ABERCIUS, Saint. — Bishop of Hieropolis (or Geropolis) in Phrygia. Feast day: October 22. The *Life* of Abercius recounts that when a decree was issued by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus ordering sacrifices to be made everywhere, Abercius, warned by a vision, went by night to the temple of Apollo and with a large staff smashed everything within II. As the city was thrown into turmoil by this act, he went to the Forum to preach to the faithful. When a furious pagan mob arrived, he healed several possessed persons in their presence, calming them and even converting many to baptism. His fame spread to neighboring provinces; he restored sight to the blind mother of a leading citizen, Eussenianus, a friend of the emperor, and freed many possessed persons. The demon, seeking revenge, entered the emperor’s own daughter, declaring that she could only be freed by Abercius of Hieropolis. Marcus Aurelius wrote to Eussenianus ordering him to send Abercius, who set sail from Attalia, arrived at Portus Romanus, and presented himself to the empress (Marcus Aurelius being at the front against the barbarians). He had the emperor’s daughter brought to the hippodrome, expelled the demon in a solemn rite, and as a penalty for having made him undertake the journey, ordered the demon to carry on his shoulders a heavy marble altar that stood there and transport it to Hieropolis at the southern gate. He then asked the empress as a favor to have baths built near Hieropolis. Before returning to his homeland, he traveled through Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, benefiting all. He lived several more years and wrote a book. Warned of his approaching death, he prepared his tomb and dictated the epitaph to be inscribed upon it on the very altar he had brought from Rome. When another Abercius was elected to succeed him, he himself consecrated him.
This legend was long considered devoid of authority and entirely fanciful, including the poetic epitaph attributed to the saint. Only Halloix (Illustrium scriptorum ecclesiae orientalis vitae, II, Douai 1630, p. 137) and more learnedly Pitra (Spicilegium Solesmense, III, Paris 1856, p. 352) defended its substantial authenticity. Others, such as Garrucci (La Civ. Catt. [1856, 1], p. 686), saw it as heavily interpolated. But in early 1882 Ramsay discovered near ancient Hieropolis (just south of Sinnada, capital of Second Phrygia or Salutaris) a fine metrical inscription by one Alexander, dated 216, in which De Rossi and Duchesne immediately recognized notable parallels with Abercius’s epitaph. The following year, Ramsay found in the same place, built into the walls of ancient baths, two significant fragments of the original epitaph of Abercius, agreeing almost verbatim with the text of the legend. Their character, older than Alexander’s stele, must date at least to the late 2nd century, matching the era suggested by the legend, which correctly places Abercius not in the more famous Hieropolis ad Lycum in First Phrygia or Pacatiana but in a city near Sinnada. Thus the value of the *Life* cannot be denied, since it is based on the epitaph and likely preserves several other notable details about the saint.
We present the text of the inscription (22 hexameters), critically reconstructed, with parts drawn from Alexander’s stele in capitals and passages attested only by the *Life* in brackets:
ἘΚΛΕΚΤΗΣ ΠΟ[Λ]ΕΩΣ Ο ΠΟΛΕΙΤ[ΗΣ] ΤΟΥΤ' ἘΠΟΙΗΣ[Α
ΖΩΝ ΙΝ'ΕΧΩ ΦΑΝΕΡΩ[Σ] ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ ἘΝΘΑ ΘΕΣΙΝ
ΟΥΝΟΜ' [Ἀβέρκιος ὤν ὁ] ΜΑΘΗΤΗΣ ΠΟΙΜΕΝΟΣ ἉΓΝΟΥ
[ὃς βόσκει προβάτων ἀγέλας ὄρεσιν πεδίοις τε,
ὀφθαλμοὺς δ' ἔχει μεγάλους πάντῃ καθορῶντας.
