Traditional Catholic Prayers: St. John before the Latin Gate

Traditional Catholic Prayers: St. John before the Latin Gate

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume V: May.

The Lives of the Saints. 1866.

May 6

St. John before the Latin Gate

From St. Jerom in Jovin. t. 1, p. 14. Tertullian, Præscr. c. 36. Tillem. t. 1, p. 338, and L’Istoria della Chiesa di S. Giovanni avanti Porta Latina, Scritta da Gio, Mario Crescimbeni. Roma, 1716. 4to.

A.D. 95.

WHEN the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, strangers as yet to the mystery of the cross and the nature of Christ’s kingdom, had, by their mother Salome, 1 besought our Lord to allot them the two first places in his kingdom, (implied by sitting at his right and left-hand,) he asked them whether they were disposed to drink of his cup, or, in other words, to suffer with him, in which case they should not fail to be considered in proportion to their pains and fidelity. The two disciples answered boldly in the affirmative, assuring their divine Master that they were ready to undergo anything for his sake. Our Lord, thereupon, foretold them that their sincerity should be brought to the trial, and that they should both be partakers of his cup of sufferings, and undergo bitter things for the honour and confirmation of the Christian religion. This was literally fulfilled in St. James, on his being put to death for the faith by Herod: and this day’s festival records in part the manner in which it was verified in St. John. It may be said, without any violence to the sense of the words, that this favourite disciple, who so tenderly loved his Master, and was so tenderly beloved by him, drank of his chalice, and experienced a large share of its bitterness, when he assisted at his crucifixion; feeling then in his soul, by grief and compassion, whatever he saw him suffer on the cross. This was further fulfilled after the descent of the Holy Ghost, when he underwent the like imprisonment, scourging, &c. with the other apostles, as is recorded in the fifth chapter of the Acts. But our Saviour’s prediction was to be accomplished in a more particular manner, and still more conformable to the letter, and which should entitle him to the merit and crown of martyrdom; the instrument whereof was Domitian, the last of the twelve Cæsars.

He was a tyrant, detestable to all men on account of his cruelty, and the author of the second general persecution of the church. In the beginning of his reign he accustomed himself to take pleasure in acts of inhumanity, spending part of his time in his closet in catching flies, and sticking them with a sharp bodkin. He debauched his own niece, and impiously took the titles of God and Lord, as Suetonius and Eusebius have recorded. He reigned fifteen years, that is, from the year of Christ 81 to 96. Tacitus says, that in cruelty he surpassed Nero, who often shunned the sight of barbarous executions, whereas Domitian was known to take delight in beholding them. He deluged Rome with the blood of its illustrious citizens, and out of a hatred to virtue, banished the philosophers; on which occasion, Epictetus (whose Enchiridion is the most perfect abstract of the justest sentiments of moral virtue ever published by a heathen) and Dio Chrysostomus, with others, were expelled from the city. As for the Christians, not only the sanctity of their doctrine and manners was the strongest reproach of the crimes of the tyrant, but the general hatred of the heathens against them excited him to glut his insatiable cruelty with their innocent blood. St. John, who was the only surviving apostle, and who at that time governed all the churches of Asia with the highest reputation which his dignity, extraordinary virtue, and miracles had acquired, was apprehended at Ephesus, and sent prisoner to Rome in the year 95. The emperor did not relent at the sight of a man of his most venerable old age and countenance, which alone might suffice to command respect, but condemned him to a most barbarous death, by ordering him to be cast into a caldron of boiling oil. The holy apostle was probably first scourged, according to the Roman custom with regard to criminals before execution, who could not plead the privilege of being Roman citizens. It is at least certain from Tertullian, St. Jerome, and Eusebius, that, by the order of the tyrant, he was thrown into a vessel of boiling oil. The martyr doubtless heard, with great joy, this barbarous sentence, exulting at the thought of speedily rejoining his Redeemer, and desiring to repay love for love in the best manner he was able, and to die for Him who had laid down his most precious life to save us sinners from hell. The most cruel torments seemed to him light and most agreeable, because they would, he hoped, unite him for ever to his divine Master and Saviour: but God accepted his will, and crowned his desire; he conferred on him the honour and merit of martyrdom, but suspended the operation of the fire, as he had formerly preserved the three children from hurt in the Babylonian furnace. The seething oil was changed in his regard into a refreshing bath, and the saint came out more fresh and lively than he had entered the caldron. Domitian, with most of the heathens, entertained a great idea of the power of magic, in which he had been confirmed by the reports concerning the prodigies pretended to be wrought by the famous magician, Apollonius of Tyana, whom he had sent for to Rome. He therefore saw this miracle without drawing from it the least advantage, but, like another Pharaoh, remained hardened in his iniquity. However, he contented himself after this with banishing the holy apostle into the little island of Patmos, one of the Sporades, in the Archipelago or Ægean sea. Domitian being assassinated the year following, his statues were every where pulled down, his name erased from all public buildings, and his decrees declared void by the senate. Upon which St. John returned to Ephesus, in the reign of Nerva, who by mildness, during his short reign of one year and four months, laboured to restore the faded lustre of the Roman empire.

