Commentaria in II Machabaeorum
WITH WHIPS AND SCOURGES (in Greek neurais, that is sinews of bulls) TORMENTED—and scourged.
2. BUT ONE OF THEM, WHO WAS THE ELDEST (by name Maccabeus, as I said), SAID THUS: WHAT WOULDST THOU ASK OR LEARN OF US? (see here the courage of Maccabeus, who addresses the king as a boy and pupil) WE ARE READY TO DIE RATHER THAN TO TRANSGRESS THE LAWS OF GOD RECEIVED FROM OUR FATHERS.—He was the eldest and firstborn; whence he alone answers for all: for his mouth and sense was the mouth and sense of the rest, who, strengthened in the faith, desired death and martyrdom for it. Josephus, in the book On the Maccabees, chapter 8, adds that Antiochus exhorted these seven brothers with many words and reasons to eat swine’s flesh, and threatened every torture if they did not obey him; and therefore showed them the instruments of all the torments which he had prepared to torture them, namely cords, wheels, racks, catapults, cauldrons, pans, iron fingers and hands, wedges, fires, etc., and added: “Fear, young men, and the Deity which you venerate will pardon you offending under force”; presently all with one mind and voice answered: “We are ready to die rather than to violate the precepts of our fathers. You frighten us by threatening us with death through torments; as though you had not learned a little before what this is from Eleazar. But if old Hebrews retained piety even in torments, we youths shall die more justly, despising the violence of your torments, which our teacher also overcame. Therefore try, tyrant, whether you can kill our souls also fighting for piety. Do not think you harm us by torturing; for by bearing evils patiently we shall obtain the rewards of virtue. But you for our wicked slaughter shall be afflicted by divine vengeance with eternal torment.”
3. THEN THE KING BEING ANGRY, COMMANDED PANS AND CALDRONS TO BE MADE HOT.—They were full, says Theophilus of Alexandria, Paschal Letter 3, of boiling oil, pans, and for frying the bodies of the saints they sounded with incredible terror; and yet amid all this, walking in spirit in paradise, they did not feel what they suffered, but what they desired to see. Moreover “the pan,” says Antonio Gallonio, Book De Martyrum cruciatibus, page 221, “was an oval or round dish, large, filled with oil, pitch, resin and sulphur, and applied to the fire; and when it began to boil and seethe, Christians of both sexes who had constantly and bravely persisted in the confession of the faith of Christ were thrown into it, to be roasted and fried like fish cast into boiling oil.” And he adds that martyrs were sometimes fried with the whole body in a large pan, as happened to St. Euphemia, sometimes not with the whole body, but member by member; wherefore it is set down there in writing: “The Proconsul Priscus commanded her, that is the holy virgin, to be divided member by member with saws, and the divided members to be roasted in a pan,” etc. The pan, then, was for frying; the cauldron for boiling the flesh of martyrs. “The cauldron,” says he, “in which martyrs were boiled for ignominy (as certain very ancient relics show, which are sometimes dug out of the ruins of this city), was like the pots we use to cook food, without brass, with two handles, which were partly square, partly round; square from the bottom to the middle, round from the middle to the top.” Into it also they were cast, so pressed by a press and folded that the head was driven to the knees. Of this other kind Josephus is witness, in the place cited, in these words: “A cauldron is set under the hands of the executioners (this is the name of the penal torment), the press being turned, the holy head is driven to the knees, and so, the body reduced downward, the athlete miserably lay hidden in that cauldron we have mentioned.” So he there.
Let the reader observe here that Josephus by “press” (prelum) denotes a certain kind of pressing instrument: for prelum signifies not only that beam by which in the winepress the trodden grape or olive is pressed, but also, as Budaeus testifies, the pressing instrument which clothiers, paper-makers and printers especially use.
