This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism and the eucharist. See this index.
Chapter 6
They have no care for love, none for the widow, none for the orphan, none for the afflicted, none for the prisoner , none for the hungry or thirsty: they abstain from thanksgiving and prayer, since they do not acknowledge that the thanksgiving is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ…
In “Translations of Ignatius: Letter to the Smyrnaeans,” we discussed the problems with how the context of this passage is handled by translators with respect to the sacrifice of thanksgiving (‘eucharist‘). They avoided the simple conclusion that the ‘eucharist’ of the early church was the giving of first-fruits, tithes, and gifts of food for the poor and those in need. The eucharist was “The Tithe.”
There were many classes of people who were in need of the meals provided from the thanksgiving offering (‘eucharist‘). Among these were those in prison. And, similarly, the poor often included those in debtor’s “prison” (e.g. work camps and mines).
Prisons of the past were not like prisons of today. Men were not simply warehoused as a punishment for crime. In the Roman Empire, prisons were more-or-less temporary housing for those awaiting trial, sentencing, or punishment. Men languishing in prison were not well-fed by the State. Among Christians, it was an essential responsibility of family and the Christian community to feed those who were imprisoned.
For example, here are two very early sources:
Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given (εὐχαριστηθέντων), and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons . And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need .
…and…
Blessed Martyrs Designate — Along with the provision which our lady mother the Church from her bountiful breasts, and each brother out of his private means, makes for your bodily wants in the prison , accept also from me some contribution to your spiritual sustenance…
Here is a scholarly explanation, referring to the very early Shepherd of Hermas (c.140AD):
The third point in the catalogue of virtues given by Hermas is:
Prisoners might be innocent for various reasons, but above all there were people incarcerated for their faith or imprisoned for debt, and both classes had to be reached by charity. In the first instance, they had to be visited and consoled, and their plight alleviated by gifts of food. Visiting prisoners was the regular work of the deacons, who had thus to run frequent risks; but ordinary Christians were also expected to discharge this duty. If the prisoners had been arrested for their faith, and if they were rather distinguished teachers, there was no hardship in obeying the command; in fact, many moved heaven and earth to get access to prisoners, since it was considered that there was something sanctifying about intercourse with a confessor. In order to gain admission they would even go the length of bribing the gaolers, and thus manage to smuggle in decent meals and crave a blessing from the saints. The records of the martyrs are full of such tales. Even Lucian knew of the practice, and pointed out the improprieties to which it gave rise…
…
If any Christian brethren were sentenced to the mines, they were still looked after, even there. Their names were carefully noted; attempts were made to keep in touch with them; efforts were concocted to procure their release, and brethren were sent to ease their lot, to edify and to encourage them. The care shown by Christians for prisoners was so notorious that (according to Eusebius, H.E. v. 8) Licinius, the last emperor before Constantine who persecuted the Christians, passed a law to the effect that “no one was to show kindness to sufferers in prison by supplying them with food, and that no one was to show mercy to those who were starving in prison.” “In addition to this,” Eusebius proceeds to relate, “a penalty was attached, to the effect that those who showed compassion were to share the fate of the objects of their charity, and that those who were humane to the unfortunate were to be flung into bonds and imprisonment and endure the same suffering as the others.” This law, which was directly aimed at Christians, shows, more clearly than anything else could do, the care lavished by Christians upon their captive brethren , although much may have crept in connection with this which the State could not tolerate.
But they did more than try to merely alleviate the lot of prisoners. Their aim was to get them ransomed. Instances of this cannot have been altogether rare, but unfortunately it is difficult for us to form any judgment on this matter, since in a number of instances, when a ransom is spoken of, we cannot be sure whether prisoners or slaves are meant. Ransoming captives, at any rate, was regarded as a work which was specially noble and well-pleasing to God, but it never appears to have been undertaken by any church. To the last it remained a monopoly of private generosity and along this line individuals displayed a spirit of real heroism.
This provides an adequate example of the history regarding the church’s response to prisoners during the first three centuries of the church. They brought them food and they paid their debts. Much of this came from the tithes of the church, from the ‘eucharist.’ This was, after all, the primary purpose of the ‘eucharist.’ The church took this duty seriously, even at great personal cost:
In the first instance, they had to be visited and consoled, and their plight alleviated by gifts of food. Visiting prisoners was the regular work of the deacons, who had thus to run frequent risks ; but ordinary Christians were also expected to discharge this duty.
I highlight this because regularly bringing meals (‘eucharist‘) to prisoners was dangerous work. Food was valuable and not easily concealed. Moreover, bringing food to the same location with regularity carried the added risk of being an the easy target of thieves.
Now we turn to Tarsicius. History first mentions him here:
When an insane gang pressed saintly Tarcisius, who was carrying the sacraments of Christ, to display them to the profane, he preferred to be killed and give up his life rather than betray to rabid dogs the heavenly body.
