[Footnote 116: "Inventio Corporis S. Stephani, Visio S. Luciani," viii. te ix.]
The same tradition has taken a pleasure in surrounding the young neophyte with every gift and accomplishment that could make him a most precious victim. The memory which the fathers have preserved of Stephen is that of a youth of rare beauty, in the flower of his age, endowed with wonderful eloquence, and with a candor of soul yet more charming.
"He was a virgin," St. Augustine says of him, "and this purity of heart reflecting upon his features imparted to his face an angelic expression." St. John Damascene speaks in the same strain of that excellent nature which "made the light of grace shine with more brilliant lustre." Such souls are very near to Christianity. Stephen had become a Christian. St. Epiphanius affirms that he was such during the life of Jesus Christ, and that he was one of the seventy-two disciples. [Footnote 117] St. Augustine doubts of it. [Footnote 118]
[Footnote 117: "Haer." 21.]
[Footnote 118: Sermo xciv. "De Diversis.">[
What we are informed of in the Book of the Acts concerning this point is, that moved by "a murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews for that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration," the apostles caused seven men of that nation to be chosen, whom they "appointed over that business." The first named (and perhaps the most preëminent) among them was Stephen, characterized by the inspired historian as "a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost."
This conversion raised storms in the bosom of the synagogue; and as St. Paul, according to his own account, occupied a preëminent rank among the young men of that time, it was easy for him no doubt to breathe his own burning flame into them.
Besides, everything announced a violent crisis, and the whole city experienced that agitation and anxiety which, in troubled times, precede and portend a near commotion and a desperate struggle. As the disciples had not yet been outlawed, as they did not even have any peculiar name which distinguished them from the rest of the people, and their religious belief enjoyed as yet its freedom, they joined everywhere the Jewish assemblies, instilled there their doctrine, taught even in the temple, where they went to pray like the rest. But a deep-rooted dissension, pregnant with tempests, was growing in the heart of every synagogue. These were most numerous at Jerusalem, as it is said that well-nigh five hundred different ones were there in existence, each people possessing their own, about in the same manner as now in the city of Rome every Catholic nation possesses her proper church, for her own use, and in her own name. The synagogue of the Cilicians, is expressly mentioned in the holy Scripture and signalized as one of the most disturbed, and most opposed to the new sect. [Footnote 119] Interpreters are of opinion that it was there Saul and the deacon Stephen met together in the midst of other Asiatic Jews, their countrymen, [{540}] hot-headed and subtle, as are all of that country. [Footnote 120] They were of the same age, according to computations made for the purpose, and of equal learning; but Stephen's eloquence had no rival! It was, the Acts say, something at once sweet and powerful, that attracted by its grace, and bore away the soul by its force. One felt in it a higher spirit, it is said, and it was in vain that disputants from all the synagogues arose against Christ and his faith; none could resist that word, "full of wisdom and of the Holy Ghost." Some Greek copies add that he "reprehended the Jews with such an assurance that it was impossible not to see the truths which he announced."
[Footnote 119: Act. vi. 9]
[Footnote 120: Dom Calmet, "Comm. sur les Actes," vi. 9.]