This glorious triumph of St. John happened without the gate of Rome, called Latina, because it led to Latium. A church was consecrated in the same place in memory of this miracle, under the first Christian emperors, which has always borne this title. It is said to have been a Pagan temple of Diana, before it was converted to the worship of the true God. It was rebuilt by Pope Adrian I. in 772. This festival has been kept in many places a holiday. In the twelfth century, and probably long before, till the change of religion, it was observed in England a holiday of the second rank, in which all servile work was forbidden, except agriculture. Our pious Saxon ancestors had a singular devotion to St. Peter and St. John the Evangelist.

Our divine Saviour, as a mark of his special favour, and to put their love to the test, asked his two disciples, James and John, whether they could drink of the cup of which he was to drink? His sufferings he called his cup, first, because, out of the excess of his love for man, he was pressed with a burning desire to suffer and die for his redemption, as with a vehement thirst, which nothing but the ignominies and cruel torments of his cross could satiate. 2 O ardent desire of Jesus to suffer for us! O love of his cross! Secondly, Because, among the Jews, a portion which fell to a person’s lot was called his cup, Jesus, by this expression, gives us to understand, that his cross and sufferings were allotted him by his eternal Father as his portion, and that from the first moment of his incarnation he accepted it cheerfully from his hands, with an entire submission to his will, offering himself as a victim perfectly to accomplish it. He presents his cup to his servants to drink, because there is nothing which produces in them so perfect a conformity with himself, or improves more wonderfully all heroic virtues in their souls, or obtains more abundantly for them the greatest graces, provided we bear our cross with him, embrace it affectionately for his love, and offer our sufferings to him, uniting them with his. O precious cross! you are the high royal road to heaven, sanctified and made divine by our sovereign head, who opened it, and showed the way in which all his elect follow him. St. John suffered above the other saints a martyrdom of love, being a martyr, and more than a martyr, at the foot of the cross of his divine Master, with the true lovers of Jesus, Magdalen, and the Blessed Virgin mother. All his sufferings were by love and compassion imprinted in his soul, and thus shared by him. O singular happiness of St. John to have stood under the cross of Christ, so near his divine person, when the other disciples had all forsaken him! O extraordinary privilege, to have suffered martyrdom in the person of Jesus, and been eye-witness of all he did or endured, and of all that happened to him in that great sacrifice and mystery. 3 Here he drank of his cup; this was truly a martyrdom, and our Saviour exempted all those who had assisted at the martyrdom of his cross, from suffering death by the hands of persecutors. St. John, nevertheless, received also the crown of this second martyrdom, to which the sacrifice of his will was not wanting, but only the execution.

Note 1. Matt. xx. 21. Mark x. 35. [back]

Note 2. Luke xii. [back]

Note 3. Joan x. 26. [back]

The Antichrist: Rev. Paschal Huchede's view of the Antichrist

First see this below.

The Antichrist: Rev. Paschal Huchede's view of the Antichrist

Rev. Paschal Huchede's view of the Antichrist

Chapter 2- The Action 

ARTICLE I-CONTEST AND POLITICAL SWAY OF ANTICHRIST 

1. Antichrist Begins to Manifest Himself to the Jew 

Antichrist, being a Jew, will be circumcised; he will observe the Mosaic Law, and finally he will give himself for the Messiah whom Israel still expects, and he will be received by those whose names are not written in the Book of Life, in the Book of the Lamb. (Apoc. 13:8). Hence Our Lord thus reproaches the Jews, "I am come in the name of my Father, and you receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive." Jn. 5:43). St. Irenaeus, St. Hilary, St. Am­brose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Damascus are of opinion that Our Lord makes allusion in this passage to Antichrist. 

