Phrygia those of Laodicea, Colossae, and Hierapolis, to which later on was added that of Synnada, a city that afterward became the metropolis of East Phrygia (Phrygia Salutaris). The Proconsul Pliny complained, about A. D. 106, that the superstition called Christianity was rapidly spreading through Bithynia, and the churches established in Nicomedia, at Apollonias, Prusa, Hellenopolis, Caesarea, and Adrianople, are sufficient evidence that his complaint was well founded. The Church Caesarea (Mazaca), in Cappadocia, of which the celebrated Firmilian became bishop A. D. 233, was in a very flourishing condition; and in Pontus there were the churches of Sinope and Neo-Caesarea, of the latter of which the famous Gregory Thaumaturgas was consecrated bishop by the neighboring bishop of Amasia, and he in turn consecrated Alexander the Philosopher, bishop of Comana. Even the distant Trapezunt possessed a Church in the beginning of the fourth century. A Christian Church was founded A. D. 288 at Edessa, the capital of the province of Osroëne, and we meet at an early period churches at Amida, Nisibis, and Cascar, in Mesopotamia.

St. Denys of Alexandria wrote a letter on penance1 to the Christians of Roman Armenia, and during the second and third centuries we find mention of churches at Sebaste, Melitene, and other places. Maris, said to be a disciple of St. Thaddeus, was bishop of Seleucia, a city situated on the Tigris in Chaldea, and which, always important because of its relations with Ctesiphon, became still later a nursery from whence the faith was carried to the kingdom of the Parthians, occupying the territory afterward known as Persia. Pantaenus, the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, labored energetically to propagate the Christian religion in India (Arabia Felix?). The seed sown by St. Paul3 in Arabia bore

1

2

1In Euseb. hist. eccl. VI. 46.

2 Happy Arabia (Yemen), because Philostorg. hist. eccl. II. 6, calls the Homerites and Zabeans Indians, and St. Jerome, de viris illustr., c. 36, relates that Pantaenuș found amongst them the Gospel of St. Matthew, which, it is said, they had received from St. Bartholomew, whose Apostolic labors in Happy Arabia are an established fact. Conf. Tillemont, T. I.; Mosheim, comment. de rebus Christ. ante Constant. M., p. 206. Euseb. h. e. V. 10, and VI. 19. Gildemeister, scriptor. Arabum de rebus Indicis loci et opuscula inedita, Bonnae, 1838. 8 Galat. i. 17.

fruit a hundred-fold, for one of the Emirs of that country (ýroúpsvos tis’Apaßias) sent a request to Origen, asking him for instruction in the Christian religion, to which the latter gladly acceded.

There was a bishopric at Bostra at a very early date, and at many other places in Arabia about the middle of the third century. The Christians were tolerably numerous in Persia during the second and third centuries, where a spirit of hostility to the Romans, who persecuted the Persians, inspired the kindness with which they were treated."

The metropolitan Church of Salamis, on the island of Cyprus, had, before the Council of Nice, three bishops, and not long after fifteen other bishoprics were made suffragan sees.

§ 63. Christian Churches in Africa. (Cf. § 50.)

+Morcelli, Africa christiana, Brix. 1816, 3 T. 4. [Wiltsch, ecclesiastical Geography, Vol. I., p. 52-55.] Münteri, primordia eccl. Afric., Hafn. 1829. de Rossi, de christianis titulis Carthaginiensibus separately taken from the spicilegium, Solesmense, ed. Pitra, T. IV. Collection of the Christian inscriptions found in Algiers, ed. Léon Renier, 1855. (Voices from Rome, by the Benedictines of St. Paul, Schaffh. 1860.) Blampignon de Sto Cypriano et de primaeva Carthaginiensi ecclesia, etc., Paris, 1862.

