already Christians at Puteoli), and so at last came to Rome.[1] We are not told in the Acts anything about missionary work done by the Apostle at Syracuse and Rhegium; but it would have been unlike Paul not to preach the Gospel during the three days at Syracuse and the one at Rhegium. As soon as he got to Rome he made an appointment with the Jews and "bore witness of the Kingdom of God, and persuading them about Jesus from the Law of Moses and the Prophets from morning till evening."[2] We may no doubt suppose that he did the same at Syracuse and Rhegium.
St Peter, too, must have been in these parts. We have nothing from the Acts about his coming to Rome at all; but when he did, he could hardly have come except by passing through Lower Italy, if not through Sicily. So the Sicilians and Italo-Greeks have some reason when they ascribe the foundation of their Churches to St Peter and St Paul.
Naturally they have more detailed traditions as to how this happened. When St Paul was at Rhegium, they say, he made a certain Stephen, born at Nicæa, first bishop of that city. St Stephen died a martyr in 74. The Sicilians count their lines of bishops rather from St Peter. They believe that he passed through the island on his way to Rome, and everywhere ordained bishops for the cities. So we hear of a St Marcian, "Bishop of Sicily,"[3] St Pancras, Bishop of Tauromenium, and others, all disciples of St Peter. At Naples St Peter is believed to have founded a flourishing Church, to have baptized St Candida, to have turned a heathen temple into a church in which he celebrated the holy liturgy (S. Petri ad aram), to have converted, baptized, and ordained St Aspren, whom he then left as the first bishop.[4]
We have further details about the Churches of Southern
- ↑ Acts xxviii, 11-16. On St Peter and St Paul in Sicily see the excellent work of D. G. Lancia di Brolo, O.S.B. (now Archb. of Monreale), "Storia della Chiesa in Sicilia nei dieci primi secoli del Cristianesimo" (2 vols., Palermo, 1880-1884), i, pp. 32-34.
- ↑ Acts xxviii, 23.
- ↑ St Marcian, or Marcellus, and St Pancras occur in the Byzantine Menologion on February 9. In the Roman Martyrology we have, on June 14, "Syracusis S. Marciani ep., qui a b. Petro ordinatus ep. post euangelii prædicationem a Iudæis occisus est"; on April 3, "Tauromenii in Sicilia S. Pancratii ep. qui christi euangelium, quod a S. Petro ap. illuc missus prædicauerat, martyrii sanguine consignauit."
- ↑ In the Rom. Mart. September 4, St Candida, August 3, St Aspren. On the local cult of St Aspren see C. d'Engenio Caracciolo, "Napoli Sacra" (Naples, 1624), p. 12.