2. He Achieves the Conquest of the World and Makes Jerusalem its Capital 

Antichrist will naturally meet with obstacles in carrying out his de­signs. The ten kings, who, according to the prophet Daniel and St. John, will have divided the Roman empire among them, shall endeavor to con­serve the independence of their realms and consequently will resist him with fire and sword. "I considered," says the prophet, "the horns, and behold another little horn sprung out of the midst of them, and three of the first horns were plucked up at the sight thereof. . . And these ten horns shall be ten kings, and another shall rise up after them, and he shall be mightier than the former, and he shall bring down three kings." (Dan. 7:8 & 24). "He shall take possession of the land; Egypt will not escape his power. . . he shall pass into Libya and Ethiopia." (Dan. 11 :42-43). St. Jerome has left us the interpretation of the Fathers, which is corroborated by all ecclesiastical writers who have since treated the question. At the end of the world. after the destruction of the empire, ten kings will divide among them the fragments of the Roman empire; then an eleventh king will enter the scene and conquer three of their number: the king of Egypt, the king of Africa [Libya, re: St. Hippolytus on the Antichrist], and the king of Ethiopia. After their death, the remaining seven laid their scepters at the con­queror's feet. (Dan. 7 [esp. 24-25]).

Remember several things in connection with this.


1) It was Our Lord Jesus Christ who quoted the book of Daniel as a defining reference to the abomination of desolation. Do not downplay the importance of that.


2) This almost completely happened already during the time of two persecutors of the Church. Diocletian is one (whose name in a specialized Greek spelling of his time on a few coins in Graeco Latin would, in the Greek Isopsephia that St. Irenaeus refers us to, spell the number 666 which is the number of the name the Full Consensus of the Church Fathers tell us the Antichrist will bear - concerning Diocletian, this is of typological importance since he is in the past tense). Diocletian in fact conquered Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia of his time and totally subjugated the ten Dioceses of the Roman Empire under him with a four part division of the same ten Dioceses, not referred to here, that also was under his complete rule. See Note One. below. That ten and four part division was predicted by St. Hippolytus based on his exegesis of the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel a century before Diocletian. Diocletian's persecution is when, by Diocletian's command, the use of the Teserea and the Libellus - the Mark of the Beast, was used to the utmost in the ancient Roman Empire to force Christians to either deny Christ or die. The Martyrs chose to die now and inherit eternal life. Julian the Apostate, in the same century as Diocletian's rule ended in, almost succeeded in making an Apostate Jew ruled Jerusalem the center of a revived pagan Roman Graeco-Egyptian religion - the same thing the Apostate Vatican is trying to do now. To follow the Vatican (since its Apostasy beginning in 1958) in any way is to take the Mark of Beast. God commands His people NOW to come out from her and be separate and touch not the unclean thing. 2Cor. 6:14-18 and Apocalypse 18.


3) The Vatican (in Latin the Vatican is Vaticanus and in the pagan context meant "divining serpent") has returned to being only a temple of Satanic Antichrist False Prophet infidel iniquity. We must not have anything to do with them at all on pain of eternal damnation.


4) The final fulfillment of the Antichrist and the Abomination of desolation will happen centered in Jerusalem and we are forewarned and must have nothing to do with any of it upon penalty of eternal damnation.




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Note One. 



click on picture to see enlarged

The Four Districts, and the Dioceses throughout the four, of the Roman Empire all ruled by Diocletian. His sub emperors ruled in three of the four for him and he ruled in the fourth over all - notice that his direct domain included Jerusalem; in St. Hippolytus, seven and eight and ten and [Diocletian as a type in his time was] the eleventh who cast down three [Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia - the ancient boundaries are meant] and ruled as the eighth over the seven and thence the whole world. This is part of the world wide recapitulation of iniquity (recapitulatio universae iniquitatis) as exegeted by St. Ireanaeus. See: The Mark, the Name, the Number of the beast and the Tower of Babel = Ecumenism

See below for the number of divisions in the Roman Empire which varied and as actually finally recorded is after Diocletian. Diocletian typologically fulfilled this in his time. St. Hippolytus gives us the prophetic number of ten [also meaning fullness] and of four [also meaning worldwide] as the coming to power of the Antichrist and also an eleventh power (given St. Hippolytus' context, keep the Apostate Vatican in view and ultimately an individual coming forth from there - also this, the Antichrist will be a Jew) to keep in mind in these current times (Anglo-American or Russia-Chinese or Nato-Eurasian or ultimately World wide Zionist, it will be revealed in its time.)


From:


Laterculus Veronensis
  

The ''Laterculus Veronensis'' or ''Verona List'' is a list of Roman provinces from the times of the Roman emperors Diocletian and Constantine I. The list is transmitted only in a 7th-century manuscript, which is preserved in the Chapter House Library (Biblioteca Capitolare) in Verona. The most recent critical edition is that of . Earlier editions include that by , that by Otto Seeck in his edition of the Notitia dignitatum (1876), and by Alexander Riese in the ''Geographi Latini minores'' (1878).