St. Mark, the Evangelist, carried the faith to Egypt, and became the first bishop of Alexandria. But the influence of the Jews in Lower Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis, and the laying waste and depopulation of the provinces brought about by the rebellion of the Jews under Hadrian (A. D. 115), together with the opposition of the Gnostics, who were very numerous in these parts, seriously interfered with both the founding of churches and the establishment of bishoprics. Still, in the beginning of the third century, a council was held (235), consisting of twenty bishops. Three well-known bishops-Demetrius, Heraclas, and Dionysius-presided successively over the Church of Alexandria.*

1 Euseb. VI. 33, 37.

2 Arnob. (about A. D. 297), adv. gentes, II. 7.

3 The Christian Jew, Apollos, mentioned Acts xviii. 24, xix. 1; 1 Cor. i. 12, was a native of Alexandria.

*Euseb. h, e. II. 16, VI. 2.

Men of intellect throughout Egypt grew more favorably inclined toward Christianity in proportion as they became dissatisfied with the gloomy tenets of their national worship, and soon learned from the teachings of the great theologians of Alexandria that the Christian religion alone satisfied all the cravings of human nature. So favorably was Christianity received during the time of Origen that he was obliged to have recourse to the services of a coadjutor to aid him in instructing the catechumens.

The history of the first attempts to establish the Church in Northwestern Africa, Proconsular Africa, Numidia, and Mauritania is very unsatisfactory; but it is quite probable that missionaries were sent thither from Rome at an early period. Baronius says that the Apostles themselves founded the Church there, but Schelstrate takes exception to this assertion." Carthage became the metropolitan see of the African churches, and Christianity spread thence into Numidia and Mauritania, and its progress, to which the use of the Latin language by the early Christian writers contributed not a little, was so remarkable for the space of a century, or down to the reign of the Emperor Severus, and the number of Christians increased so rapidly, that Tertullian," the famous priest of Carthage, declared, A. D. 202, that throughout the cities of Africa, the Christians almost outnumbered the Pagans. Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, toward the close of the second century, presided over a synod of seventy bishops of Africa and Numidia, and St. Cyprian, who succeeded to the see A. d. 248, convened a synod of the three named provinces, at which eighty-seven bishops were present. During the fourth century the number of ecclesiastical provinces was increased by

3

1Baron. ad a. 49, n. 8. E. Schelstrate, ecclesia Africana sub primatu Carthag., Par. 1690, 4to. Concerning the idolatry of Carthage, see Döllinger, The Jew and the Gentile, pp. 455, 456.

2Ad Scapul., c. 2: Tanta hominum multitudo pars paene major civitatis cujusque; and c. 5: Quantis ignibus, quantis gladiis opus erit? Quid ipsa Carthago passura est decimanda a te., pp. 86 and 88. Apologet., c. 37: Hesterni sumus et vestra omnia implevimus: urbes, insulas, castella, municipia conciliabula, castra ipsa, etc., p. 33.

3 Cypr. ep. 71 and 73. August. de baptismo, II. 13. Mansi, T. I., p. 967– 992. Harduin, T. I., p. 159-180.

the addition of Tripoli, Byzacium, and Mauritania Sitifensis, all of which contained numerous bishoprics.

§ 64. Propagation of Christianity in Europe.

+Ughelli, Italia sacra s. de Episcop. Italiae, etc., ed. II., studio N. Coleti, Venet. 1716-1722, 10 T. fol. Florez, España sagrada, continued by Risco and others, Madr. 1754-1850, 47 T. 4to. P. Gams, Church History of Spain, Ratisbon 1862 sqq., 2 vols. Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, qua series et historia omnium Episcoporum et Archiep., etc., opera et studio fratrum Sammarthanorum (Dionys., Scaev. et Lud. de St. Marthe) et alior. Monachor. congr. St. Mauri, Paris, 1715-1786, 13 T. fol. New ed. by P. Piolin, O. S. B., Paris, 1871., 13 T. Calles, annales ecclesiastici Germaniae, Viennae, 1756, fol. T. I. Cf. Wiltsch, ecclesiastical Geogr. and Statistics, Vol. I., p. 34-43; and Holzhausen, Establishment of the Christian Church in the Domains of the Roman Bishops. (Illgen. Hist. Period., Vol. VIII., n. 4.)

