introibo ad altare Dei,” says the priest, his back facing the congregation, uttering Latin more familiar nowadays from fiction — the opening of James Joyce’s ”Ulysses,” where Buck Mulligan flippantly uses the phrase on his way to shave — than from exposure on Sunday. It means ”I will go in unto the altar of God,” and it opens an hour of reverent, murmured worship defined as much by its silences as its words.

The Mass, formally called the Tridentine Mass because it was codified under Pope Pius V at the 16th century Council of Trent, was supplanted by the Mass of Pope Paul VI — the largely vernacular Novus Ordo, or new order — in the 1970s.

That was a decade of jarringly rapid change in the church as the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — which called for the church to open itself to the modern world — were implemented. The loss of the Tridentine rite, which could only be celebrated afterward by special permission, devastated many Catholics, some of whom departed for the unchanged liturgies of Orthodox churches or retreated into resistance or outright schism as they strove to sustain the old ways of worship.

But in these early years of the church’s third millennium, the Latin Mass isn’t dead. It is making a bona fide comeback, with attendance at diocese-approved celebrations growing — in part because of interest among young people — and Pope Benedict XVI reportedly preparing to further loosen strictures on the rite so that priests can offer it without having to seek permission from the local bishop. The Coalition for Ecclesia Dei, a Tridentine Mass advocacy group, estimates the number of Masses offered weekly across the country has grown from fewer than 40 in 1988 to nearly 240 today.

”There’s a catholicity to it that was somewhat submarined after Vatican II,” says the Rev. William Seifert, who has begun offering the old rite at St. Stephen of Hungary in Allentown — the sole forum in the Catholic Diocese of Allentown — and welcomed more than 100 worshippers to the first Mass three weeks ago.

Most were carry-over worshippers from St. Roch’s in West Bangor, where Monsignor Charles Moss offered the Mass until his death earlier this year. They came from as far as Jim Thorpe, many clutching leatherbound copies of the pre-Vatican II 1962 Missal to guide them through the liturgy.

The women and girls wore lace chapel veils. The men and boys wore suits. They arrived early and lingered late. That alone made the gathering distinct from some new Masses, where families dressed for the day’s soccer game race for the exits at the first opportunity.

Many of the bowed heads were gray, but other worshippers were of generations born since Vatican II, who have little or no memory of the days when the old rite was the only rite. For them, sentiment plays no role in how they worship. They simply find a fuller, more satisfying expression of faith in the old ways.

That appears to be the case wherever Tridentine celebrations are offered. Dozens of stories in secular and Catholic media in recent years have noted the large numbers of younger people attached to the rite.

”I guess I’m drawn to the quiet, the reverence, the fullness of the prayers,” says Susie Lloyd of Whitehall, 40, a flesh-and-blood portrait of old-line Catholicism as she knelt with her husband and six daughters — a seventh child is on the way — in a pew at St. Stephen’s. ”There’s a sense of stability, an emphasis on God and the sacrifice.”

Matt Cavoto of Bethlehem, a 25-year-old Moravian College graduate who attends with his wife and infant son, says he was first drawn to the Tridentine rite when he lived in Norristown. Cavoto, a musician and composer who is forming a small choir for the St. Stephen’s Mass, was enraptured by the haunting medieval chant of the liturgy.

”I wouldn’t call my interest in the old Mass a preference, per se,” he says. ”You have different rites in the church and each emphasizes different aspects of spirituality. It’s the same faith either way. When someone becomes attached to a particular rite, it’s not a matter of preference, it’s simply the manner in which one lives one’s faith.”

Old versus new

The debate over new Mass versus old — raging hot as ever these days in theological journals and on countless Web logs — extends far beyond language and atmosphere into the very nature of Catholicism. Is worship primarily an individual meeting between God and believer, or more of a communal gathering? Are the Eucharistic bread and wine — which Catholics believe to be the body and blood of Christ — to be received on the knees, with a sense of awe and trembling, or shared like the elements of a meal?