οὗτος γάρ μ'ἐδίδαξε... γράμματα πιστά·]
ΕΙΣ ΡΩΜΗ[Ν ὃς ἔπεμψεν] ἘΜΕΝ ΒΑΣΙΛ[ΕΙ' ἈΝΑΘΡΗΣΑΙ]
ΚΑΙ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΣΣ[ΑΝ ἸΔΕΙΝ ΧΡΥΣΟ]ΣΤΟΛΟΝ ΧΡΥ[ΣΟΠΕΔΙΛΟΝ·]
λαὸν δ'εἶδον ἐκεῖ λαμπρὰν σφραγεῖδαν ἔχοντα.
καὶ Συρίης πεδίον εἶδα καὶ ἄστεα πάντα, Νισῖβιν
Εὐφράτην διαβάς· πάντῃ δ'ἔσχον συνομηγύρεις
Παῦλον ἔχων ἐπ...· πίστις πάντῃ δὲ προῆγε
καὶ παρέθηκε τροφὴν πάντῃ ἰχθὺν ἀπὸ πηγῆς
παμμεγέθη, καθαρόν, ὃν ἐδράξατο παρθένος ἁγνή
καὶ τοῦτον ἐπέδωκε φίλοις ἐσθεῖν διὰ παντός,
οἶνον χρηστὸν ἔχουσα κέρασμα διδοῦσα μετ' ἄρτου.
ταῦτα, παρεστὼς εἶπον Ἀβέρκιος ὧδε γραφῆναι·
ἑβδομηκοστὸν ἔτος καὶ δεύτερον ἦγον ἀληθῶς.
ταῦθ' ὁ νοῶν εὔξαιτο ὑπὲρ Ἀβερκίου πᾶς ὁ συνῳδός,
ΟΥ ΜΕΝΤΟΙ ΤΥΜΒΩ ΤΙΣ ΕΜΩ ΕΤΕΡΟΝ ΤΙΝΑ ΘΗΣΕΙ
ΕΙ Δ'ΟΥΝ ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ ΤΑΜΕΙΩ ΘΗΣΕΙ ΔΙΣΧΕΙΛΙΑ ΧΡΥΣΑ
ΚΑΙ ΧΡΙΣΤΗ ΠΑΤΡΙΔ' ΙΕΡΟΠΟΛΕΙ ΧΕΙΛΙΑ ΧΡΥΣΑ.
Here is the translation:
“I, a citizen of an elect city, have made this monument for myself while alive, so that I may have here a noble resting place for my body. I am called Abercius, disciple of the pure shepherd who tends his flocks on mountains and plains, who has great eyes that look out everywhere. He taught me faithful writings... He sent me to Rome to behold the palace and see the queen in golden raiment and golden sandals. There I saw a people bearing a radiant seal. I also saw the plain and all the cities of Syria, and crossing the Euphrates, Nisibis. Everywhere I found companions... having Paul with me... and faith guided me everywhere. He provided as food for me everywhere a great, pure fish from a spring, which the chaste virgin took and gave to friends to eat always, having good wine which she mixed with water along with bread. These things I, Abercius, had written here in my presence. I was truly seventy-two years old. Whoever understands this and feels as I do, let him pray for Abercius. But let no one place another in my tomb; otherwise, he shall pay two thousand gold pieces to the treasury of the Romans and one thousand to my beloved homeland, Hieropolis.”
The Catholic significance of this monument was too great and evident for rationalist scholars, once its authenticity was confirmed, not to begin doubting its Christian character. Thus in 1894 Ficker attempted to prove that Abercius was a priest of Cybele, in 1895 Harnack saw him as a pagan Gnostic, and the following year Dieterich as a priest of Attis. But these and similar attempts failed because every singular phrase in the epitaph is easily and naturally explained in the language of ancient Christian symbolism, as Dölger especially demonstrated, while outside that framework only strained and contradictory interpretations remain. It is often suggested that our Abercius is identical with Avircius Marcellus, to whom an anti-Montanist treatise was addressed (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, V, 16, 3), but this is incorrect. Even if we suppose the identification of Ἀοίρκιος with Ἀβέρκιος, the latter would not have omitted the most important part of the name Marcellus in the epitaph, at a time when the *nomen* was often omitted but never the *cognomen*. Since the author of the *Life* was certainly in Hieropolis (and thus could not have confused it with distant Hieropolis ad Lycum) and copied the inscription there, had he found the full name—at least in the prose section that likely followed the poetic part—he would not have omitted II. Perhaps in that prose section Abercius was explicitly called bishop, as the *Life* presents him; the poetic epitaph does not make this clear.
