The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Martyrs' Church
Pamphilus of Caesarea
died c. 309Early Church
The rich man who spent his fortune copying Bibles to give away, then spent two years in prison and was beheaded.
Summary
- Lived died c. 309.
- Stood in The Martyrs' Church (AD 100–313).
- Hangs on The Fathers and The Martyrs.
- Tradition: Early Church.
The life
Pamphilus was born wealthy at Berytus, modern Beirut, and could have had the public career his family expected. He studied at Alexandria under Pierius, who was called the younger Origen, and then settled at Caesarea in Palestine as a presbyter, and there he did the thing he is remembered for.
He built a library.
Origen had left his books at Caesarea when he died. Pamphilus took that collection and spent his inheritance turning it into the greatest Christian library in the world, hunting down manuscripts, employing copyists, and correcting texts himself. Jerome, who used the library a century later, says Pamphilus copied out most of Origen's works in his own hand, and that he kept a stock of Bibles which he gave away free to anyone, man or woman, who would read them. He gave books to the poor the way other rich men gave bread.
That library is the reason we have a church history at all. A young man named Eusebius attached himself to Pamphilus, worked beside him, and loved him so much that he took his name, signing himself Eusebius Pamphili, Eusebius of Pamphilus, for the rest of his life. The Church History, which preserves most of what is known about the first three Christian centuries, was written out of Pamphilus's shelves. Eusebius also wrote a three-book Life of Pamphilus, now lost.
In November 307, under the persecution of Maximinus, Pamphilus was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned. He was not released. He stayed in that cell for two years.
He kept working in it. Together with Eusebius, who visited him, he composed a five-book Apology for Origen, a defense of his master against the charges already gathering, writing from prison the arguments that a later century would reject. Only the first book survives, in a Latin translation by Rufinus.
On 16 February 309 Pamphilus was brought out and beheaded, along with eleven others. Eusebius watched, and wrote the account down in The Martyrs of Palestine, and he is not a detached historian in those pages. He names the men who died with him. He calls Pamphilus the most beloved of all.
The library survived him by three hundred years, and then it too was gone. What came out of it did not go with it.
Sources: Eusebius, The Martyrs of Palestine 7 and 11; Eusebius, Church History VII.32, VIII.13; Jerome, On Illustrious Men 75; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, article St. Pamphilus.
What was happening while he lived4 moments · AD 100–313
- 250Decius orders the whole empire to sacrificeFor the first time the persecution was universal by decree: every inhabitant had to sacrifice before a commission and receive a signed certificate proving it. About forty-odd of those certificates have been dug up in Egypt on papyrus, ordinary paperwork of a very hard year. Fabian, bishop of Rome, was killed in January 250; thousands of others simply signed and lived, and the church spent the next decade arguing about what to do with them.
- 257–260Valerian targets the leadershipValerian went after the church's structure rather than the crowd: bishops, priests, and deacons first, then Christians of senatorial and knightly rank, and the cemeteries where they met. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was beheaded on September 14, 258; Sixtus II of Rome was seized in a catacomb the same year. When Valerian was captured by the Persians, his son Gallienus reversed the policy in 260, and the church got about forty years of quiet.
- 303–311Eight years of pressure, and the handers-overSome clergy surrendered the Scriptures to be burned to save their people, and were afterward called handers-over, *traditores*, the root of our word traitor. Eusebius, who lived through it, describes executions in Palestine and Egypt in numbers he says he saw with his own eyes. The bitterness over who had held firm would split the North African church in the next era.
- 313The agreement at MilanConstantine and Licinius met at Milan and agreed that everyone in the empire could follow whatever religion they chose, with confiscated Christian property returned at public expense. It is usually called the Edict of Milan, though what survives is the letter Licinius sent out afterward; historians often call it an agreement rather than an edict for that reason. Two hundred years of dying for the Name were over.
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Pamphilus of Caesarea at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Spent his fortune copying Bibles for a great library, then spent two years in prison and was beheaded.
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received. Hangs on The Martyrs: The witnesses who paid with their lives, from the arena at Carthage to the present day, and the confessors who paid with everything short of their lives.
Standing beside himThe Martyrs' Church · 40 on this stretch of wall
A 22-year-old mother who kept a diary in prison and walked into the arena at Carthage singing.
Stayed with his people through plague and persecution, then walked to his own beheading and paid the executioner.
Traced his teaching straight back to the apostle John through Polycarp, and wrote the first great takedown of the gnostics.
Kept wearing his philosopher's cloak after he met Christ, argued the faith to the emperor's face, and was beheaded for it.
Wanted to die with his martyred father as a boy, and spent the rest of his life laying six versions of the Old Testament side by side.
.jpg%3Fwidth%3D480&w=3840&q=75)
The lawyer who gave the church the word Trinity and told Rome that the blood of the martyrs is seed.