These aren’t either-or propositions, Lloyd says. The Mass is a sacrifice and a meal, a private rendezvous and a public gathering.

But the new and old rites emphasize different elements, and the distinctions are evident even to a casual observer. At a Tridentine service, the priest faces the altar, not the people, and seems to be engaged in private discourse much of the time. His orientation and gestures make the sacrificial aspect of the liturgy far more explicit than in the Novus Ordo, which emphasizes the social elements of worship by using lay people for Scripture readings and including more responsorial prayers.

The Rev. John T. Zuhlsdorf, a priest and author who lives in Rome and maintains a Catholic apologetics Web site, says the old rite constitutes ”vertical” worship, raising the congregation’s attention to God on high, whereas the new Mass is ”horizontal,” emphasizing God’s presence in the community of believers.

While most of the old rite is in Latin, calling it the Latin Mass is misleading, because the new Mass is sometimes said in that language. It is also misleading to call the Tridentine the ”Mass of all time,” as some traditionalists do, because other liturgical forms flourished before its development.

Indeed, the Mass of Paul VI was ostensibly an attempt to reclaim elements of the earliest Christian liturgies — the sign of peace, for example, a handshake or other greeting among congregants which was a prominent part of early worship. It is used in the elaborate Tridentine High Mass, but not in the simpler Low Mass.

Communion in the hand, another recent change that traditionalists view as innovation, was also part of early worship.

”There is no doubt in my mind that the people who carried out the liturgical reforms in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, continuing through today, have seen their work as an act of retrieval from those [early] centuries,” says Mike Aquilina, a Catholic author whose work has focused on the teachings and practices of the church fathers. ”Whether they’ve succeeded in an actual retrieval is an open question.”

That’s because the record of early worship is spotty, at best. In those years, Christians were fiercely persecuted, so gatherings were held in secret. And witnessing the heart of the Mass, the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, was a privilege reserved for the faithful. Catechumens — those receiving instruction in the faith — were dismissed before the Eucharistic prayers began.

What hasn’t changed about the Mass is its core purpose. ”The essentials remain the same,” says Aquilina, vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio. ”That is, the offering of the elements, the bread and the wine and the belief about what happens there. But the ceremonials have changed from time to time.”

Returning to tradition

Lloyd, an author and columnist for Catholic periodicals, argues that Catholics risk losing the true sense of what happens at Mass, with belief in the Real Presence — the literal transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood — already in sharp decline.

In short, Catholics have been pushed toward a Protestant view of the Eucharist as a mere symbolic re-creation of the Last Supper, even though Catholic teaching on the essence of the Mass has not changed.

”This is the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary,” Lloyd says. ”We kneel down and the priest feeds us the Eucharist. … All of this imagery is lost [in the way new Masses are offered] and the result is that people don’t believe.”

According to media reports in Italy and America, Benedict is preparing a document that would ease the strictures on celebrating the Tridentine Mass by allowing any priest to offer it without first seeking permission.

That would be a step further than Benedict’s predecessor. Recognizing widespread longing for the old ways, John Paul II urged bishops to be more generous in allowing old rite celebrations — not just the Mass, but all the sacraments — in 1988.

”Respect must everywhere by shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition by a wide and generous application,” John Paul wrote. The directive, called an indult, was widely ignored, leading John Paul to reiterate his wishes in 1998.

If Benedict plans to grant even greater leeway, he may be hoping to mend the schism with traditionalist groups — especially the Society of St. Pius X, whose founder, Archbishop Marcel LeFebvre, was excommunicated before his death for ordaining bishops against the Vatican’s wishes.

Zuhlsdorf says the pontiff’s primary aim would be to allow the new rites and old to exist side by side and influence each other to the benefit of both. To a degree, that is already happening, he says. Younger priests who celebrate the old rite are more conscious of the congregation’s desire to participate, thanks to the influence of the Novus Ordo. Likewise, the old rite serves as an example of the sense of reverence and awe that should pervade any liturgy.