In this context, the "chosen city" must be Hieropolis and not the mystical heavenly city; Hieropolis is so called by A. [Abercius], by another inscription, and by some coins, just as various other cities of the same name are called now Hieropolis and now Hierapoli. The "shepherd who feeds flocks on mountains and plains" is Jesus, who has faithful everywhere; "the palace and the queen of Rome" are the Church in its splendid seat, but the author of the legend (like certain moderns) understood it as the empress in her palace in the absence of the emperor; the "splendid seal" is the Christian character; the "companion of travel Paul" alludes presumably to the Letters of the Apostle, as faith is its guide; the "great fish etc." is evidently Jesus, the Eucharistic food (ΙΧΘΥΣ, v.); the "chaste virgin" is the Church, which daily administers the Eucharist to us (and note the abundant use of water that was then made of it).
This, as De Rossi has said, is the queen of Christian inscriptions, the most ancient certainly datable, the first Eucharistic monument to reach us on stone and one of the earliest of the disciplina arcani, a worthy forerunner of the flourishing Phrygian Christian epigraphy of the 3rd and 4th centuries. It deserves to be compared especially with the epitaph of Pettorius (v.) of Autun. - See Plate V. BIBLICA.: The legend, to be referred to the 4th century, has come down to us in two recensions, one from Metaphrastes and the other, better and more complete, represented by the Paris codex gr. 1540; excellent edition by Th. Nissen, S. Abercii vita, Leipzig 1912. The two fragments of the epitaph were presented to Leo XIII in 1892 for his jubilee, the lower one by Ramsay and the upper one by the Sultan; they are now in the Museo sacro Lateranense (excellent photograph from a cast in Römische Quartalschr., 8 [1894], pl. VI, less accurate in DACL, I, Paris 1907, col. 72; among other editors it is retouched or taken from the above); the entire stele, in the form of a funerary altar, was entirely similar to that of Alexander (photo in Mélanges de l'École française de Rome [1885, fasc. 1]) and written on a single face, inside and outside the central frame. A. Rocchi, in Dissert. Pontif. Accad. di arch., 9 (1907), p. 243, gives an extensive history of studies. For the text see especially W. Lüdtke and Th. Nissen, Die Grabschrift des Aberkios, ihre Überlieferung und ihr Text, Leipzig 1910; for its Christian character: G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae, II, Rome 1888, p. XII ff.; cf. G. Wilpert, Fractio panis, Freiburg in Br. 1895, pp. 103-28 and pl. VII; J. Dölger, ΙΧΘΥΣ, I, Rome 1910, pp. 8, 87, 134, and spec. II, Münster 1922, pp. 454-507; A. Abel, Étude sur l'inscription d'Abercius, in Byzantion, 3 (1926), pp. 321-411. In general J. Quasten in the Florilegium Patristicum of Bonn, fasc. VII, part 1, Bonn 1935, p. 21, and H. Strathmann-Th. Klauser, in Reallex. für Antike u. Christentum, I, Leipzig 1940, col. 12; A. Ferrua, Nuove osservazioni sull'epitaffio di Abercio, in Rivista di archeologia cristiana, 20 (1943), pp. 279-305; id., Della patria e del nome di s. A., in La Civiltà Cattolica (1943, IV), pp. 39-45.