The tenth installment of this mega-part series on the History of the Mass and Holy Mother Church
treats a variety of issues during the first half of the Third Century, a century known for the spread of the catacombs and Origen, the noted Apologist and the holy hermits and Anchorites originated by Saint Anthony of Egypt and Saint Paul of Thebes. We discover how the catacombs evolved as a tribute to the new faith and how one of the Church's great apologists - Tertullian went astray. But that was balanced by the noble works of Saint Cyprian, believed to be one of the last great Apologists of this era.
There had been a brief respite in the intensive persecutions which allowed the Church to spread to remote regions of the Roman Empire as well as within the heart of Rome, but this would be shortlived as we shall see in the
eleventh installment when we cover the effects the martyrs had on the rise of the Christian Church
and the decline of the once proud Roman Empire, bringing to reality the words of Tertullian, "The
blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christianity."
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christianity" (Tertullian)
In the past two issues we covered the Second Century. As each century progresses, installments will
increase in number for that particular century. There will be at least three on the Third Century and
they shall multiply as we follow the course of Holy Mother Church from her early years through the
dark ages to the Reformation into the missionary era and all the way to the present. We will present
many sidebar installments on various aspects in the Mass and history and backtrack when necessary
to highlight an area that needs emphasis or fits with the topic at hand. Needless to say, this on-going
series will definitely be on-going for quite some time!!! And now back to the the beginning of the
Third Century as in 200 B.C.
As the saying goes, "Rome wasn't built in a day," and neither were the catacombs. It took a few
centuries to perfect this underground refuge and burial grounds for the Christians as the persecutions
continued in Rome. The catacombs came about as a result of fellow Christians burying their own.
ad catacumbas
The Christians followed the Jewish custom of burying their dead in contrast to the Romans' practice
of cremating the dead. However inside the city proper, there was little ground suitable for digging
graves deep enough.
Therefore, the Christians migrated outside the walls where there is a rock
known as Tufa which enabled the Christians to dig down into this mass of hard soil. These
underground tunnels bored through rock were mostly found near the lowlands, especially near the
church of St. Sebastian along the Appian Way where so many Christians were buried. The Latin
word for "near the lowlands" was ad catacumbas which evolved into "catacombs." Bodies were
ceremoniously buried in the rock walls on either side of the long, narrow and winding, dank
corridors of the catacombs. In wider areas of the catacombs, or rooms, were buried the martyrs and
those whom living Christians held in deep respect - many of them saints.
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As the persecutions and the
hunt for Christians intensified, many of the followers of Christ literally went underground to avoid
capture. There they gathered and celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, often on top of the
martyrs' coffins or building permanent altars into the walls. This is where the practice began of
embedding the relics of a saint into the altar. The barren walls of the catacombs and the hand-hewn
coffins afforded space to carve the tenets of the True Faith in tribute to the dead and as
encouragement to the living. Christians in those times expected to die for their faith so they did not
cower in the catacombs, but retreated their often not as much for safety as a refresher in the faith
and to be with those of like mind and heart. How they were able to continue so long without wide
detection still remains a mystery today for one would think the Romans would have been able to
infiltrate these refuges and root them out. Yet, protected by the angels, saints and God Himself, they
rallied to the call of Christ for centuries from these underground sanctuaries. This was especially
prevalent at the beginning of the Third Century.
Pope Saint Zephyrinus had just been elevated to the Chair of Peter in 199 AD. In the 18 years he
governed as the 15th Pontiff, Pope Zephyrinus met with bitter theological struggles including dealing
with Gnosticism, Praxeasism which denied the doctrine of the Trinity, Manescheism which was the
doctrine of two eternal beings - Light and Dark, and Marcionism. The most heart-rendering decision
Zephyrinus had to make was excommunicating the noted Apologist Tertullian who stubbornly clung
to some of Marcion's theories regarding sin.