Description

The document comprises a list of the names of all the provinces of the empire (c. 100 in total), organised according to the 12 newly created regional groupings called dioceses. Although the 12 dioceses are presented in a single list, they are not ordered in a single geographical sequence but rather in two separate eastern and western groups, the eastern group (Oriens, Pontica, Asiana, Thraciae, Moesiae, Pannoniae) preceding the western (Britanniae, Galliae, Viennensis, Italiae, Hispaniae, Africa). The split is apparent from the discontinuity midway in the list between the dioceses of Pannoniae and Britanniae. The eastern half of the list circles the Mediterranean neatly anticlockwise from south to north or, in continental terms, from Africa, through Asia, to Europe. The arrangement of the western half is less tidy, though it is approximately anticlockwise from north to south or from Europe to Africa.

Theodor Mommsen had dated the provincial situation in the list to 297, but later research changed the estimate to 314–324 for the Eastern Half and 303–314 for the Western Half of the Roman empire. The most recent work by Timothy Barnes and Constantin Zuckerman concludes that the entire document belongs to a single moment, c. 314, the eastern and western parts corresponding to the respective spheres of responsibility of the emperors Licinius and Constantine during the period between Licinius’ defeat of Maximinus II (Daia) in 313 and his own defeat in his first civil war with Constantine in 316-317.

English version of contents

Below is an English version of the content of the list (Square brackets [] represent additions/corrections to transmitted text):

; Oriens (18 [actually 17] provinces): [1] Libya Superior; [2] Libya Inferior; [3] Thebais; [4] Aegyptus Iovia; [5] Aegyptus Herculia; [6] Arabia (Nova); [7] Arabia; [8] Augusta Libanensis; [9] Palaestina; [10] (Syria) Phoenice; [11] Syria Coele; [12] Augusta Euphratensis; [13] Cilicia; [14] Isauria; [15] Cyprus; [16] Mesopotamia; [17] Osrhoene ; Pontica (7 provinces): [18] Bithynia; [19] Cappadocia; [20] Galatia; [21] Paphlagonia; [22] Diospontus; [23] Pontus Polemoniacus [24] Armenia Minor ; Asiana (9 provinces): [25] (Lycia et) Pamphylia; [26] Phrygia Prima; [27] Phrygia Secunda; [28] Asia; [29] Lydia; [30] Caria; [31] Insulae; [32] Pisidia; [33] Hellespontus ; Thracia (6 provinces): [34] Europa; [35] Rhodope; [36] Thracia; [37] Haemimontus; [38] Scythia; [39] Moesia Inferior ; Moesiae (11 provinces): [40] Dacia [Mediterranea]; [41] [Dacia Ripensis]; [42] Moesia Superior/Margensis; [43] Dardania; [44] Macedonia; [45] Thessalia; [46] [Achaea]; [47] Praevalitana; [48] Epirus Nova; [49] Epirus Vetus [50] Creta ; Pannoniae (7 provinces): [51] Pannonia Inferior; [52] (Pannonia) Savensis; [53] Dalmatia; [54] Valeria; [55] Pannonia Superior; [56] Noricum Ripense; [57] Noricum Mediterraneum ; Britanniae (6 [actually 4] provinces): [58] Britannia Prima; [59] Britannia Secunda; [60] Maxima Caesariensis; [61] Flavia Caesariensis ; Galliae (8 provinces): [62] Belgica Prima; [63] Belgica Secunda; [64] Germania Prima; [65] Germania Secunda; [66] Sequania; [67] Lugdunensis Prima; [68] Lugdunensis Secunda; [69] Alpes Graiae et Poeninae ; Viennensis (7 provinces): [70] Viennensis; [71] Narbonensis Prima; [72] Narbonensis Secunda; [73] Novem Populi; [74] Aquitanica Prima; [75] Aquitanica Secunda; [76] Alpes Maritimae ; Italia (16 [actually 12] provinces): [77] Venetia et Histria; [78] [Aemilia et Liguria]; [79] Flaminia et Picenum; [80] Tuscia et Umbria; [81] [Latium et Campania]; [82] Apulia et Calabria; [83] Lucania [et Brutii]; [84] [Sicilia]; [85] [Sardinia]; [86] Corsica; [87] Alpes Cottiae; [88] Raetia ; Hispaniae (6 provinces): [89] Baetica; [90] Lusitania; [91] Carthaginiensis; [92] Gallaecia; [93] Tarraconensis; [94] Mauretania Tingitana ; Africa (7 provinces): [95] (Africa) Proconsularis/Zeugitana; [96] Byzacena; [97] [Tripolitania]; [98] Numidia Cirtensis; [99] Numidia Militiana; [100] Mauretania Caesariensis; [101] Mauretania [Sitifensis]/Tubusuctitana

Notes

References

External links

·  Roman map literary authorities by T.G. Ikins

Category: Roman itineraries Category: Ancient Roman Empire Category: Geography of the Roman Empire Category: Medieval documents

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