Here is how Wikipedia describes it:
The only positive information concerning this Roman martyr is found in a poem composed in his honour by Pope Damasus (366–384), who compares him to the deacon Saint Stephen and says that, as Stephen was stoned by a crowd, so Tarcisius, carrying the Blessed Sacrament, was attacked by a group and beaten to death.
Nothing else definite is known concerning Tarcisius. Since Damasus compares him to Stephen, he may have been a deacon; however, a 6th-century account makes him an acolyte. According to one version of the detailed legend that developed later, Tarcisius was a young boy during one of the fierce 3rd-century Roman persecutions, probably during the reign of Emperor Valerian (253–259). One day, he was entrusted with the task of bringing the Eucharist to condemned Christians in prison. He preferred death at the hands of a mob rather than deliver to them the Blessed Sacrament which he was carrying.
The simplest explanation is that Tercisius was a deacon who was delivering meals—from the ‘eucharist’—to the hungry. A later tradition says he was going to those in prison, and this is as likely an explanation as any.
The issue with the account described above (from the late 4th century!) is that there was no “Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist” in the 3rd century. Here is what one commentator noted:
Since reading this post I learned about a saint Tarcisius who is said to have been killed by a pagan mob who were trying to take the eucharist off him while he was delivering it to the sick or poor or something like that. And I wonder now if the original story wasn’t that this eucharist was money as you describe with the thanksgiving offering. Its hard to imagine that the mob of pagans were after a wafer.
This is absolutely correct.
A few token pieces of bread (“the Blessed Sacrament”) were of almost no value and were easily concealed. They would have posed little risk to the man carrying them.
Deacons ran risks because what they were carrying was valuable. Whether they were going to feed those in prison or carrying money to pay off their debts, they were targets. Christians took this duty seriously, and would not willingly give up their charge:
In the first instance, they had to be visited and consoled, and their plight alleviated by gifts of food. Visiting prisoners was the regular work of the deacons, who had thus to run frequent risks; but ordinary Christians were also expected to discharge this duty.
More than a century later, Damasus would write…
When an insane gang pressed saintly Tarcisius, who was carrying the sacraments of Christ , to display them to the profane, he preferred to be killed and give up his life rather than betray to rabid dogs the heavenly body .
…about a spiritualized, sacramental ‘heavenly body’ instead of meals (or money) from the tithes and offerings. Damasus was rewriting history according to his own beliefs. He is not the only one to do so. We can see the same problem in the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“At Rome they carried not only the eulogia, or blessed bread, when occasion required, but also the Blessed Eucharist from the Pope’s Mass to that of the priests whose duty it was to celebrate in the churches (tituli). This is evident from the letter of Innocent I (401-417) to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio, in Italy (P.L., XX, 556). They also carried the sacred species to the absent, especially to confessors of the faith detained in prison (see TARSICIUS). This office of carrying the Blessed Eucharist, St. Justin, who suffered martyrdom about 165 or 166, had previously assigned to deacons (Apolog., I, 67), which would indicate that at that time acolytes did not exist.”
Notice how the Catholic Encyclopedia cites an early 5th century source to explain how acolytes carried the communion wafer to those in prison, something that only became officially acceptable practice after Constantine established Christianity in the Roman Empire (in the 4th century). In a truly anachronistic fashion, the Catholic Encyclopedia cites the example of Tarsicius.
The problem? The Catholic Encyclopedia recognizes that Tarsicius wasn’t an acolyte:
“He may have been a deacon, as Damasus compares him to Stephen. An addition to the sixth-century legend of the martyrdom of Pope St. Stephen makes Tarsicius, for some unknown reason, an acolyte; this addition, however, is based on the poem of Damasus.”
In its haste to find its own doctrine of ‘the Eucharist’ in the early church, the Catholic Encyclopedia has contradicted itself.
It’s not hard to imagine what the “unknown reason” was: recasting the ‘eucharist’ from an offering of gifts and tithes into a ‘blessed sacrament’ that needed to be given to all Christians, including ones in prison.
The simple fact is that the early church brought their gifts of food (and, sometimes, money) whenever they gathered, then the gifts were sacrificially offered, and, lastly, then they were distributed to those in need. Starting in the late 4th century, all of that changed with the rise of Roman Catholicism and its novel introduction of sacramental theology.
Damasus (late 4th century), the 5th century source, and the Catholic Encyclopedia, all share one thing in common: an anachronistic view of the ‘eucharist.’ Each source desires to have churchmen (deacons or acolytes) delivering the (supposed) literal body of Christ to absent Christians, something that isn’t found in any primary document from the 3rd century (when Tarsicius lived) or earlier.
Each source recast history according to their own personal theology, rather than that of history itself. Gone is the purpose of the ‘eucharist’ to feed those in need of meals. In its place is a distribution of the sacred sacrament of the body of Christ. Such is the curse of doctrinal development that it distorts history and creates anachronism.