St. Paul and his fellow-laborers laid the foundations of the Church in Greece. The most flourishing of all the churches of Italy was beyond all question that of Rome, which had been quickened by the preaching, moistened with the blood, and hallowed by the glorious death of the Prince of Apostles.

Besides SS. Peter and Paul, there were, as Tacitus affirms, great numbers (ingens multitudo) put to death by every species of cruel torture during the persecution of Nero.1

2

About the middle of the third century, mention is made of priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and clerics in minor orders in connection with the Roman Church, in which they appear to have been quite numerous at this time. (Cf. § 83.) Many other churches of Italy were founded either by the contemporaries of the Apostles or their immediate disciples. Such was the church of Lucca, founded by Paulinus, and of Fiesole by St. Romulus; of Ravenna by St. Apollinaris, and of Milan by St. Anathalon; of Aquileia by St. Mark, and of Bologna by St. Zamas. The church of Bari, in Apulia, can beast that St. Peter appointed Maurus, who suffered martyrdom during the reign of Domitian, its first bishop; and the churches of Benevento, Capua and Naples, Palermo and Syracuse, in

1 Tert. de praescr., c. 36. Tacit. annal. XV. 44.

2Selvaggio, antiquit. Christ., lib. I., c. 5-7, P. I., Mogunt. 1787, p. 86-137. VOL. I-16

2

Sicily, and those of Pavia, Urbino, Mantua, Verona, Pisa, Florence, and Siena, point with pride to similar traditions." There is no positive proof either that St. Paul preached the Gospel in Spain, or that the Apostle St. James, the Son of Zebedee, to whose reputed tomb at Compostella the piety of the Spaniards led them to make pilgrimages in after years, was ever in that country. A marble slab found (?) at Compostella, and bearing an inscription thanking the Emperor Nero for having rid the country of a band of robbers and such as would impose a new superstition upon the inhabitants, if genuine, would show beyond doubt that the Gospel was preached in Spain in the first century; but it has been proved a forgery.3 Historians of the third century make mention of the churches of Leon, Astorga, Caesar Augusta, Tarragona, and others, which the Mozarabic liturgy and Spanish writers affirm were founded by the seven bishops, Torquatus, Ctesiphon, Secundus, Indaletius, Hesychius, and Ephrasius, whom SS. Peter and Paul sent as missionaries to Spain.4

Nineteen Spanish bishops were present at the synod of Elvira, A. D. 306.5 The martyrdom of Fructuosus, bishop, and of the deacons Augurius and Eulogius, during the reign of Valerian, threw a halo of glory around the church of Spain; but the number of her martyred saints was greatly increased in the time of Diocletian."

For a long time before the introduction of Christianity into Gaul, the well-organized body of the Druids' had exercised both a religious and political influence over the minds of the people, with which the Roman laws so seriously interfered, after the conquests of Caesar, that the mythology of Rome 1 Cf. Joann. Lami, deliciae eruditor. T. VIII. praefat., p. 25 sq. T. XI. praefat. 2 Natal. Alex. h. e. saec. I., diss. 15, on SS. Paul and James. (T. IV., p. 334 sq.) 3 Gruteri thesaur. inscription. No. 9, p. 238. The genuineness of this inscription is denied by Muratori, and defended by Walch, persecutio Christianor. Neron. Jen. 1653; called in question by Scaliger, Hagenbach, and others, and denied by Gams, C. H. Spain, Vol. I., p. 387-392. Zell, delectus inscript. nr. 1486. Cf. Iren. contr. haeres. I. 10 and annot., p. 43. Tertull. adv. Jud., c. 4 Gams, l. c., p. 76–80, and p. 118 sq.

5 Mansi, T. II., p. 6.

6 The acts in Ruinart, p. 210; Gams, 1. c., p. 284 sq.

7.

Caesar, de bell. gall. I. 31, VI. 12-16. Döllinger, The Jew and the Gentile, p. 558-563.