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Regarding the Anxiety with Which the Jews Await the Coming of the Messiah

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Regarding the Anxiety with Which the Jews Await the Coming of the Messiah CHAPTER SEVEN REGARDING THE ANXIETY WITH WHICH THE JEWS AWAIT THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH Many gentiles came to know that Christ, our Lord, was the true God and I could bring forth as evidence for this point the writings of many saintly men. In order not to be tiresome, however, I shall only refer and reproduce here a letter that Vicente da Costa Mattos included in his Perfidia Judaica1 and which originates in the Pontifical.2 It reads thus: Letter. Abgar,3 King of Edessa, son of Uchania. To Jesus the Saviour, who appeared in the places of Jerusalem. Greetings. “I have heard of you and your cures, which are performed without the use of medicines and herbs but only through the use of the word. You have caused the blind to see, the lame to walk, cleansed the lepers, cast out demons and unclean spirits, restored to health those who have been suf- fering for a long time and resuscitated the dead. When I heard of all of this, I was persuaded that either you are God Himself, descended from Heaven, to do these wondrous things, or that you are the son of God. On this account, therefore, I have decided to write to you, to beseech you to take the trouble of a journey hither, and cure a disease from which I am suffering. Moreover, because I know that the Jews persecute you and mur- mur against you, I ask you to come to this city, which although small will be large enough for us both”. Christ our Benefactor, being so courteous that our Father Saint Francis states about Him in his minor works4 when addressing his friars and sons 1 Vicente da Costa Mattos actually reproduces this letter verbatim not in his Breve Discurso contra a Heretica Perfidia Judaica but in his Honras christãs nas afrontas de Iesu Christo continuadas nos presentes Apostatas de nossa Santa Fè (Lisbon, 1634), fols. 55v-56r. 2 See footnote 6 in this chapter. 3 The Syriac king Abgar V, ruler of the Kingdom of Osroene, traditionally held to have been one of the first kings to convert to Christianity after his conversion by Thaddeus of Edessa, one of the seventy disciples. Abgar V ruled his kingdom from ad 13 to 50. 4 Torrejoncillo refers here to opusculos (“minor works”) without offering any further details. The notion that courtesy was a divine property is noted in B. P. Francisci Assisiatis <UN> <UN> 186 chapter seven that they should be courteous because the Christian religion is founded on courtesy and it is one of the characteristics of the Lord (Fratres habete curialitatem, quia sine curialitate non potest esse Religio, quia curialitas es una de proprietatibus Domini), responded to the King’s letter. According to Eusebius (distinction 5 in the chapter Sanct. Roman.),5 cited in book 1 of the Pontifical,6 the tenor of the reply was as follows: Letter. “You are fortunate, Abgar, because you have believed in me, for it is writ- ten concerning me that that those who have seen me will not believe in me, so that those who have not seen me might believe and live. Regarding what you have written to me, which is that I should come to you, know that that I must fulfill all the ends of my mission in this land where I live, and that when I have accomplished them I shall rise up again in Heaven to Him who sent me. I will send one of my disciples to you, who will cure your disease, and give life to you, and all that are with you”. Eusebius says that it is commonly held that the Apostle Thaddeus7 later cured King Abgar and that his city persevered in its Christian faith until it lost it in the time of Innocent II.8 Even the General History of Spain, in Opuscula, ed. Luke Wadding O.F.M. (Antwerp, 1623), 500. Moreover, it is worth noting that it also appears in the Fioretti (“Little flowers”) of Saint Francis of Assisi, a compilation of excerpts from other writings by the founder of the Franciscan Order. In chapter 37 of the Fioretti, Saint Francis utters the following words to persuade a rich nobleman to espouse a religious life: “Know, dear brother, that courtesy is one of the attributes of God, who sends his rain on the just and on the unjust; for courtesy is the sister of charity, it extinguishes hatred and kindles love”. 5 Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, is the first source to mentions these letters in his Ecclesiastical History (book I, chapter 13). Here, however, Torrejoncillo is somewhat strangely referring to what appears to be chapter 3 of the fifteenth distinction in the Decretals of Gratian (Decretum Gratiani), a twelfth-century collection of Canon Law. See Decretum Gratiani, emendatum et annotationibus illustratum, una cum glossis (Paris, 1601), Dist. XV, chapter 3, col. 70. He seems to have done this by merely recopying the reference to Gratian given by Gonzalo de Illescas in his Historia Pontifical y Catholica, (Barcelona, 1602), Vol. I, fol. 5r, who quotes Gratian when noting that the letter of Abgar and the reply of Jesus were considered to be apocryphal, something that Torrejoncillo (of course) does not mention. The confusion between the fifth and fifteenth distinctions was made in the 1602 edition of the Historia Pontifical y Catholica but the correct reference appears in the original Barcelona 1589 edition. 6 This vague reference is actually to Gonzalo de Illescas’ Historia Pontifical y Catholica (Barcelona, 1602), I, fols. 4v-5r. 7 Also known as Saint Jude the Apostle, who was martyred in ad 65. See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (book I, chapter 13). 8 Pope Innocent II (1130–1145). Torrejoncillo refers here to the siege and capture of Edessa by the Muslim ruler of Aleppo and Mosul in December 1144, an event that led his successor Pope Eugenius III to issue the call for a Second Crusade to the Holy Land in 1145. <UN> <UN>.
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