Through this liturgical cross-pollination, ”the pope hopes to reaffirm the newer form of Mass,” Zuhlsdorf says. ”It’s not a criticism of the newer form. It may be a criticism and correction of the way it’s being celebrated, but not of the form itself.”

Just as baseball’s post-season wraps up and the NFL heads to midseason … Maria Lectrix scores big with audio files of Tertullian’s De Spectaculis (Of Shows). Almost as entertaining as Tertullian himself is Maria L. (aka Maureen) on Tertullian. Here’s her introductory text:

We don’t know if he’s a saint, ’cause he apparently died a member in good standing of those weird, self-righteous, and possibly semi-pagan, Montanists. We don’t know if he counts as a Father of the Church, though he would clearly deserve to be called one if he hadn’t stalked off to join a heretical sect. But before his little head-on with the Church, this North African Christian said some very cool, useful, and sarcastic things.

Yes! You asked for it! It’s our special Fathers guest star, Tertullian! And we begin with Tertullian at his nicest and his snarky best, asking new Christians why the Church is all mean about taking their favorite pastimes away. I mean, how could anyone think that attending gladiator games is inconsistent with Christian faith?…

“De Spectaculis” concludes with a brief stop at Tertullian’s typically philosopher-ish issues with fiction, acting and stage makeup as equivalent to falsehood. Then we get more thoughts about the games and the proper place of pleasure, many of which are useful, and a big showy finish with The End of the World.

Unfortunately, Tertullian’s amazingly big finish gets derailed by his anger issues. Anybody who can portray his eternal joy as catcalling and watching the damned get destroyed in happy Roman-type “games” is… well… the kind of guy who’d run off and join the Montanists out of pique that repentant lapsed Christians weren’t being punished enough. Sigh.

But don’t stop with reading. Go, download, and listen to our man from North Africa.

Alexandria in Egypt was the Cambridge of late antiquity. It was a city renowned for its colleges and libraries. The city was ethnically diverse, as its ports were the trading hub of the ancient world. But the dominant language and culture were Greek, and so the backbone of its remarkable educational system were the gymnasia, where the city trained the minds and bodies of young men for their duties as citizens.

The first Greek ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy I, dreamed of making his capital city the world’s greatest center of learning. And his successors took up his dream, working almost desperately to amass all the world’s literature in one great library. The Ptolemies were unscrupulous in this pursuit, willing even to send thieves abroad to steal manuscripts from distant Athens, which was then well into its decline. According to ancient legend, it was Ptolemy II who commissioned the Septuagint, the translation of all the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, so that his library would not lack the great literature of Jews.

The library and its holdings were the lifeline of Alexandria’s great university and research institution, the Museion, which was renowned for its studies in astronomy, biology, philosophy, botany, geography, and literature. The Museion counted among its alumni great men such as Euclid and Archimedes, and its laboratories produced remarkable inventions such as the steam engine.

The Jews were a sizable and influential minority in the city, but they lived in uneasy tension with the dominant culture. Jewish parents debated among themselves whether it was right to enroll their boys in the gymnasia, where they might be corrupted by Greek culture, with its polytheism, immodesty, and homoeroticism. The pagan Alexandrians were, for their part, ambivalent about admitting Jews to full citizenship anyway, as the Jews were a discrete community within the community — a faction of ethnic “foreigners” and a potential source of disaffection in the land.

But in the cultural greenhouse that was Alexandria it was an easy matter for Jews to establish their own educational enclave. Philo describes a semi-monastic group called the Therapeutae, who occupied themselves with communal prayer and intense study of the Scriptures.

Into this world, in the mid-first century — around and amid the Harvards and MITs of the Roman empire — came the Christian faith. The gospel arrived early in Alexandria, and some of the city’s best and brightest responded with vigor. The super-apostle Apollos was an Alexandrian (Acts 18:24). A well-established tradition tells us that St. Mark the Evangelist was the city’s first bishop. Eusebius reports that the Therapeutae responded to the apostolic preaching and converted en masse, constituting perhaps the Church’s first scholarly monastic order, anticipating the Benedictines by several centuries. There is documentary evidence, too, indicating that many early conversions came from the pagan Greek and native Egyptian (Coptic) peoples as well.

