ii s. v. APRIL 27, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
335
- H.E.,' I. iv. That means " King of the
Britannias," i.e., of the Roman provinces in Britain. The absurdity of the meaning does not warrant misrendering of the words. Bede, unfortunately, distrusted his authority the late - seventh - century ' Liber Ponti- ficalis.' The words in that record are " Lucto rege Britannio," and the adjectival form in -ius, though almost unique as regards derivatives from the Latin noun Britannia, is rather common as regards other land- names of the same ending; e.g., the adjectives Assyrius, Ausonius, Bceotius, Caledonius, Hesperius, Lydius, all derive from proper nouns in -ia.
Prof. Harnack, in his paper ' Der Brief des britischen Konigs Lucius an den Papst Eleutherius,' read on 19 May, 1904, stigma- tizes ." Britannio " as corrupt, and com- mends Bede for " correcting " the ' Liber Pontificalis.' Bede wrote " Rex Britanniae " in ' H.E.,' V. xxiv., and in ' Chronica Maiora,' cap. 331. Prof. Harnack says we might expect Britannias in the ' Liber Pontificalis.' But why ? Rex Britannius = " the Britannian king," and the seventh- century papal historiographer may have used the unusual form in order to avoid a racial adjective. He was not necessarily ignorant of the fact that there were kings in Britain who were not British.
Prof. Harnack's position comprises the following facts : (1) In an ancient fragment giving the names of the burial-places of the Twelve Apostles we find " Thaddaeus et ludas in Britio (Beruto, MS. P.) Edesse- norum." (2) The full style of the ninth Abgar of Edessa was Lucius ^Elius Septimius Megas Abgarus IX. (3) He was the only Abgar who bore the name of Lucius. (4) He reigned from 179 to 216. (5) Eleutherius was Pope from 174 to 189. (6) In his time the ruler of Edessa and his subjects became Christians. (7) Lucius Abgar built Birtha at Edessa.
Prof. Harnack's reasoning is that
- Lucius " stands ; that the " Unform "
Britannio misrepresents " Bru*io," and that Britio does not equate Beruto of MS. P., but " Birtha." Hence the legend does not concern Britain.
Now birtha is a plural, Harnack says. It means die Palatien, i.e., the palatia, or palaces. Birtha was built on a hill, in A.D. 206, in consequence of an inundation of the lower town of Edessa in 201. The authority for these statements is the Chronicle of Edessa, the ninth entry in which is rendered by Harnack thus: " zum Jahre 51 7= post Chr. 205/6 : Es baute Abgar die Palatien
('Birtha') in seiner Stadt." How, then,
could Lucius Abgar write to Eleutherius
and date from Birtha in or before 189 ?
How could Thaddeus and Judas-Thomas
have been buried there c. A.D. 50 ? Why
did the compiler of the list of apostolic
burial-places turn the plural birtha into the
singular Britium ? Lastly, how came it
that the papal historiographer made such
confusion ? The ninth Abgar of Edessa
was well known to Sextus Julius Africanus,
to Eusebius, Jerome, and Bede. The con-
nexion between Edessa and Rome in Eleu-
therius and Lucius Abgar's time is un-
questionable ; but the addition of " Edesse-
norum " to the forms Britio, Beruto, must
date from post 205, even if we admit that
Britium = Birtha. But that is not neces-
sary. The phrase " Beruto Edessenorum "
is conglomerate of two traditions : one, that
Judas-Thomas laboured at Edessa, the other
that he passed from Edessa to Berytus
(Beirut in Syria), and died there.
ALFRED ANSCOMBE.
Cabrol in his ' L'Angleterre Chretienne ' says :
" De nombreuses hypotheses ont e"te" propose'es pour trouver 1'origine de cette 16gende. Zimmer pense qu'elle fut invente'e vers la fin du VII. siecle, pour soutenir les arguments des repre"- sentants de l'6glise romaine centre les pr6ten' tions des Bretons. M. Harnack voit dans Lucius- Abgare IX. d'fidesse, transfonne'.par une erreur de lecture en roi breton. Ces explications ne sont pas tres satisfaisantes. II est difficile en tout cas qu'un roi breton, au II. siecle, oil il n'y avait pas de rois bretons, ait 6crit a Rome et qu'on lui ait envoy6 des missionnaires. Gildas ne sait rien de ce fait ; et BMe ne le connait que par le ' Liber Pontificalis.' "
LAWRENCE PHILLIPS,
MR. JONAS is right. The 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' does mention Eleutherius and Lucius (see Prof. Earle's edition, Oxford, 1865, pp. 8-9), but the mention does not occur in the Chronicle proper. It is found in the Preliminary Chronology, under the date of A.D. 167, between the notices of the accession of the Roman Emperors Marcus Aurelius (155) and Severus (189). It is thus a simple chronological note.
W, A. B. COOLIDGE.
In his article on Pope St. Eleutherius in ' The Catholic Encyclopaedia ' Mgr. J. P. Kirsch, Professor of Patrology and Christian Archaeology in the University of Fnbourg, Switzerland, goes into the question at some length, and seems to incline to Dr. Harnack's hypothesis to which MR. COOLIDGE refers. Drf Harnack's paper is there stated to be