4. AND THE SKIN OF HIS HEAD BEING DRAWN OFF, TO CHOP OFF ALSO THE EXTREME PARTS (the extremities of hands and feet) OF HIS HANDS AND FEET.—Josephus adds, chapter 9: “Therefore the guards, by command, brought the eldest of them into the midst, and, tearing his tunic, bound his hands and arms on either side with thongs. Then, after beating him with whips till weary, when they gained nothing, they placed him on a wheel: stretched on which the youth, disjointed, and all his limbs broken, cursed him in this way: Most wicked tyrant, enemy and cruel to heavenly justice, you torture me not for murder or any impious deed, but for the defence of the divine law. And when the guards warned him to promise that he would eat, to be freed from the tortures, he said: Your wheel is not so strong, O unclean ministers, as to choke my reason. Cut my limbs, burn my flesh, rack my joints; for through all the torments I shall persuade you that the Hebrews alone are unconquered for virtue. While he said this they put fire under him, and stretched the wheel more and more, so that it was all stained with blood, and the heap of fire was quenched by drops of gore, and the machine and axles were bathed in flesh. But that high-minded, truly Abrahamic youth, though the framework of his bones was now stripped, did not groan, bore mortality, bore the tortures bravely. Imitate me, brothers, he said, and do not desert the order of my life, nor abjure the alacrity of me your brother. Fight the sacred and noble warfare for piety: whereby it will come about that that just and ancestral providence of our Deity, propitious to the nation, will inflict punishment on the wicked tyrant. Having said this, that holy youth gave up his soul.”
5. THE REST, TOGETHER WITH THE MOTHER, EXHORTED ONE ANOTHER TO DIE MANFULLY,—saying to one another, says Josephus, Book On the Maccabees, chapter 12: “Brothers, brothers, let us die for the law; let us imitate those three youths in Assyria who despised that vast furnace: let us not grow soft in showing piety. Be of good courage, brother, said one. And another: Endure nobly. Another, reminding the rest of the past: Remember, he said, whence you are, and by whose father’s hand Isaac suffered himself to be immolated for piety. Finally all, looking at one another, glad and very alert, said thus: Let us consecrate ourselves with all our heart to God, who gave us souls, and spend our bodies in keeping the law.” And a little after: “For so Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the fathers will receive us dead and praise us. Then each of the remaining brothers, from whom each was torn away, exhorted thus: Do not dishonour us, brother, nor degenerate from our brothers who have already met death.”
6. THE LORD GOD WILL LOOK UPON THE TRUTH, (that is justice, as if to say: God will weigh and furnish what is just, namely that we are innocent and just, and are unjustly tortured by thee, O tyrant, and therefore will crown us with the crown of martyrdom: wherefore) AND WILL TAKE PLEASURE IN US,—that is, will be help and solace to us, will pour in and send upon us his consolations, that we may nobly overcome thee and thy torments, as Moses in the Canticle, Deuteronomy 32:36, sang and promised that God would do.
8. BUT HE ANSWERING IN HIS OWN (that is manly) LANGUAGE,—as if to say he answered, not like a boy with a thin voice, but with a strong, deep voice, as a father and man, of which at verse 21.
SAID (the second, by name Aber): I WILL NOT DO IT, I will not eat swine’s flesh. This is my firm purpose, this my hardened will. Hear Josephus, who adds many things, and adorns the martyr with his eloquence, perhaps also with some additions, as he leads on the guards, the second by age, and, throwing iron hands with sharp nails upon him, they bind him with a catapult (which is a machine). Then, having asked him, before they tortured him, whether he wished to escape, after they heard his noble answer, beginning from the bottom of his feet, they tear all his flesh with those iron hands up to the chin, and, applying leopards, rend the skin of his head. Whom he, bearing the most grievous pain, thus addressed: “Sweet is any kind of death for our ancestral religion. Do you not think, O most cruel tyrant, that you are now tortured more than I, when you see this cruel manner of tyranny overcome by our patience for piety? For I lighten the pain by the pleasures of virtue: you are tormented by the threats of impiety. Nor shall you escape, most impure tyrant, the penalties of divine wrath.” Following Josephus, St. Ambrose, Book On Jacob and the Happy Life, Book II, chapter 11, says: “The second came, and, not unworthy of his brother, fulfilled the duties of his pious confession. And when the skin of his head was drawn off, he answered: You take away the skin, but I have a spiritual helmet, which you cannot take away. And truly no one can take away this helmet: as the Apostle afterwards taught in the Church of the Lord, that the head of the man is Christ, and we are his members. Rightly did the boy by the divine Spirit foresee this Apostolic teaching: Savage beasts stripped the hide of his head, and raged with leopard fierceness. But he failing said: How sweet it is to die for religion! How sweet every bitterness of death for piety! because the reward of these labours remains. Yours, king, are the heavier torments; you are vehemently tortured by your own punishments, because you see them conquered in your power.”