SCILLITAN MARTYRS  , a

company of early North African Christians who suffered under Marcus Aurelius in A.D . 18o, and whose Acta are at once the earliest documents of the Church of Africa and the earliest specimen of Christian Latin . The martyrs take their name from Scilla (or Scillium), a town in Numidia . Their trial and execution took place in Carthage under the Pro-consul Vigellius Saturninus, whom Tertullian declares to have been the first persecutor of the Christians in Africa . The date of their martyrdom is the 17th of July A.D . 180 . It is thus the concluding scene of the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, which is best known from the sufferings of the churches of Vienne and Lyons in South Gaul . Marcus Aurelius died on the 17th of March of the year in question, and persecution ceased almost immediately upon the accession of Commodus . A group of sufferers called the Madaurian martyrs seems to belong to the same period: for in the correspondence of St Augustine, Namphamo, one of their number, is spoken of as " archimartyr," which appears to mean protomartyr of Africa . We have in this martyrdom an excellent example of "Acts of Martyrs " properly so called . The document is in brief legal form, beginning with the date and the names of the accused, and giving the actual dialogue between them and their judge . It closes with the sentence, based on " obstinate " persistency in an illicit cult, and with the proclamation by the herald of the names of the offenders and the penalty .

All this may quite well be a transcript of the Acta, or

official report of the proceedings . A Christian appends the words: " And so they all together were crowned with martyrdom; and they reign with the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever . Amen." The Scil itan sufferers were twelve in all--seven men and five women . Two of these bear Punic names (Nartzalus, Cintinus), but the rest Latin names . Six had already been tried: of the remainder, to whom these Acta primarily relate, Speratus is the principal spokesman . He claims for himself and his companions that they have lived a quiet and moral life, paying their dues and doing no wrong to their neighbours . But when called upon to swear by the genius of the emperor, he replies: " I recognize not the empire of this world; but rather do I serve that God whom no man hath seen, nor with these eyes can see." Here he uses the language of 1 Tim. vi . 16; and it is interesting also to note that in reply to the question, " What are the things in your satchel ? " he says, " Books and letters of Paul, a just man." The martyrs are offered a delay of thirty days to reconsider their decision, but this they all alike refuse . These'Acts have been long known in an expanded form, or rather in a variety of later recensions . The fame of the martyrs led to the building of a basilica in their honour at Carthage; and their annual commemoration required that the brevity and obscurity of their Acts should be supplemented and explained, to make them suitable for public recitation . The historical questions connected with these martyrs are treated by Lightfoot, Ignatius (1889, 2nd ed.), i .

524 if . The Latin

text, together with later recensions and a Greek version, is published in Texts and Studies, i . 2 (Passion of Perpetua, 1890) ; see also Analecta Bollandiana (1889), viii . 5; H . M . Gwatkin, Selections from Early Christian Writers, where, as in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ix . 285, there is an English translation . U . A .