Alexandrian Christianity developed richly and rapidly. It was deeply Christian, but it was distinctively Alexandrian as well. This cosmopolitan Church prized education very highly.

Quite naturally, the Alexandrian Church soon established a school, which became known as the Didaskalion. Scholars today debate whether it was a “school” the way we understand the term today, with teachers and classes, or merely a “school of thought.” But it is certain that there was some form of systematic education going on. The first master of the school known to history is Pantaenus (late second century), who had been a Stoic philosopher before his conversion and a missionary to India afterward. It was St. Pantaenus who put the Didaskalion on the cultural map. It was he who attracted so brilliant a student as Clement, who would succeed him as master of the school. Many of Clement’s “writings” seem to be transcripts of his own lectures. They are brilliant, erudite, seasoned with allusions to classical literature and abundant examples from the natural sciences. They assume a highly literate, leisurely audience of seekers, eager and attentive.

Clement, in his turn, attracted a bright and zealous young student named Origen, who would succeed Clement while still a teenager, and who would draw famous students from all around the empire — including the emperor’s mother! Origen, like his predecessor, placed a premium on secular as well as sacred learning. He taught that natural science was a useful and indispensable foundation for theological science.

Soon the Didaskalion would eclipse and then absorb the Museion as the center of Alexandrian culture. Alexandrian thought was transformed; yet it was still distinctively Alexandrian. God’s grace had perfected what was brilliant and beautiful by nature.

That’s what Christian education — at its very best — can do.

(An earlier version of this post appeared as my regular column in LayWitness magazine — to which you really should subscribe. For more on ancient Alexandria, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

The treasures of St. Catherine’s have come down from Mount Sinai and crossed over to L.A. The International Herald Tribune reports on a long-running exhibit of St. Catherine’s icons at the Getty Museum. Patrologists of the Left Coast, make time for this. (Hat tip: PhDiva.)

Mount Sinai in Egypt is perhaps best known as the site where Moses encountered the burning bush and received the Ten Commandments.

But also in this desolate desert landscape, Justinian, the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, in the middle of the sixth century ordered the construction of a monastery, St. Catherine’s, that has become the oldest continuously operating Christian monastic community. Over the 1,400 years of its existence, St. Catherine’s has accumulated one of the finest and most extensive collections of religious icons in the world.

Now, many sacred treasures from the Greek Orthodox monastery are to be shown for the first time abroad. The exhibition “Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai” will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from Nov. 14 to March 4…

The exhibition will feature approximately 43 icons – holy images regarded as sacred in the Eastern Orthodox church – including some of the oldest surviving Byzantine examples, as well as illuminated manuscripts and liturgical objects…

The highlight of the exhibition is a sixth-century icon of the apostle Peter, notable for both its antiquity and its realistic portrait style. A wave of iconoclastic zeal in the eighth and ninth centuries led to the destruction by the Byzantine emperors and their forces of almost all icons in Constantinople, and few examples predating that period have survived. But because of its remote location, St. Catherine’s was unaffected by the upheaval.

While I was out of town, the New York Times ran a long and fascinating travel piece on Christian Ethiopia, “Ethiopia Opens Its Doors, Slowly,” by Joshua Hammer. It ran on September 17, so it will only be free for a couple more days. Check it out.

Hammer takes us on “what Ethiopians call ‘the historic tour’ — a several-day circuit through ancient Christian kingdoms that flourished in the northern highlands beginning in the fourth century A.D. According to legend, Syrian monks crossed the Red Sea then and converted the Aksumite king, Ezana, from paganism to Christianity.”

