Phileas of Thmuis

Phileas was a man of rank before he was a bishop. Eusebius describes him as distinguished by his public services and his standing in his own country, and by his skill in philosophy and learning — a wealthy provincial notable with a family, an estate, and a reputation. He became bishop of Thmuis, a town in the Nile delta. When the Great Persecution reached Egypt he was arrested and held at Alexandria, and while he was in prison he wrote a letter to his congregation at home. That letter is why he matters. Most of what survives about the persecutions is written by people who heard about them. Phileas was in the building. He describes what was done in the Alexandrian courts to the Christians brought in with him: men hung by one arm from the ceiling until the joints tore; men with their arms bound behind them to a pillar while machines drew them out; the sides and stomach and legs raked; some who died under it; some cut down and thrown back into prison to be brought out again. He notes, carefully, that the magistrates were not restrained by any of it, and that some Christians were beaten with their faces to the ground while others were beaten with their faces up. He writes it in plain sentences, as testimony. Eusebius quoted the letter into his Church History, and that is how it comes down. Phileas's own trial is preserved separately. A Latin account and a Greek papyrus found in Egypt in the twentieth century — the Bodmer papyrus — both record his interrogation by the prefect Culcianus, and the two versions agree closely enough to show they go back to court records. The transcript is a strange, patient conversation. Culcianus did not want to kill him. He kept offering ways out: sacrifice, or say you have sacrificed; think of your wife; think of your children; Paul was uneducated, was he not; was your Christ God. Phileas answered every question and refused every exit. When his own family and the officials of the court begged him to have pity on himself, he answered that Christ's apostles and martyrs were his kindred. He was beheaded, with a Roman official named Philoromus who had spoken up for him from the crowd and was condemned on the spot. The date is usually given as about 306, with 307 also argued. Sources: Eusebius, Church History VIII.9–10; the Acts of Phileas and Papyrus Bodmer XX (the Greek Apology of Phileas); the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, article St. Phileas.