Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne

1From the servants of Christ sojourning in Vienne and Lyons of Gaul to the brothers and sisters in faith in Asia and Phrygia who share with us the same faith and hope of redemption: peace and grace and glory from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

2We cannot tell with exactness how great the affliction is here, nor how fierce the anger of the pagans is against the saints, nor all that the blessed martyrs endured. No writing could contain it.

For the devil fell upon us with all his strength, already rehearsing his coming, which is to be without fear. He moved through every means, accustoming his own people and training them in advance against the servants of God, so that we were shut out not only from houses and baths and the marketplace, but it was forbidden for any of us to appear before them in any place at all.

3But God's grace took the field against him like an opposing general. It rescued the weak and set firm pillars in his path, men able through endurance to draw the whole attack of the evil one onto themselves. They too closed with him in hand-to-hand combat, bearing every kind of insult and torture. They counted their many pains as small and hastened toward Christ, truly showing that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be set against the glory to come that shall be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).

4First they bravely endured everything the crowd heaped upon them all together in a heap. There were shouts and blows and dragging and tearing and volleys of stones and confinement, and every outrage an enraged multitude inflicts upon enemies in war. Then the chiliarch and the leading authorities of the city brought them up to the marketplace. They were questioned before the whole crowd, and once they had made their profession of faith, they were shut together in prison until the governor arrived.

5When they were brought before the governor, and he turned all his cruelty against us, Vettius Epagathus stepped forward. He was one of the brothers and sisters in faith who had reached the full measure of love for God and for his neighbor, and his life was so exacting that, young as he was, he was ranked equal to the witness of the elder Zacharias. For he had lived blameless in all the commandments and decrees of the Lord (Luke 1:6), tireless in every service to his neighbor, with great zeal for God and fervent in spirit (Romans 12:11).

Being such a man, he could not bear so senseless a trial against us. He burned with anger and asked to be heard himself, pleading for the brothers and sisters in faith that there is nothing godless or impious among us. The people crowding the tribunal shouted him down, for he was a man of standing, and the governor would not accept the just request he had made. The governor asked him only this, whether he too was a Christian, and when Vettius professed the faith in a ringing voice, he too was taken up into the lot of the martyrs. He had stood as advocate for Christians, and he carried the advocate within himself, the spirit of Zacharias, which he showed through the fullness of his love, gladly offering even his own life for the defense of the brothers and sisters in faith. For he was and is a true disciple of Christ, following the Lamb wherever he goes (Revelation 14:4).

6From that point the rest began to stand apart. Those who were open and ready showed themselves as first martyrs, and with complete eagerness they fulfilled the profession of faith of the testimony. Those who were unready and untrained and still weak also came to light, since they could not bear the fear of a great contest, and about ten in number miscarried. They brought us great grief and immeasurable mourning, and they checked the eagerness of the rest who had not yet been arrested, although these last suffered every horror and still stood beside the martyrs and did not leave them. Then we were all deeply afraid because the profession of faith hung in the balance. We did not fear the tortures laid upon us, but we looked toward the end and dreaded lest anyone fall away. Yet day by day those who were worthy were arrested and filled up their number, until all the zealous from the two churches had been gathered in, including those on whom our life here chiefly depended.

Some pagan household slaves of ours were also arrested, for the governor had ordered in public that all of us be hunted down. Through the ambush of Satan they grew frightened at the tortures they saw the saints enduring, and at the urging of the soldiers toward this very thing they falsely accused us of Thyestean dinners and Oedipodean unions, and of deeds which for us it is not lawful even to speak of or to imagine, nor even to believe.

7When those slanders spread, everyone became like beasts against us. Even those who had held back before because of family ties now raged fiercely and gnashed in rage at us. In this, what our Lord had spoken was coming true: "A time will come when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God" (John 16:2).

Then the holy martyrs endured torture beyond all description, since Satan was eagerly striving to draw even one of those blasphemies from their own mouths. The full fury of crowd, governor, and soldiers broke beyond all measure upon Sanctus, the deacon from Vienne, upon Maturus, newly baptized yet a brave contender, and upon Attalus, a man from Pergamum by birth who had always been a pillar and support for the Christians here, and upon Blandina. Through her Christ showed that what seems cheap and ugly and contemptible to people he counts worthy of great glory with God, when love for him is shown in power and does not boast in outward form.

8We were all afraid for her, and so was her fleshly mistress, who was herself also one of the martyrs and a contender in the struggle. Her mistress was in anguish, fearing that weakness of body would keep Blandina from even speaking her profession of faith with boldness. But Blandina was filled with such strength that the men who took turns torturing her in every way from morning until evening wore themselves out and gave up. They admitted themselves that they were beaten and had nothing left they could do to her. They marveled that she still breathed when her whole body was broken open and laid bare, and they declared that one single kind of racking should have been enough to drive the soul from her, let alone such great and so many torments. But the blessed woman was made young again like a noble athlete in her profession of faith, and her recovery and rest and deadening of pain lay in saying, "I am a Christian and nothing base happens among us."

9Sanctus too bore every torture that men can inflict with a nobility far beyond human measure. The lawless men hoped that the long continuance and the greatness of the torture would wring some forbidden word from him. He set such firm endurance in battle array against them that he would tell neither his own name nor his people nor the city he came from, nor whether he was enslaved or free. To every question put to him he answered in the Latin tongue: "I am a Christian." This he professed over and over instead of name and city and birth and everything else, and the pagans heard no other word from him.

A fierce contention of the governor and the torturers rose against him for this, so that when they had nothing left that they could do to him, they finally pressed red-hot bronze plates to the tenderest parts of his body. His flesh burned, but he himself remained unbending and unyielding, solid in his profession of faith, cooled and strengthened by the heavenly spring of the water of life flowing out from the depths of Christ (Revelation 21:6). His poor body stood as a martyr to what had happened, all wound and bruise and drawn together, stripped outwardly of human form, and in it the suffering Christ worked great glory, stripping the devil of his power and showing as a pattern for the rest that nothing is fearful where the love of the Father is, and nothing pains where the glory of Christ is.

10After some days they unlawfully put the martyr on the rack again. They supposed his body was swollen and inflamed, so the same instruments of torture would now get the better of him. He could not even bear the touch of a hand. Or, if he died under the tortures, fear would take hold of the rest. Nothing of that kind happened to him. Beyond all human expectation, his little body rose and stood upright under the tortures that followed, and it recovered its former appearance and the use of its limbs, so that by the grace of Christ the second twisting became for him not torture but healing.

The devil thought he had already swallowed Biblis, one of those who denied the faith, and he wanted to condemn her too through slander. So he had her led away to torture, to force her, fragile and cowed as she already seemed, to say godless things about us. But on the rack she came to herself and woke as if from a deep sleep. The passing punishment reminded her of the eternal torture in Gehenna (Matthew 25:46). So she answered the blasphemers back, saying, "How could people like that eat children, when they are not even allowed to eat the blood of brute beasts?" From that moment she professed herself a Christian and was added to the lot of the martyrs.

11Christ had made the tyrannical tortures powerless through the endurance of the blessed. So the devil devised other contrivances: confinement in prison in darkness and in the harshest quarters, the stretching of the feet in the stocks to the fifth hole, and the remaining abuses that enraged jailers, themselves full of the devil, habitually inflict on prisoners. Most were suffocated in prison, all those whom the Lord willed to depart in this way, and He displayed His glory in them.

Those who had been cruelly tortured, so cruelly that it seemed they could not go on living even with every care, remained in prison. They had no human care, yet the Lord restored them and gave them strength in body and soul, and they urged the rest onward and encouraged them. But those who were young and had only just been arrested, whose bodies had not been hardened beforehand, could not bear the weight of confinement and died inside the prison.

12Blessed Pothinus, who had been entrusted with the bishop's office in Lyons, was over ninety years old and very weak in body. He could scarcely breathe because of his physical illness, but eagerness of spirit gave him strength again because of his urgent desire for witness. He too was dragged to the tribunal, his body broken down by both age and sickness, while his soul was still kept within him so that Christ might triumph through it. Soldiers carried him to the tribunal, with the city authorities and the whole crowd escorting him and raising all kinds of shouts against him as though he himself were Christ. There he bore his good witness.

When the governor asked him who is the God of the Christians, Pothinus said, "If you are worthy, you will know." After that he was dragged without mercy and suffered many kinds of blows. Those standing near abused him in every way with hands and feet, showing no respect for his age, while those farther off hurled at him whatever each had in hand. All of them believed it a grave fault and impiety to fall short in outrage against him, for they thought they were avenging their gods in this way. Still barely breathing, he was thrown into prison and died two days later.

13At this turn a great plan of God came to pass, and the immeasurable mercy of Jesus appeared. Such a thing has seldom happened among our brothers and sisters in faith, yet it fell in no way short of the art of Christ. Those who had denied the faith at the first arrest were shut in with the rest as well and shared in the hardships. Even now their denial did them no good at all. Those who were making profession of faith of what they truly were were shut in as Christians, with no other charge laid against them, while the others were at last held as murderers and as defiled, being tortured twice as severely as the rest.

Those who confessed were lightened by the joy of being martyrs and by hope in the promises and by love toward Christ and by the Spirit of the Father. Those who denied the faith were heavily punished by their own conscience, so that in their walk to trial their faces stood out plainly to everyone else. The one group went forward cheerful, with great glory and grace mingled on their faces, so that even their chains lay upon them like a fitting ornament, like a bride adorned in gold-embroidered robes richly varied with gold (Revelation 21:2), and they breathed out the fragrance of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15), so that some supposed they had been anointed with earthly perfume.

The other group went forward gloomy and downcast and disfigured and full of every shameful mark, and they were reproached even by the pagans as ignoble and cowardly, charged as murderers and stripped of the all-honored and glorious and life-giving name. When the rest saw this, they were strengthened, and whenever any of our people were arrested they confessed without hesitation and gave no room even to a thought prompted by the devil.