He visits sites whose religious significance goes back even further than that. Ethiopia’s Jewish community traces its origins to Solomon’s philosophical dalliance with the Queen of Sheba. And that was a full millennium before the Ethiopian eunuch made his remarkable appearance in the Acts of the Apostles.

Our guide treks to sixth-century monasteries as well as the country’s famous monolithic churches — carved out of a single mass of rock. He even hovers near “The Treasury,” where Ethiopian monks claim to house the real Ark of the Covenant (pace Indiana Jones). “No one but a single monk is allowed to see the sacred artifact — and few people are permitted to see him — though replicas, known as tabots, are brought out once a year for the Timkat celebration of Christ’s baptism on Jan. 19.”

Hammer describes the liturgy and architecture with respect, if not quite reverence. Do you remember Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”? Well, Hammer’s tone reminded me, just a little, of Marlin Perkins’ voice-over explanation of the mating rituals of caribou. But, for the New York Times on religion, that’s pretty good. I found only one real groaner, in the author’s description of “Ethiopian Christianity, which combines belief in the Holy Trinity with some of the myths and the symbols of the Old Testament.” I mean, don’t all Christians do that? (Pace Marcion.)

The story‘s worth the trip. A pilgrimage would be even better.

Today’s the feast of St. Matthew, the evangelist who got the New Testament off to a royal start. The Fathers testify, overwhelmingly, that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew (or maybe an Aramaic dialect). A witness of Matthew’s own generation, Papias said: “Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and everyone interpreted them as he was able.” Irenaeus echoes: “Matthew among the Hebrews did also publish a Gospel in writing in their own language.” The Sicilian Bee, St. Pantaenus, went to India, where he found converted Jews who read “the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters.” In the third century, the critical scholar Origen gave his two cents: “the first Gospel was written by Matthew … who delivered it to the Jewish believers, composed in the Hebrew language.”

Here’s Jerome’s entry on Matthew, from his profiles of illustrious men:

Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and aforetimes publican, composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea which Pamphilus so diligently gathered. I have also had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Beroea, a city of Syria, who use it. In this it is to be noted that wherever the Evangelist, whether on his own account or in the person of our Lord the Savior, quotes the testimony of the Old Testament he does not follow the authority of the translators of the Septuagint but the Hebrew. Wherefore these two forms exist “Out of Egypt have I called my son, ” and “for he shall be called a Nazarene.”

If you’re looking for an excellent, short study edition of Matthew, with ample light from the Fathers, try this one.

In the year 64, a huge fire destroyed a large part of the city of Rome. Nero was Emperor at the time, and the rumor spread that he had started the fire himself, then “fiddled while Rome burned.” Nero was the sort of Emperor you could believe wild rumors about. He certainly did take advantage of the destruction: he built himself a gigantic palace on land cleared by the fire.

The Empire had no official policy on Christianity. There were local persecutions, but nothing so far had been dictated by the Emperor himself. But Nero needed someone to blame. Since the Christians were an unpopular cult, he accused them of setting the fire. Then he set about killing as many as he could get his hands on. Some were crucified in the usual way, but Nero could be much more imaginative than that. He liked to think of himself as an artist, and he applied all his creativity to the art of killing Christians.

Some of them were sewn up in animal skins and thrown to hungry wild dogs. Others were doused with pitch and became human torches for Nero’s garden parties. Even Tacitus, the pagan historian who hated Christians and thought they all deserved to die, was appalled by Nero’s cruelty. Tacitus pointed out that Nero’s methods had one effect no one had counted on: ordinary Romans started to have sympathy for the Christians, who met such horrible and unjustified punishments so heroically.

In the midst of these horrors, Peter and Paul both came to Rome—Paul in chains, Peter willingly. Eusebius tells us that they both died on the same day.

Peter was crucified. This time, he didn’t deny Jesus or try to run away. He made only one request: he asked his executioners to crucify him upside-down. He said he wasn’t worthy to die the same way as his Lord.

Paul, who was a Roman citizen, couldn’t be crucified. That was one of the privileges of being a citizen. Instead, he was beheaded—a quick, neat death, compared to the slow agony of crucifixion.

Nero’s persecution established a precedent for the persecutions to come. From now on, Christianity was a more-or-less illegal cult, and the punishment for it was death. But it also made the Christians much more visible, and it made them objects of sympathy. By creating so many martyrs, Nero may well have been responsible for thousands of conversions.

Nero’s persecution had set the official face of the Empire against the Christians. But the Romans had as yet no official policy against Christianity as such. For the next few decades, where persecutions broke out, they were usually responses to popular riots against the Christians—riots which the authorities blamed on the Christians.

So Christians lived in an uneasy uncertainty. They might live their lives in peace, or they might be called upon suddenly to give up everything for the sake of Christ. There was no way to know. And yet more and more pagans were turning Christian all the time. As the Good News spread outward from Palestine, it seemed to encounter everywhere huge numbers of people who had been waiting to hear it.

The persecutions stopped at the end of Domitian’s reign. Nerva, a virtuous and kindly Emperor, succeeded him, and he allowed all the Christians who had been exiled to return to their homes—including the ancient Apostle John, who returned to Ephesus from his exile on the remote island of Patmos. But virtuous and kindly Emperors didn’t usually last long, and in a little over a year Nerva was succeeded by Trajan, who renewed the persecutions. Still, Trajan wasn’t about to have a bloodbath on his hands, and he set the policy that would become the law for more than a century after him.

Trajan’s policy is preserved in a letter he sent to his friend Pliny, who had been sent to sort out problems in Bithynia in the year 111. Pliny had asked what to do about the Christians he found there. Trajan’s answer was very sensible, from the pagan point of view: “There’s no one rule that will cover every case. Don’t go looking for these people. But if someone points them out and they are found guilty, they must be punished; except that if the accused denies that he is a Christian, and proves he isn’t by worshipping the gods, he should be pardoned for reforming, no matter how suspicious he might have been. But no anonymous accusations can be admitted in evidence against anyone; they set a very bad precedent and don’t suit our modern ideas.”

In other words, the Roman government had a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy for Christians. The government wasn’t going to go looking for them. And anonymous accusations—of which there had been plenty, sometimes in the form of posters hung up in the middle of the night—would not be allowed. The only way a Christian could be arrested was if one of his enemies was willing to accuse him, and risk the serious penalties that went with bringing false charges. Even then, the Christian had a way out. If he renounced Christianity, he would be pardoned.

So most Christians could live their lives in peace most of the time. The threat of death was always hanging over them, but it was seldom carried out. Christianity spread rapidly under those conditions: life was not impossible for the average Christian, but the heroic witness of the famous martyrs kept enthusiasm high. For there were famous martyrs, even under Trajan’s mild reign.

The Church wasn’t always persecuted. While Rome disdained Christianity, full-scale purges took place only sporadically. Especially bloody persecutions happened during the reigns of Domitian (81-95), Trajan (98-117), Antoninus Pius (138-161), Marcus Aurelius (161-180), Septimius Severus (193-211), Decius (249-251), Valerian (253-260), Diocletian (284-305), and Galerius (305-311). In between, some of the Emperors were sympathetic or at least indifferent to Christians, so there were long periods of peace. When Philip the Arab became Emperor in 244, rumor had it that he was actually a Christian. If that’s true, Philip deserves the honor of being called the first Christian emperor. Christian or not, he encouraged the Church to grow and prosper—which made the persecution under his successor, Decius, all the more terrible.

And in every persecution, the pagans made the same mistake. “Most Christians won’t be willing to die for their silly religion,” they seemed to think. “If we just show them we’re serious about it, they’ll come round to our way of thinking.” But it never worked that way. The Christians had an entirely different way of seeing things.

