Scillitan Martyrs

What survives of them is a transcript. santiebeati, reprinting Treccani, calls the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs a Latin record of the hearing before the proconsul Saturninus, of undisputed authenticity, extant in Latin and Greek though first written in Latin. ³ It is the oldest document of Latin Christian literature from North Africa that carries a date, and the oldest that certainly attests Christianity in Roman Africa. ³

The Catholic Encyclopedia puts the Acts among the few martyrs' records drawn from the official reports of an interrogation, and names the Scillitan Acts as typical of the class. ⁶ Such reports, it adds, reached us only in editions prepared for the edification of the faithful. ⁶ Butler says the faithful copied them out of the public registers and added a few short notes. ⁴

The Acts open with their date: the second consulship of Praesens, with Claudianus, on the seventeenth day of July, at Carthage. ¹ Before the proconsul stood Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Donata, Secunda and Vestia. ¹ Saturninus offered them the emperor's pardon "if you return to a sound mind." ¹

Speratus answered for them. "We have never done ill, we have not lent ourselves to wrong, we have never spoken ill, but when ill-treated we have given thanks." ¹ The proconsul replied that Romans too were religious, and their religion simple: they swore by the genius of the emperor and prayed for his welfare. ¹ Speratus offered to explain "the mystery of simplicity," and Saturninus refused to listen. ¹

Then Speratus made his claim. "The empire of this world I know not; but rather I serve that God, whom no man has seen, nor with these eyes can see." ¹ He had stolen nothing, he said, and paid the tax on whatever he bought, "because I know my Lord, the King of kings and Emperor of all nations." ¹

The others spoke briefly. Cittinus said they feared no one but the Lord God in heaven. ¹ Donata said, "Honour to Cæsar as Cæsar: but fear to God." ¹ Vestia said, "I am a Christian." ¹ Secunda said, "What I am, that I wish to be." ¹

Saturninus asked Speratus whether he persisted in being a Christian, and Speratus said he did; the rest agreed with him. ¹ Asked if he wanted time to consider, he answered, "In a matter so straightforward there is no considering." ¹

Then the proconsul asked what was in their chest. "Books and epistles of Paul, a just man," Speratus said. ¹ santiebeati notes that this line is of great interest to historians: it is the oldest text to mention a Latin version of the books of the Bible. ³

Saturninus offered thirty days to think it over. ¹ Speratus said again that he was a Christian, and again they all agreed. ¹ The proconsul read the sentence from his tablet: having confessed that they lived by the Christian rite, and having obstinately refused the chance to return to the custom of the Romans, they were to be put to the sword. ¹ "We give thanks to God," Speratus said, and Nartzalus added, "Today we are martyrs in heaven; thanks be to God." ¹ The herald read out all twelve names, and all of them said, "Thanks be to God." ¹

Only six people speak in the transcript; the herald names twelve. ¹ santiebeati lists them as seven men, Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Veturius, Felix, Aquilinus and Laetantius, and five women, Donata, Vestia, Januaria, Generosa and Secunda, and adds that six of the twelve names were probably added later and were not among those condemned on July 17. ³ The spellings differ in every source: Butler has Narzalis and Vestina, and the 1897 Martyrology Narzales and Acyllinus. ⁴⁵

Butler follows a longer telling, and it differs from Robinson's text at several points. ¹⁴ He dates the trial to the year 200, under Severus, rather than 180. ³⁴ He has two hearings, with a night between them in prison in the wooden stocks, and his Speratus names the books as the four Gospels, the epistles of Saint Paul and the rest of the Scriptures. ⁴ His proconsul offers three days rather than thirty, and at the end the martyrs kneel and give thanks once more before they are beheaded. ⁴ The current Martyrology follows that longer account: a first confession and prison, a return in chains the next day, a refusal to honor the emperor as a god, and death by the sword as they knelt and thanked God. ²

Butler adds that Tertullian, writing soon afterward, says that Saturninus, the first to draw the sword against the Christians of Africa, soon lost his sight. ⁴

No one knows exactly where Scilli was. santiebeati calls it an unidentified place in Numidia, probably within the old province of Africa Proconsularis. ³ Butler says only that they were probably from a town of proconsular Africa. ⁴

Their relics traveled. The 1897 Martyrology says the remains of Speratus, with the bones of Saint Cyprian and the head of Saint Pantaleon, were carried from Africa into France and placed in the basilica of Saint John the Baptist at Lyons. ⁵ santiebeati says the relics went to France in the ninth century and later to Rome, where they are kept in a marble sarcophagus in the church of Saints John and Paul on the Caelian. ³ They are venerated, it adds, by the Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic churches. ³

No source consulted for this page names a patronage for the Scillitan Martyrs, and none is claimed here. ²³⁴

The feast of the Scillitan Martyrs is July 17, the day the Acts give for their trial and death. ¹² The current Roman Martyrology keeps the anniversary of their death that day, and santiebeati, Butler and the 1897 Martyrology all place them on July 17. ²³⁴⁵

They were not people of the desert or the cloister. Speratus pays his taxes and says so; he and his companions answer a magistrate politely and briefly. ¹ The trial reads like any court record, which is what it is. ³⁶

They brought books with them, and Speratus could say what they were. ¹ They had carried the letters of Paul with them to Carthage, in a chest. ¹³

Some of them said only a few words. Vestia said she was a Christian, and Secunda that she wished to be what she was. ¹ The record kept those sentences beside the longer answers.

Offered thirty days, they did not need them. ¹ Their last words in the Acts are thanks. ¹