ABERCIUS, Saint. — Bishop of Hieropolis (or Geropolis) in Phrygia. Feast day: October 22. The *Life* of Abercius recounts that, after a decree 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 destroyed everything within II. As the city seethed with indignation, he preached in the Forum to the faithful; when a pagan mob arrived in fury, he healed several possessed persons before their eyes, thus calming them and even converting many to baptism. His fame spread to neighboring provinces; he restored sight to the mother of a leading citizen, Eussenianus, a friend of the emperor, and freed many from demonic possession. The demon, seeking vengeance, entered the emperor’s own daughter, declaring that she could be freed only by Abercius of Hieropolis. Marcus Aurelius wrote to Eussenianus ordering him to send Abercius, who sailed from Attalia, arrived at Portus Romanus, and presented himself to the empress (since Marcus Aurelius was campaigning against the barbarians). He had the emperor’s daughter brought to the hippodrome, expelled the demon solemnly, and as punishment for having made him undertake the journey, commanded 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 build baths near Hieropolis, and before returning home 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 that 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 (south of Sinnada, capital of Phrygia Secunda or Salutaris) a fine metrical inscription by one Alexander, dated 216, in which De Rossi and Duchesne immediately recognized notable parallels to Abercius’s epitaph. The following year Ramsay found, built into the walls of ancient baths at the same site, two significant fragments of Abercius’s original epitaph, 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—consistent with the legend’s implied chronology. The legend does not mistakenly place Abercius in Hieropolis ad Lycum in Phrygia Prima or Pacatiana, since it explicitly refers to a city near Sinnada. Thus the *Life* cannot be denied credibility, as it rests on the epitaph and likely preserves other notable details about the saint.
Below is the text of the inscription (22 hexameters), critically reconstructed, with parts drawn from Alexander’s stele in uppercase and additions 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 a noble resting place for my body here. I am called Abercius, disciple of the pure shepherd who tends flocks of sheep on mountains and plains, who has great eyes that look down from on high upon all. He it was who taught me trustworthy scriptures... He sent me to Rome to gaze upon the palace and see the queen in golden raiment and golden sandals. There I beheld a people bearing a radiant seal. I saw the plains and all the cities of Syria, crossed the Euphrates to Nisibis, and everywhere I found companions... having Paul with me... and faith guided me everywhere. He set before me as food a great, pure fish from a spring, which a chaste virgin took and gave to friends to eat every day, while she offered excellent wine mixed with water along with bread. These things I, Abercius, had written here in my presence. I was truly seventy-two years old. Let whoever understands and feels as I do 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 good homeland, Hieropolis.”
Once the Christian character of this monument was confirmed, rationalist scholars immediately sought to cast doubt upon II. In 1894, Ficker argued that Abercius was a priest of Cybele; in 1895, Harnack saw him as a pagan Gnostic; and in 1896, Dieterich identified him as a priest of Attis. These and similar attempts failed, however, because every striking phrase in the epitaph finds a natural and straightforward explanation within the language of early Christian symbolism—especially as demonstrated by Dölger—whereas alternative interpretations require strained and contradictory hermeneutics.
It is often assumed that our Abercius is the Avircius Marcellus to whom an anti-Montanist treatise was addressed (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, V, 16, 3), but this is unlikely. Even if Ἀοίρκιος could be equated with Ἀβέρκιος, the author of the epitaph would not have omitted the cognomen Marcellus, a practice common in his time for the *nomen* but never for 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 likely appended to the poem—he would not have omitted II. Perhaps this prose section explicitly called Abercius bishop, as the *Life* represents 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 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 see, but the author of the legend (like certain moderns) understood it as the empress in her palace in the emperor’s absence; 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 as 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 earliest certainly datable one, the first Eucharistic monument to reach us on stone and one of the first of the disciplina arcani, a worthy forerunner of the flourishing Phrygian Christian epigraphy of the 3rd and 4th centuries. It deserves to be compared PETTORIO (v.) of Autun. - See Pl. V. BIBLICA.: The legend, to be assigned to the 4th century, has come down to us in two recensions, one in the 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 by Ramsay and the upper by the Sultan; they are now in the Museo sacro of the Lateran (excellent photograph from a cast in Römische Quartalschr., 8 [1894], pl. VI, less exact in DACL, I, Paris 1907, col. 72; among other editors it is retouched or taken from the above); the entire stele, fashioned like a funerary altar, was similar in all respects to that of Alexander (photo in Mélanges de l'École française de Rome [1885, fasc. 1]) and inscribed on one face only, inside and outside the central frame. A. Rocchi, in Dissert. Pontif. Accad. di arch., 9 (1907), p. 243, gives an ample 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 esp. 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.