“Your cruelty is our glory,” the famous Christian theologian Tertullian wrote to the imperial authorities. And Rome could be ingenious in its cruelty. Thus, all the greater was the Church’s glory. St. Irenaeus described the shock of pagans who witnessed the willingness of Christians to endure lingering tortures and the “games” (as they were called, though being eaten by a lion had little sport in it) rather than renounce the cult of Jesus. Tertullian taunted the pagans that their most noble philosophies offered them nothing comparable to die for. Testing the resignation of Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher who was sentenced to death by poison, he found it wanting, when measured against the Christians’ eager embrace of death.

What the Romans couldn’t understand was that martyrdom was the ultimate imitation of Christ: accepting a cruel and unjust death, as Jesus did. There could be no greater proof of one’s faith than to choose death rather than apostasy. So the Christians recorded the trials and pains of the martyrs in almost unbearable detail. It was common teaching that the martyrs entered heaven immediately upon their death. Some of the early Christian writers taught that the martyrs earned a sort of “priesthood” by their endurance.

And that was true in a sense. A priest is one who offers sacrifice, and martyrs offered their lives in union with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Two of the most famous martyrs of that age, St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp of Smyrna, both used images of the Eucharist to speak of their dying. “I am the wheat of God,” St. Ignatius wrote to the Romans. “Let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.” And while he was being burned at the stake, St. Polycarp made a speech that sounds like a eucharistic prayer: “I give you thanks that you have counted me worthy of this day and this hour, that I should have a part in the number of your martyrs…among whom may I be accepted this day before you as a rich and acceptable sacrifice, as you, the ever-truthful God, have foreordained.”

In 260, a new Emperor named Gallienus came to the throne. Things had been going rather badly for the Empire; the previous Emperor, Valerian, had been captured by the Persians. Gallienus revoked all the edicts against the Christians, and restored the property the previous emperors had taken from them. For the next four decades, Christians would live at peace in the Empire. Gallienus’ edict of toleration guaranteed their rights. It seemed as though Christianity had finally been accepted.

But if you think the story of the Roman persecution is over in 260, you haven’t read been visiting this blog very much! The worst was yet to come.

Read some books on the subject: Abbot Ricciotti’s The Age of Martyrs: Christianity from Diocletian (284) to Constantine (337), Herbert Musurillo’s The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford early Christian texts), and most especially Robin Darling Young’s In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom As Public Liturgy in Early Christianity.

Whenever I post on Christianity in ancient India, I see an avalanche of interest. There’s an abundance of plausible tradition concerning the Apostle Thomas’s work there. It’s affirmed by many of the Fathers and historians of antiquity. Modern historians, especially in India, have built libraries of evidence, judiciously sifted. Archeology, however, is problematic, since India’s climate is hostile to preservation (making it quite unlike, say, the deserts of Egypt). Paper, wood, pigment just don’t hold up.

Still, some excavations and underwater explorations have yielded results that favor the claims of the Thomas historians. The more the archeologists dig and dredge, the more we learn about Roman-Indian contact and sea trade — which seems to have been quite extensive. That was the point of last month’s links on the recent finds at the port of Muziris. Now comes a far more detailed analysis of the archeological data on Indo-Roman sea trade. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology is providing, free for download, “Evidence for Indo-Roman Trade from Bet Dwarka Waters, West Coast of India.” It’s well illustrated with photographs of cool stuff pulled from the ocean and the ground.

Right around the time of Christ, sailors discovered the trade winds that made travel to India much more speedy and safe. Ships could then sail the open sea, rather than hugging the shoreline as they formerly had done. Some of us find the timing providential. Some of us believe that the same thought probably occurred to St. Thomas. We can be fairly certain that it occurred to St. Pantaenus and others who took the spice route in their evangelical travels.

If you’re interested in the subjects of Christianity, India, and St. Thomas, I recommend the histories by Mundadan and Menachery, both available in India but difficult to track down in the States. You can usually find copies for sale (and quick, reliable shipment) from Merging Currents, a bookseller I’ve written about here. We should encourage the work of these historians, who face heated and sometimes irrational opposition from Hindu nationalists. Such critics accuse Christianity of having “anti-national designs,” and they speak of the churches as “instrument of the Western powers.” Some even claim that St. Thomas’s apostolate was a late invention of the Portuguese colonizers — this in spite of the ample testimony from the patristic era.