Born in Carthage around 160 AD, Tertullian was
well-educated in Greek and Latin literature, eventually earning honors in law, specifically in Rome. In 193,
after studying Christianity for some time, he converted to the faith. Shortly after he returned to his
native-Carthage to defend the faith. With his expertise in Latin he became known as the "Father of
Ecclesiastical Latin" with his greatest work being the "Apologeticus" in which he clearly theorized
how Christ's one, true Church was the only faith. It was Tertullian who immortalized the words, "The
blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christianity." For all the good he did, unfortunately because of his
stubbornness and fanatical stance toward certain points in the tenets of faith, such as being too
severe toward sinners. He was, in effect, the first Calvinist. Though his works have been studied
and admired by many saints, those points and his insistence on following the teachings of the heretic
Marcion forced Zephyrinus to painfully have to excommunicate Tertullian. There are reports that
shortly before he died in 240 he amended his thinking and asked forgiveness of the Church. If only the modern pontiffs had the fortitude of St. Zephyrinus perhaps there wouldn't be so many heretics loose in our day and age.
To offset Tertullian's pride, God rose up another who was undaunted in defending all tenets of the
faith. This was Origen who had been made head of the Catechetical School in Alexandria in 203.
Twenty seven years later he was removed for he had not notified his bishop that he had been an
ordained priest for quite some time. The bishop forced him out, but Origen moved on to Caesarea
opening another school that would become as renowned as his former school in Alexandria.
Because of his widespread notoriety as one of the greatest defenders of the faith and the fact Origen
had been promoting the idea that there was comparative peace throughout the Roman empire as a
result of so many conversions to Christianity, the Emperor Decius decided to make an example of
Origen. Thus he was arrested and inhumanly tortured in efforts to get him to forsake his faith. But he
would not budge from the goal of following Christ to the end. Fearing a backlash from the people
over the apparent inability of the Roman emperor to break this man of God, Decius had him
released. However, Origen who had grown feeble and brittle from being beaten to a pulp lived only
a few more years...yet he lived those years in freedom defending the faith to his dying breath.
The last of the well-known Apologists was Saint Cyprian. A student of both Tertullian and Origen,
Cyprian hailed from wealthy lineage in Carthage. This teacher of rhetoric became a Christian in 245
and was moved by the passage in Matthew 19: 20-30 about the rich man. Unlike the rich man who
walked away, Cyprian embraced Christ's words and gave all he had to the poor and became a
beacon of faith to all his followers. He wrote numerous volumes defending the Church, specifically
his well-known defense: "On the Unity of the Catholic Church" in which he staunchly asserted
that "outside the Church there is no salvation. He cannot have God as his Father who has not the
Church for his Mother." Cyprian was marytred in 258 at the hands of the Emperor Valerian.
Some of those who had heard and responded to Cyprian sought a more contemplative life to live,
pray and offer mortification. Thus, some of them retreated from Alexandria and Carthage toward the
deserts of northern Africa to live by themselves in order, they reasoned, to be closer to God. These
men were called hermits, recluses or Anchorites and the first of these holy solitary men were Saint
Anthony of Egypt and Saint Paul of Thebes. They attracted many followers, and though they
came together to teach, Anthony and Paul insisted on solitary not only for themselves but their
followers as well. Every hermit was assigned their own cell, spending their day in prayer and fasting.
These were the forerunners of the monastic, cloistered contemplative orders that would evolve in
later centuries. Many of these hermits had studied under both Origen and Tertullian and though the
latter had been excommunicated, his writings still inspired the faithful.
Tertullian also wrote about the staggering blooming of Christianity throughout the Roman empire,
"We are but of yesterday, yet we crowd your cities, your colonies, your army, palace, Senate,
Forum. We leave you for yourselves only your temples." This attitude of "deal with it" left the Roman
emperors seething - from Septimus Severus to Maximian to Decius to the most vile of all,
Diocletian, they all vowed to crush Christianity as we shall see in the next installment when we treat
the persecutions of the Third Century and the tactics used by pagan Rome to crush Christianity.
Little did they know of Christ's words in Matthew 16: 18, "...and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it."
chapter ten:
