Commentaria in II Machabaeorum
Josephus adds, in the book On the Maccabees, chapter 5, that Antiochus persuaded Eleazar by various reasons to eat swine’s flesh, and first by this, that God would give him pardon, because he would have eaten the swine’s flesh not willingly but as compelled; and that Eleazar answered the king: “We, Antiochus, who are persuaded that we must live by the divine law, think there is no necessity more violent for us than to obey our law; whence it comes that we judge it must in no way be violated.” He adds the reason: “For it teaches us temperance, so that we command all pleasures and desires, and exercise fortitude so that we bear all labours willingly. It also teaches justice, so that we magnificently venerate him who alone is God.” And a little after: “But I shall not allow you thus to mock me; nor shall I violate the sacred oath of our forefathers about keeping the law, not even if you put out my eyes and roast my entrails. I am not so old and effeminate that reason does not flourish in me through piety. Prepare your wheels, and blow the fire more vehemently: I do not so pity my old age as to violate for its sake the law of my country. I shall not lie to you, O law my teacher; nor shall I forswear you, dear temperance; nor dishonour you, reason studious of wisdom; nor deny you, venerable priesthood, and knowledge of the laws: my forefathers [shall have me] chaste [chaste]; I shall not fear that deadly violence of yours.” Then he adds in chapter 6: “Eleazar having spoken thus against the exhortation of the tyrant, the guards present cruelly drag him to the torments, and first, stripping him, holding his arms on either side, they beat him with whips, the herald meanwhile crying out that he should obey the king’s commands. But that high-minded Eleazar, as though he were tortured in a dream, was moved not at all; but with fixed eyes that old man looked up to heaven, while meanwhile his flesh was torn by the blows, and his sides wounded with the flowing blood. And when, the body not bearing the pains, he had fallen to the ground, he yet kept his reason upright and unmoved. Here a cruel guard leaps on the flank of him as he lay, and kicks him with his feet to make him rise. But he bore the pains, and despising that life endured the torture, and the old man overcame his tormentors, so that even they marvelled at the excellence of his spirit.” Josephus adds here more than Scripture has, for which therefore the credit rests with him. Alluding to the words of Josephus, St. Ambrose, Book II De Jacob, chapter 11, asserts that Eleazar said: “We are not led by intention, but held by reverence for the law, which commands abstinence from swine’s flesh. But if you think it a light thing to eat swine’s flesh, he who has despised the law in the least things, how will he keep it in the great? Our abstinence is a discipline of chastity. I am not so old that the strength of my mind does not grow young. Old age ought to be a harbour, not the wreck of the former life. I shall not deny thee, law of my country; I shall not forswear you, holy institutions of the forefathers; I shall not disgrace you, priestly fillets; I shall not defile thee, grey hair, with the dust of perfidy.” So he would not even feign, when other meats were offered; and thus, says Ambrose, “dying under torments, he became to the rest a school of perseverance, who had been chosen as an example of weakness.”
23. SAYING, THAT HE WOULD RATHER BE SENT INTO THE OTHER WORLD,—that is, that he would rather die and be sent into the limbo of the fathers than eat swine’s flesh against the law. The Carthusians imitate Eleazar, who constantly refuse flesh, though prescribed by a physician as necessary for the life of the sick, and prefer to die that they may keep their vow of not eating flesh unimpaired and inviolate. For it is lawful to put life after religion and vow: as St. Casimir, when ill, preferred to die that he might keep the vow of virginity, when physicians asserted that he could not be cured of the disease from which he suffered unless he married; to all these he made this one answer: “I choose to die a virgin,” namely: “May I live and die, live with the Virgin Jesus, for love of whom I gladly choose to die a virgin.”
These are the heroic acts of heroes of chastity, temperance and fortitude.
26. FOR THOUGH, FOR THE PRESENT TIME, I SHOULD BE DELIVERED FROM THE PUNISHMENTS OF MEN, YET SHOULD I NOT ESCAPE THE HAND (the sharpest vengeance) OF THE ALMIGHTY NEITHER ALIVE NOR DEAD.—For Eleazar would have sinned mortally against God if he had eaten swine’s flesh at the command of Antiochus; because he commanded it to be eaten in contempt of the law and of God, that by this as by a sign he might testify that he apostatized from the law and God to Antiochus and his gods.
28. HE WAS CARRIED (in Greek to the tympanum, of which at verse 19) TO EXECUTION.—Josephus adds, Book On the Maccabees, chapter 6: “Seeing this his magnanimity, they who were not moved even by their own pity bring him to the fire, and, subjecting him to dire instruments, burn him, and pour foul odours into his nostrils. He, now scorched to the bones, and about to yield up his soul, with his eyes lifted to God said: Thou knowest, O God, that when I might have escaped, I die by the torments of fire for the law. Wherefore be propitious to thy nation, content with my punishment for them. Make my blood an expiation for them, and take my life for theirs. Having said this, the holy man died nobly.” So Josephus: which do not agree so well with the tympanum, unless we say that the guilty on the tympanum were wont to be tortured not only with clubs, but also with fires, and any punishment, which it is clear is true from authors and the acts of the martyrs. Whence Lipsius, Book De cruciatu: “The tympanum,” he says, “comprehends all these kinds of torments.”
30. I SUFFER GRIEVOUS PAINS IN BODY: BUT IN SOUL AM WELL CONTENT TO SUFFER THESE THINGS BECAUSE I FEAR THEE.—Illustrious and glorious, therefore, was this martyrdom of Eleazar, who as leader went before the seven brothers and the rest to the same. Wherefore he is called by Nazianzen “the first-fruits of the Martyrs of the Old Testament,” as Stephen of the New. For granted that before Eleazar Abel, Isaias, Zacharias, Jeremias and the other prophets suffered martyrdom; yet Eleazar was the first who expressly, for the true faith and religion towards God, publicly against Antiochus who wished to subvert it, underwent the solemn contest of martyrdom.
Hear Nazianzen: “This Eleazar, the first-fruits of those who suffered before Christ, as Stephen of those who suffered after Christ, a priest and a man of great age, grey both in hair and in prudence, formerly offering sacrifices and prayers for the people, now offering himself also to God, the most perfect victim, and expiator of the whole people, an auspicious prelude of the contest, an exhortation both speaking and silent: and offering besides seven sons, the fruit of his teaching, a living victim, holy, pleasing to God, more illustrious and purer than every legal sacrifice. For it is most equitable and just to ascribe the virtues of the sons to the parents.” Hear also the praises which Josephus deservedly gives Eleazar, Book On the Maccabees, chapter 6: “O priest worthy of the priesthood! You have not polluted those sacred teeth, nor contaminated by the eating of unclean things the belly, the guest of religion. O fellow-singer of the law, and zealous of the divine word! Such ought those to be who perform the sacred ministry of the law with their own blood, and resist the pains of death with noble sweat. You, father, by your patience gloriously confirmed the goodness of our laws, and established holiness by the weight of your words, and by your deeds won credit for the words of divine discipline. O old man more vehement than torture, and aged man keener than fire, and Eleazar greater than the passions! O happy old age, which a faithful seal of death has completed!”