when it was scandalous to call one another brothers and sisters

7/31/2019 When It Was Scandalous to Call One Another Brothers and Sisters

1/5


2/5

The building of a Christian identity on the tombstones of the early centuries

When it was scandalous to call

one another brothers and sisters

In the homily delivered on the occasion of the celebration of the dies natalis

of Peter and Paul, Benedict XVIdrawing inspiration from the lived

experience of the two Apostlesrecalled in tones of luminous simplicity the

immanent and transcendent newness implicit in the principle of Christianfraternity. And in this perspective, in a reflection offered in the editorial of

our newspapers June 30-July 1 edition, the image of the universal Church as

the loftiest expression of Christian brotherhood was conceptualized in its full

historical sense.

When we speak of Christian fraternitywhich goes above and beyondkinshipwe express not only an absolute principle, a preferential option, butalso a way of being and of living that has accompanied and characterized the

Christian community from its earliest daysnot only in its principle

propositions, which necessarily emerged in apologetics and polemics, butalso in the concrete history of daily life; and we find consistent, genuine and

unmediated features of this in epigraphic evidence.

This is the context in which persons and situations otherwise unknown

assume their full historical importance; always, of course, within the bounds

of the nature of epigraphic memory, in which an attitude of self-

representation is always at work, one however, thatin terms of historicalreconstructionportrays a collective imagination and hence a case of

consciously shared behavior.

We may therefore reread with profit a basic funerary inscription dating back

to the first two decades of the 3rd century, which is taken from an outdoor

cemetery on the Via Salaria Vetus (located close to the St. Ermetecatacombs) and is currently displayed in the National Roman Museum. It tells

of the young roman slave Marco, who died at the age of 18 years, nine

months, 5 days:Alexander | Augg(ustorum duorum) ser(vus) fecit | se bivo.

Marco filio | dulcisimo caputa|africesi, qui deputa| batur inter bestito|res, quivixit annis | XVIII, mensibu VIIIi | diebu V. peto a bobis, | fratres boni per |

unum deum ne quis | un titelo moles[tet] | pos(t) mor[tem meam](Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, x, 27126).

The dedication and commissioner of the inscription is Alessandrothe father

of the deceaseda servant in the Severan imperial domus (specifically ofSeptimius Severus and Caracalla). The young Marco was seized by death

while he was training for the office ofvestitor(inter bestitores the inscription

reads) in the school of pages destined for the imperial domus located in


3/5

region II (Mount Celio), along the Vicus Capitis Africae (now the Via Capo

dAfrica), hence the caputafricensis quality of the inscription addressed toMarco.

But beyond this information, the interesting aspect that emerges in this

inscription is contained in the last four lines, where the deceased himselfenters the scene, addressing his brothers in the faith, saying in the first

person: "I ask you, good brothers, in the name of the one God, that no one

damage this tomb after my death." If we consider that this inscription was

not "protected" within the enclosure of a private Christian cemeterywithin a

catacomb, for instancebut was found, fully visible, in a "mixed" outdoor

cemetery, where pagans and Christians alike lived together in the sleep ofdeath, the appeal to the fratres boniand the inclusion of the profession of

unum deum acquire, in their complementarity, a most notable relevance.

What emerges here, with the greatest weight of evidence, is a specific

identity traitprecisely that of Christian fraternityand it is displayedunambiguously and in writing for the community of survivors, who were

pagans and Christians, and it is conveyed by a Christian family belonging tothe lowest rung on the roman social ladder: Marco and his father Alessandro

were slaves.

Of a different cultural extraction, and following nearly 50 years after, isanother epigraphic witness, which is presently considered to be the oldest

Latin funeral oration produced by the Christian community in Rome: it

certainly dates back prior to the age of Constantine, as its discovery in one of

the most ancient areas of the cemetery of Priscilla indicates. It is a lengthy

poem in hexameters. Here alsoin the concluding part of the eulogythe

deceased, the 14-year old Agape, called Christi fidelis by her parents Pius

and Eucharis, begins to speak (Inscr. Christ., ix, 25962): Eucharis est mater,Pius et pater [mihi - - -].| Vos precor, o fratres, orare huc quando veni[tis] |

et precibus totis patrem natumque rogatis, |9 sit vestrae mentis Agapes

carae meminisse,| ut deus omnipotens Agapen in saecula servet(Eucharis ismy mother, Pio my father. I ask you, brothers, when you come here to pray

and in all your prayers call upon the Father and the Son, remember your

dear Agape, that Almighty God keep Agape forevermore). The reminder to

the fratres here does not concern the protection of the grave, but reaches

rather to the celebration of Agapes dies natalis (the day of her birth to new

life), when the "brethren" standing before her grave (huc quando venitis)

together will raise a common prayer (precibus totis) in memory of their"sister."

Seemingly rarified in its essential simplicity of expression is another

inscription from the catacomb of Priscilla, dating not later than the mid-thirdcentury, in which the brethren collectively address a final farewell to Leonzio:

"Leonzio, peace from your brothers. Farewell" (Inscr. Christ., ix, 25319).

In third-century Rome, the followers of Jesus did not describe themselves

using what we might call the technical adjective Christianus, which at least in


4/5

the West would slowly begin to spread beginning with Constantine. However,

looking to the essence of an announcement revealed in history, they calledthemselves children of one God and Father, who were equal among

themselves; indeed, like "brothers" and "sisters." Two terms that already in

second century Rome had been severely stigmatized as scandalous and, as

such, had aroused defamatory slander.

The opinion that circulated among the pagans was well known, and was

reported by Minucio Felicewho for some time resided in Romein his

imaginary dialogue Octavius (8,2): "They acknowledge one another with

secret signs and insignia and they love one another with mutual affection

virtually before knowing one another: everywhere there winds its way amongthem a kind of religion of love, and without distinction they call one another

'brothers' and 'sisters.'"

Around a century later, we read a coherent reply to the destructive pagancriticism in a measured page of Lattanzio. Here the ideal of a Christian

society is evoked, in which all the followers of Jesus called one another"brother" and "sister": "No other reason may be attributed to our calling one

another brothers, save that we all consider one other equals (): slaves and

freemen, great and small alike, are all equal among themselves () and

before God we are distinguished only by virtue" (Divinae institutiones, 5,15).

Against the backdrop of this reflectionand quite clearlywe read the

watermark of a secular tradition, which found its milestone in Paul and in

Luke in the Acts of the Apostles.

Marco and Alessandro, Agape, Pio, Eucharis, Leonziothe faithful we have

met in inscriptions recalled abovebelong to the generation that had seenthe birth of the memoria apostolorum along on the Appian Way in 258. Here,

over the course of nearly a half a century, thousands of faithful came to

invokealways togetherPeter and Paul, as the more than six hundredgraffiti that may still be read on the painted walls of the triclia, a walled

courtyard, incontrovertibly indicate.

A meeting-place for a banquet (the refrigerium) in honor of the two Apostles,

there they etched the writtenand therefore consciously indeliblememorial

of a devotional act carried out, and a request for help and protection: Petre

et Paulo petite pro Victor(Peter and Paul, intercede for Victor); Petre etPaule in mente habetote Urbium et Zitum (Peter and Paul, remember Urbio

e Zita); Petre et Paule beati martyres nos conservate in Domino (Peter andPaul, blessed martyrs, keep us in the Lord ) (Inscr. Christ. 12989, 12992,

12996). It is the indisputable sign of the building of an identity, one that inthis case, is entirely roman.

Carlo Carletti

July 12, 2012

[Translation by Diane Montagna]


5/5

when it was scandalous to call one another brothers and sisters

Documents