Abercius of Hierapolis

The two Hierapoleis and the historical Abercius

Phrygia held two cities of nearly the same name, and they are easily confused: the celebrated Hierapolis of the hot springs (modern Pamukkale), and the smaller Hieropolis of Phrygia Salutaris (near modern Koçhisar), of which Abercius was bishop. The Byzantine calendars and the Slavonic books style him "of Hieropolis"; English usage generally writes "Hierapolis," followed here. That a bishop named Abercius (Avircius Marcellus) held this see in the later second century is historically secure: he is very probably the "Avircius Marcellus" at whose urging an anti-Montanist writer took up his pen, quoted by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 5.16), which places him firmly in the Phrygia of the 170s–190s, the very region and moment in which Montanism arose.

The Life

The surviving Life of Abercius is a later hagiographic composition, valuable above all because it transmits the text of his epitaph, but elaborating around it a full legend. It presents Abercius as bishop of a city still overwhelmingly pagan, grieved at the few Christians among the throngs of idolaters. Commanded in a vision by an angel to throw down the idols, he entered the temple of Apollo by night and shattered its images; when the mob gathered to kill him, three demon-possessed youths in the crowd began to shriek, and Abercius cast the demons out before their eyes, so that the astonished people asked to be taught the faith and were baptised. From Hierapolis he went out through the surrounding towns and villages, healing the sick and preaching the Kingdom.

The Life then carries him to Rome. The emperor's household — the accounts name the daughter of Marcus Aurelius (Lucilla), or the empress Faustina — was tormented by a demon that could be expelled by no one but Abercius, who was summoned from Phrygia for the purpose. Having freed the girl, he laid on the demon the task of carrying a great pagan altar-stone from Rome back to Hierapolis, a token of the visit. Returning eastward he made a long missionary circuit through Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia — the Life brings him to Nisibis and the lands of the Euphrates — everywhere confirming the faithful, refuting heretics, and working cures, before coming home to Hierapolis, where he reposed in peace at a great age. For the sweep of these labours the Church names him Equal-to-the-Apostles, and for his healings Wonderworker. The historical residue beneath the legend is exactly what the epitaph independently attests: a Phrygian bishop who had in fact travelled to Rome and to the Euphrates.

The Abercius inscription

The epitaph is the heart of the matter and deserves its own weight. Abercius composed for his own tomb a Greek verse inscription of twenty-two lines, setting it up (as the text says) in his seventy-second year. Its wording was already known from the manuscripts of the Life; then in 1883 the Scottish archaeologist William Ramsay, surveying Phrygia, found first (1882) a later grave-altar that copied its opening formulae, and in 1883, built into the public baths at Kelendres near the site of Hierapolis, two fragments of the original stone itself, carved in the later second century. Their text matched the Life, proving the epitaph genuine. The fragments were presented to Pope Leo XIII and are today in the Vatican Museums (the Museo Pio Cristiano, formerly the Lateran collection).

Its language is deliberately veiled — the "discipline of the secret" that concealed the mysteries from the uninitiated — yet transparent to a believer. Abercius calls himself "a disciple of a pure shepherd" and tells how his faith sent him travelling: to Rome, "to see a queen golden-robed and golden-sandalled" (the Church, or the imperial city as her seat), and eastward across the Euphrates, where he saw Nisibis and all the cities of Syria. Everywhere, he says, he had "Paul as a companion," and everywhere Faith led him and set before him for food "the Fish from the fountain, mighty and pure, whom a spotless Virgin caught, and gave to friends to eat for ever, having good wine and offering it mixed with bread." The imagery is unmistakably sacramental: the Fish is Christ (the acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ — Iēsous Christos Theou Huios Sōtēr, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour"), sprung from the baptismal spring and born of the Virgin; the bread and mingled wine are the Eucharist; the fellowship stretches from Rome to Mesopotamia as one Church. He closes by asking every like-minded believer who understands to pray for him, and — in the ordinary Roman manner — forbids anyone to lay another body in his grave on pain of a fine to the imperial treasury.

For a brief period around 1895 some scholars (notably Albrecht Dieterich and Gerhard Ficker) argued that the inscription was pagan, addressed to Cybele or to the goddess of the mysteries; but the Christian reading defended by Giovanni Battista de Rossi, Louis Duchesne, and Ramsay himself carried the day and is now universal. The stone stands as one of the earliest dated witnesses to the Eucharist, to the baptismal symbol of the Fish, to the virginal birth, and to the felt unity of the Roman and Eastern Churches — "the queen of Christian inscriptions," as de Rossi called it.

Relics

After his repose miracles were reported at his tomb. His relics were later dispersed as the veneration spread: his skull is kept at the Monastery of the Most Pure Theotokos on the island of Andros, and portions of his relics are venerated on Mount Athos (the Monastery of Karakallou) and at Proussos in Evrytania and Phaneromeni on Salamis.