Grant It in My Name

Lucian to Celerinus — my lord, and, if I am worthy to be called it, my colleague in Christ: greetings. I have received your letter, my dearest lord and brother. In it you loaded me with such kind words that the weight of them nearly overwhelmed me with joy. I was overjoyed as I read it, a letter I had longed so long to read, and overjoyed at the great humility that made you remember me at all. You wrote to me: If I may be worthy to be called your brother. And you said that to a man like me, who confessed the name of God with trembling, and before the lower magistrates at that. For you, when you made your confession, by God’s will did not merely frighten the great serpent himself back — the forerunner of Antichrist — you beat him, by that voice of yours and those divine words. From them I know how you love the faith, and how hard you press for Christ’s discipline; and I know, and am glad of it, that you are busy at work in it. [a]

And now, dear friend — a man already to be counted among the martyrs — you have chosen to load me down with this letter of yours, in which you told us about our sisters. I wish it were possible to speak of them without also remembering the great crime that was committed. If it were, we would not think of them with as many tears as we do now.

You should know what has been done on our side. While the blessed martyr Paulus was still alive, he called me over and said to me: Lucian, I say this to you in the presence of Christ: if anyone asks you for peace after I have been called away, grant it in my name. And all of us whom the Lord has seen fit to call away in so great an ordeal have, by our letters and by common agreement, granted peace to everyone. So you can see, brother, that what I have done is part of what Paulus told me to do, and what all of us decided while we were in that ordeal — the ordeal in which the emperor ordered us put to death by hunger and thirst, and we were shut up in two cells so that hunger and thirst would wear us down. And the burning that came of our torture was past anyone’s bearing. But now we have reached the brightness itself.

So, dear brother, greet Numeria and Candida. They are to have peace, by the command of Paulus and of the other martyrs, whose names I add here: Bassus, in the prison of the perjurers; Mappalicus, under torture; Fortunio, in prison; Paulus, after torture; Fortunata, Victorinus, Victor, Herennius, Julia, Martial, and Aristo, who by God’s will were killed in the prison by hunger. In a few days you will hear that I have gone with them. It is now eight days from the day I was shut up again to the day I am writing this letter to you; and for the five days before those eight, I was given a scrap of bread and a measured ration of water. And so, brother, since here too the Lord has begun to give peace to the church itself, I ask — following Paulus’s command and the ruling we drew up, and once the case has been laid before the overseer and the confession made — that peace be given not only to these women, but to all those you know to be very close to our heart.

All my colleagues greet you. Greet for us the Lord’s confessors who are there with you, the ones whose names you mentioned: Saturninus and his companions — he is my colleague too — and Maris, Collecta and Emerita, Calphurnius and Maria, Sabina, Spesina, and the sisters Januaria, Dativa and Donata. We greet Saturus and his household, Bassianus and all the clergy, Uranius, Alexius, Quintianus, Colonica, and everyone whose name I have not written, because I am worn out already; they will have to forgive me. I say a warm farewell to you, and to Alexius, and to Getulicus, and to the money-changers, and to the sisters. My sisters Januaria and Sophia greet you, and I commend them to you.