They are extremists, of course, but they have recently been influential in setting the limits of politically correct speech. Yet this conflict is unnecessary, as more moderate voices have long recognized. In 1955, India’s president Dr. Rajendra Prasad celebrated the early arrival of Christianity on the subcontinent: “Remember, St. Thomas came to India when many of the countries of Europe had not yet become Christian, and so those Indians who trace their Christianity to him have a longer history and a higher ancestry than that of Christians of many of the European countries.” For Prasad, who was himself a devout Hindu and close associate of Gandhi, that historical likelihood was “a matter of pride.” For anti-Christian extremists today, it’s a threat to their political agenda, as is the evidence of other East-West trade and collaboration. When we read about it and spread the word, we’re taking a stand against prejudice, and making a stand with Christian historians who must work in difficult circumstances. But it’s a virtuous act that’s a pure pleasure. So read up!

John Chrysostom (349-407) was a talented young man, the son of a government official who died when John was still a baby, leaving his wife a widow and single mother at age twenty. John’s mother made great sacrifices so that her son could study under the world’s most famous professor of rhetoric, the pagan Libanios of Antioch. John became his star pupil.

At eighteen, John discerned a call to dedicate himself entirely to the service of the Church. He placed himself under the tutelage of the renowned Scripture scholar, Diodore of Tarsus. Soon, once again, John was the most brilliant pupil of his master.

He decided, however, that he was interested in contemplation more than career, and so he stepped out of track for clerical orders and, in early adulthood, went off into a mountain cave, where he lived a hermit’s life for two years, till his health gave out.

When John returned to Antioch, his bishop ordained him first a deacon and then a priest. For twelve years, he was the main preacher in the city’s cathedral church. There, he preached the homilies that earned him his fame. He also served as vicar general for the metropolitan see.

It was his fame as a preacher, however, that brought him to the attention of the wider Church, and especially the imperial court. Thus, when the patriarch of Constantinople died, the emperor unexpectedly summoned John from Antioch to the most powerful bishop’s throne in the East. John declined the honor. But the emperor ordered that John be taken by force or subterfuge, if necessary, and so he was.

John’s habitual honesty and integrity did not serve him well, by capital standards. He was a reformer and an ascetic, demanding much of others, but even more of himself. The clergy of Constantinople were not, however, eager to be reformed or to imitate John’s spartan lifestyle. Nor was the imperial family — especially the empress — interested in John’s advice about their use of cosmetics, their lavish expenses, and their self-aggrandizing monuments. John found it outrageous that the rich could relieve themselves in golden toilet bowls while the poor went hungry. He reached the limits of his patience when the empress went beyond the law to seize valuable lands from a widow, after the widow had refused to sell the property. (John did not miss the opportunity to cite relevant Old Testament passages, like 1 Kings 21.)

Ordinary people found inspiration, solace, and — no doubt — entertainment in the great man’s preaching. But the powerful were not amused. They arranged a kangaroo court of bishops to depose John in 403. In fact, a military unit interrupted the liturgy on Easter Vigil, just as John was preparing to baptize a group of catechumens. Historians record that the baptismal waters ran red with blood.

John was sent away to the wild country on the eastern end of the Black Sea. His health was never good, and his guards took advantage of this. In moving him to a new location, they forced him to go on foot. They marched him to death in September 407.

Yet, immediately, he received popular veneration as a saint. Within a generation, a new emperor was welcoming the return of St. John Chrysostom’s relics to Constantinople.

Chrysostom is not a name John received from his parents. It was the name he earned from the congregations who loved him. Chrysostomos means “Golden Mouth” in Greek.

There’s an excellent online clearinghouse of works by an about St. John. I’ve posted some excerpts of his homilies here, here, and here. A good biography of St. John is J.N.D. Kelly’s Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom-Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop.