op of Antioch,
and others, who were to speak after him on the same subject. The
miracles were recent, performed before the eyes of many then present.
Nome of the three acts of this saint in Bollandus can be authentic. See
Tillemont, Mem. t. 3, p. 400, and Hist. des Empereurs, t. 3, and F.
Merlin. Dissertation contre M. Bayle sur ce que rapporte S. Chrysostome
du Martyre de S. Babylas, Mem. de Trevoux, Juin 1737, p. 1051. Also
Stilting, the Bollandist, in Vit. S. Chrysost. Sec.15. p 439, ad 14
Septemb. t. 4.

About the year 250.

THE most celebrated of the ancient bishops of Antioch, after St.
Ignatius, was St. Babylas, who succeeded Zebinus in the year 237, and
governed that church with great zeal and virtue, about thirteen years,
under the emperors Gordian, Philip, and Decius. Philip, an Arabian by
birth, and of mean extraction, raised by the young emperor Gordian to be
prefect of the praetorian guards, perfidiously murdered his master at the
head of his victorious army in Persia, and caused himself to be
acknowledged emperor by the senate and people of Rome, in the year 244.
We have very imperfect histories of his reign. Eusebius says that he
abolished the public stews and promiscuous bathing in Rome, which
Alexander Severus, the most virtuous of the heathen emperors, had in
vain attempted to do. The same historian adds, it was averred[1] that
Philip, being a Christian, subjected himself to canonical penance at
Antioch, where being arrived on the eve of a great festival, as the
chronicle of Alexandria relates, he presented himself at the Christian
oratory, with his wife; but being excluded by the bishop, with a meek
rebuke for his crimes, he made his exomologesis, or confession, and
ranked himself among the penitents without doors. St. Jerom, Vincent of
Lerins, Orosius, and others, positively affirm that this emperor was a
Christian: and Eusebius, Rufinus, St. Jerom, Vincent of Lerins, and
Syncellus say, that Origen wrote two letters, one to the emperor Philip,
another to his wife, with an authority which the Christian priesthood
gave him over emperors.

Philip assisted at the heathenish solemnity of the thousandth year of
Rome; but his presence was necessary on that occasion, nor is he said to
have offered sacrifice. He was indeed a bad Christian, and probably only
a catechumen, an ambitious and cruel tyrant, who procured the death of
Misitheus, father-in-law of Gordian, murdered Gordian himself to usurp
his empi