Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation by HELEN RHEE

Author:HELEN RHEE
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Ethics, Christian Church, Christian Theology, History
ISBN: 9780801048241
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 2012-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

As one can see, like other forms of hospitality, caretaking of the confessors operated both individually (informally) and corporately (formally). According to Eusebius, Origen, who himself was imprisoned and tortured during the Decian persecution and died shortly after his release from the effects of the torture, courageously visited incarcerated confessors and accompanied martyrs to their final sentence in his youth (HE 6.3.4; 39.5). Tertullian, in his exhortation to the martyrs, also writes how individual (lay) Christians ministered to them out of their own private means (Mart. 1.1; 2.7). In his direct letter to the confessors from his hideout, Cyprian informs them he is sending money (250 sesterces) to them from his private fund (in addition to the money from the common fund) and expresses his delight in hearing how individual lay Christians in his church vie with one another to alleviate the confessors’ hardships with their own financial resources (Ep. 13.7). When clergy was involved in visitations, as some of these martyr acts and the letters of Ignatius and Cyprian testify (see below), the common fund was most likely employed by the clergy so that the benefits were offered in the name of the community (under the direction of the bishop) rather than by individual patrons or givers.74 The care of the Christians in the mines that was mentioned in Cyprian’s letters was done by both the private fund (that of Quirinus) and the common fund, even as Cyprian was in exile. However, though he repeatedly advised his clergy to devote themselves to supplying the confessors with “whatever is necessary” in terms of food and clothing (Ep. 14.2.2; cf. Epp. 5.1.2; 12.1.1; 13.7), because the support came from the common treasury, Cyprian specified the conditions for those confessors on the church roll as in the case of the poor: only those who comply with the moral instruction and discipline of the church and conduct themselves in humility and peace, i.e., those confessors who would acknowledge Cyprian’s authority and not join the laxist party (Ep. 14.2.2–3.2). The four Alexandrian presbyters who secretly visited fellow Christians, and the deacon Eusebius who served the imprisoned confessors “with all energy” during the Valerian persecution (257–60 CE; mentioned in bishop Dionysius’s letter preserved by [a different] Eusebius), probably also ministered out of the community fund (HE 7.11.24). Going back to Lucian’s account, not just the representatives from the Asiatic cities, but “the aged widows, orphan children, and other church officials” who gathered at the prison to look after Peregrinus also drew on the common chest. The widows and orphans themselves were in all likelihood supported by the common fund, and the church officials (clergy) could actually sleep with Perigrinus inside the prison, having bribed the prison guards.

74. Burns, Cyprian the Bishop, 30; see Justin, 1 Apol. 67.6; Tertullian, Apol. 39.6; Lucian, Mort. Per. 12–13; Cyprian, Epp. 5.1.2; 12.1.1; 13.7; 14.2.2. Bribing the prison guards, which must have cost a certain amount, features frequently enough in the Christian texts.75 The impressive visiting privileges and hospitality Ignatius

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