Year of Christ 275.
Eutychianus not
martyred.
Felix being dead, Eutychianus was chosen in his room in the very Beginning of the Year 275[[490]]. Several Things are said of him, by Anastasius, and other Writers of no Authority; but all I can learn of the Antients concerning him is, that he governed Eight Years, and Eleven Months[[491]]; and consequently died in the Close of the Year 283. He is honoured by the Church of Rome as a Martyr, and said in the Roman Martyrology to have suffered under Numerian; but it is certain that in 283. when Eutychianus died, Numerian was not Emperor, but only Cæsar, and at that very time engaged with his Father Carus in a War with the Persians in the East, where he was assassinated by Aper his Father-in-Law. As for his Brother Carinus, who remained in the West, neither he, nor the two preceding Emperors, Tacitus and Probus, ever gave the least Disturbance to the Christians; so that the Church of Rome must be at the Trouble of finding out a distinct Place in Heaven from that of the Martyrs for Eutychianus, Trophimus, Sabbacius, and the illustrious Senator Dorymedon, who are supposed to have suffered under those Princes.
| Carus, Carinus, Numerian, | CAIUS, Twenty-seventh Bishop of Rome. | Diocletian, Maximian. |
Year of Christ 283.V
As little is said by the Antients of Caius as is said of his Predecessor. A few Days after the Death of Eutychianus, Caius was chosen to succeed him, Carus and Carinus being Consuls[[492]]. |Caius not a Martyr,
tho’ honoured as
a Martyr.| He presided Twelve Years, Four Months, and Seven Days; that is, from the 17th of December 283. to the 22d of April 296. Caius too is counted by the Church of Rome among her Martyrs, upon the Authority of Bede, and of the Acts of St. Susanna, by which that Writer seems to have been misled. In those Acts Caius is said to have suffered with Susanna his Niece, and many others, under Numerian: but that Prince in his Father’s Life-time had no great Power, being only Cæsar, and very young, and was killed on his March out of Persia soon after his Father’s Death; so that he never reigned in the West, and but a very short time in the East. Caius therefore could not suffer under him at Rome, where his elder Brother Carinus governed. But the Vulgar have a particular Veneration for Martyrs, and, what turns to a very good Account, are glad to purchase their Reliques at any rate. |The Church of Rome
why so fond of
Martyrs.| The Church of Rome therefore, to provide herself with great Store of them, has multiplied beyond Belief the Number of her Martyrs; which she could not well do without multiplying at the same time the Number of the Persecutors of the Christian Religion. And hence it is that several Princes, who never molested, nay, who greatly favoured the Christians, have been by the Church of Rome transformed in her Martyrologies and Legends into Persecutors. As for the Acts of the supposed St. Susanna, they are full of Mistakes and Absurdities, and contradict the best Historians of those Times.