Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Archelaus/Acts of Disputation/Chapter IV

by Archelaus

4. Accordingly,^[1] as this man’s fame was becoming always the more extensively diffused throughout different localities, and when it had now penetrated even beyond the river Stranga, the honourable report of his name was carried into the territory of Persia. In this country dwelt a person called Manes, who, when this man’s repute had reached him, deliberated largely with himself as to how he might entangle him in the snares of his doctrine, hoping that Marcellus might be made an upholder of his dogma. For he reckoned that he might make himself master of the whole province, if he could only first attach such a man to himself. In this project, however, his mind was agitated with the doubt whether he should at once repair in person to the man, or first attempt to get at him by letter; for he was afraid lest, by any sudden and unexpected introduction of himself upon the scene some mischance might possibly befall him. At last, in obedience to a subtler policy, he resolved to write; and calling to him one of his disciples, by name Turbo,^[2] who had been instructed by Addas, he handed to him an epistle, and bade him depart and convey it to Marcellus. This adherent accordingly received the letter, and carried it to the person to whom he had been commissioned by Manes to deliver it, overtaking the whole journey within five days. The above-mentioned Turbo, indeed, used great expedition on this journey, in the course of which he also underwent very considerable exertion and trouble. For whenever he arrived,^[3] as^[4] a traveller in foreign parts, at a hospice,—and these were inns which Marcellus himself had supplied in his large hospitality,^[5]—on his being asked by the keepers of these hostels whence he came, and who he was, or by whom he had been sent, he used to reply: “I belong to the district of Mesopotamia, but I come at present from Persis, having been sent by Manichæus, a master among the Christians.” But they were by no means ready to welcome a name unknown^[6] to them, and were wont sometimes to thrust Turbo out of their inns, refusing him even the means of getting water for drinking purposes. And as he had to bear daily things like these, and things even worse than these, at the hands of those persons in the several localities who had charge of the mansions and hospices, unless he had at last shown that he was conveying letters to Marcellus, Turbo would have met the doom of death in his travels.

Footnotes

1. At this point begins the portion of the work edited by Valesius from the Codex Bobiensis, which is preserved now in the Ambrosian Library.
2. The Codex Bobiensis reads Adda Turbonem. This Adda, or Addas, as the Greek gives it below in ch. xi., was one of those disciples of Manes whom he charged with the dissemination of his heretical opinions in the East, as we see from ch. xi.
3. Codex Bobiensis adds, ad vesperam, towards evening.
4. The text gives veluti peregrinans. The Codex Bobiensis has quippe peregrinans.
5. On the attention paid by the primitive Church to the duties of hospitality, see Tertullian, De Præscriptionibus, ch. 20 [vol. iii. p. 252, this series]; Gregory Nazianzenus, in his First Invective against Julian; also Priorius, De literis canonicis, ch. 5, etc.; and Thomassin, De Tesseris hospitalitatis, ch. 26.
6. In the text, ignotum; in the Codex Bobiensis, ignoratum.