Lucian of Antioch, Saint

LUCIAN OF ANTIOCH, Saint. - Priest of the Church of Antioch, killed out of hatred of the faith at Nicomedia on 7 January 312.

The sources on him are copious, but not all of them pure, nor always in agreement. They do agree, however, in recognizing in L. vast learning, great zeal for the study of the Scriptures, and long years of teaching, which attracted to him many devoted pupils from all the East; from his school came illustrious bishops of the principal sees of Asia. From it too came what was the most enduring work of L. and his principal service to the Church, still appreciated today by scholars: a special recension of the Greek Bible, of both the Old and the New Testament, which bears the name of L. among the ancients and the moderns.

For the Old Testament, whether L. knew Hebrew, as the sources affirm, or availed himself of the help of others, it is certain that in that recension the Greek version of the Sacred Books was corrected against a Hebrew text often different, or differently understood, from that of the rabbinic tradition, and several times evidently better. Hence the great value of the Lucianic recension of the Bible, especially in the historical books of the Old Testament; but one must not, with many moderns, exaggerate by accepting, without much caution, the readings peculiar to L. They are preserved in a relatively small number of manuscripts, whose provenance, by their textual character, is securely guaranteed by their conformity with the commentaries or the citations of the Fathers of the Antiochene Church, such as Diodore of Tarsus, St. John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret.

For the New Testament things stand somewhat differently. The ancient testimonies to a recension elaborated by L. are not so numerous and indisputable. The great majority of the manuscripts that have survived has handed down a text which, in opposition to several other branches of the tradition, shows evident, especially in the Gospels, the literary characteristics of the Lucianic recension of the Old Testament. It is precisely the text that is found in the writers of the Antiochene Church. It enjoyed the widest diffusion in manuscripts and in printed editions down to the 19th century. It is not certain that L. left original writings. St. Jerome (De viris illustribus, 77) mentions, but with a prudent "feruntur", certain short works on the faith and brief letters to various persons. Of a letter of L. from Nicomedia to the Antiochenes the Chronicon Paschale (PG 92, 689) has preserved a few lines.

With the little treatises on the faith there may be some connection with the Symbol of the Antiochene Council at the Encenia (PG 26, 721-24; PL 10, 502-504), presented precisely as by L., and the brief apologetic discourse which Rufinus inserts into the account of the trial and martyrdom of L., in Eusebius' Church History (CB, 9, II, pp. 813-815).

Some cloud darkens the person and the doctrine of L. It is certain that the first champions of Arianism boasted of being his pupils. It is not equally certain that L. took the side of the heretic Paul of Samosata, and that under the three immediate successors of the latter in the see of Antioch he was excluded from Catholic communion, which is what Alexander of Alexandria asserts of a Lucian in Theodoret, Church History 1, 4 (PG 82, 901). If there was error, it was repaired by the remaining activity of L. and washed away by his glorious martyrdom. The Greek Church honours him as a martyr (anciently on 7 January, for centuries on 16 October) and as such he is also entered in the Roman Martyrology on 7 January; St. John Chrysostom wove a splendid eulogy of him (PG 50, 519-526).

Alberto Vaccari