Image: Roman funerary mask, from Balansura, Egypt, c. AD 100-200, Penn Museum, Philadelphia.
This is an occasional series of readings from and brief notes
and commentary upon Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: Book 7, chapters 22-23. Listen here.
Notes and Commentary:
These chapters describe a terrible
pestilence in Alexandria that followed the time of war described in the
previous chapters (7.20-21), as well as a period of peace and stability that
followed. Eusebius’s source is again a letter by Dionysius.
Chapter 22 describes how
the plague in those days fell like the plague of the firstborn in Egypt in that
it took so many lives, leaving no household untouched.
For the Christians, the plague came
after their experience of persecution, having been driven out to meet in “field,
desert, ship, inn, prison,” and the hardships of wartime. The believers, however,
saw this, like other misfortunes, as “a source of discipline and testing.”
He gives a glowing report of how
the Christians cared for one another during the plague, including tending the
sick and dying, even when it resulted in the losing of their own lives. Dionysius
compares these deaths as like those of the martyrs. He also notes that the Christians
even took special care in the burial of their fellow believers.
He contrasts this with the behavior
of the heathen who, when their loved ones were in the first stages of the disease,
thrust them out and abandoned them. The gravely ill were put out on the road
half-dead and the corpses of the dead treated as “vile refuse.”
When peace returned, Dionysius composed
another festal letter to the believers in Egypt as well as treatises on the
Sabbath and Exercise (peri gymnasiou).
In a letter to Hermammon and the brethren
in Egypt, he described the wickedness of Decius and his successors as well as
the peace that came to the church under Gallienus.
Chapter 23 describes the
relative peace that came to the church after the capture of Valerian and his
replacement as emperor by Gallienus. After Gallienus overcame an internal
challenge from Macrianus, it was though the clouds fell back and the sun shone.
Dionysius extolls Gallienus for leading the monarchy to put aside its “old age
and cleansed itself from its former wickedness."
Conclusion:
These chapters describe the perseverance
of the early Christians in the face of persecution, war, and plague, till they
entered into another era of peace. It is particularly striking to see how Dionysius
contrasts the way that Christians handled the plague by extending love and care
to others, in contrast to the heathen. Though this picture might be somewhat idealized,
it does show how early Christians might have presented a winsome witness to
their pagan neighbors and continued to grow despite the opposition lodged
against them.
JTR
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