The circus route and the profaned Eucharist

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Novatian is still attacking the circus games, now describing their cruelty and then the shameful route a Christian takes to reach them.

Why should I go on at length describing the monstrous kinds of sacrifices that take place in the games? Sometimes a human being even becomes the sacrificial victim through the brigandage of a priest, when blood still warm from the throat is caught in a foaming dish and, while it still steams, is thrown as if into the face of a thirsty idol and cruelly offered as a drink. And amid the pleasures of the spectators, someone's death is dispensed, so that through a bloody spectacle people learn to be savage—as if a person's private rage were not enough unless he also learns it in public. For the punishment of a human being, a raging wild beast is fed as a luxury, so that under the spectators' eyes it may rage more cruelly. The trainer schools the beast, which perhaps would have been less mad if a crueler master had not taught it to be savage.

So, to say nothing of all that idolatry proves, how vain these things are in themselves. Contests, quarrels over colors, rivalries over chariots, partisanship over honors—rejoicing that one horse was faster, grieving that another was slower, counting the years of the animal, knowing the consuls under which it raced, learning the ages, designating the lineage, recalling the grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers themselves. How utterly idle is this business—no, how shamefully disgraceful! Ask this man, I say, who from memory counts the whole offspring of the horse family and recites this lineage at great speed without stumbling, ask him about the parents of Christ, and he does not know—or he is more unfortunate if he does know. And if I ask him again by what route he arrived at that public show, he will confess: through the brothel, past the naked bodies of prostitutes, through slippery lust, through public disgrace, through common wantonness, through the shared insult of everyone. I will not charge him with what he perhaps did, but he certainly saw what should not have been done, and he led his eyes to the spectacle of idolatry through lust. He dared to lead the holy thing with him into the brothel—if he could have, this unfaithful man, hurrying to the public show after being dismissed from the Lord's house and still carrying with him, as is customary, the Eucharist, carried around the holy body of Christ among the obscene bodies of prostitutes, deserving more condemnation from the journey than from the pleasure of the show.

Latin

Plura prosequi quid est necesse uel sacrifioioram in ludis genera monstruosa describere, inter quae nonnumquam et homo fit hostia latrocinio sacerdotis, dum cruor etiam de iugalo calidus exceptus spumanti patera, dum adhuc feruet, et quasi sitienti idolo in faciem iactatus crudeliter propinatur, et inter uoluptates spectantium quorundam mors erogatur, ut per cruentum spectaculum saeuire discatur, quasi parum sit homini priuata sua rabies, nisi illam et publice discat. in poenam hominis fera rabida nutritur in deliciis, ut sub spectantium oculis crudelius insaniat. erudit artifex belluam, quae dementior fortasse fuisset, si non illam magister crudelior saeuire docuisset. ergo ut taceam quicquid latius idololatria probat, quam uana sunt ipsa. certamina, lites in coloribus, contentiones in curribus, fauores in honoribus, gaudere quod equus uelocior fuerit,. maerere quod pigrior, annos pecoris computare, consules nosse, aetates discere, prosapiam designare, auos ipsos atauosque memorare. quam hoc totum otiosum negotium, immo quam turpiter ignominiosum? hunc, inquam, memoriter totam equini generis sobolem computantem et sine offensa hunc locum magna uelocitate referentem, parentes Christi si perroges, nescit, aut infelicior si scit. quem si rursus perrogem quo ad illud spectaculum itinere peruenerit, confitebitur per lupanarium, per prostitutarum nuda corpora, per lubricam libidinem, per dedecus publicum, per uulgarem lasciuiam, per communem omnium contumeliam. cui ut non obiciam quod fortasse commisit, uidit tamen quod committendum non fuit et oculos ad idololatriae spectaculum per libibinem duxit: ausus secum sanctum in lupanar ducere, si potuisset, qui festinans ad spectaculum dimissus e dominico et adhuc gerens secum ut assolet eucharistiam inter corpora obscoena meretricum Christi sanctum corpus infidelis iste circumtulit plus damnationis meritus de itinere quam de spectaculi uoluptate.

About this text

Novatian warns Christians who quote Scripture to defend going to the public games and shows.

Novatian (fl. c. 250) was a Roman presbyter and Christian teacher who wrote this treatise to the faithful, whom he addresses as brothers. He composed it because some Christians were defending attendance at public spectacles by appealing to Scripture, and he feared that wounds poorly bound might break open again. His aim was to admonish those already instructed rather than to teach them anew.

The occasion is a dispute within the Christian community. Some believers argued that Scripture does not forbid the circus, theater, and athletic contests, and they cited examples such as Elijah, David, and an unnamed apostle whose athletic imagery matches Paul's epistles. Novatian quotes these opponents directly and refutes their appeals, showing that the biblical examples were written to stir virtue, not to permit spectacles. He also names Romulus, who first consecrated circus games to the god Consus, and Ceres and Liber, to whom stage plays were dedicated.

A reader should know that public shows means the circus games, stage plays, and athletic contests of the Roman world, all of which Novatian traces to idolatry and the devil. He argues that even apart from idolatry these shows are marked by vanity and immodesty, and that Christians have better spectacles in God's creation and in Scripture. The treatise cites Old Testament figures such as Elijah, David, and Daniel without formal book citations, and it alludes to the apostle's athletic imagery in the epistles. The term Eucharist refers to the consecrated body of Christ, which in Novatian's time a believer might carry home from church.

New English from the Latin base text; no published English used as wording.

Printed text used

Translated from CSEL 3.3 (1871) (Latin)

This work has passed this project's source check. This is an AI-assisted study translation. Source fidelity and completeness have not been independently certified. Open Latin on each section (or the Latin source witness link) for the source text. This is not a complete critical edition.