penumbra

KEWL!!!!!!!! Wanta come over to my house and turn this water into wine (or scotch)???

Toto

Martin seems to be the source of this claim. Do you think he was using Vatican records? How reliable would they be?

I didn't realize that Martin was a novelist, an actual exorcist, or that the quote came from a polemical book.

GakuseiDon

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

andrewcriddle

Martin claimed to have participated in exorcisms, others have been more doubtful, (see American Exorcism by Michel W Cuneo).

There appears to be a general problem in distinguishing truth and fantasy in Martin's work (eg is there really a powerful group of Satanists within the Vatican hierarchy ?).

It is IMO extremely unlikely that the Vatican has secret records relating to pre-medieval events and unlikely that Martin would have had access to them even if they exist.

The official Vatican records of the early popes (the Liber Pontificalis) has rather sparse entries about Sylvester I but there was a legendary life of Sylvester circulating from say 500 CE. Parts of Martin's narrative about Sylvester are clearly influenced by this legendary life but the life contains no reference to Jewish-Christians, (Although it does have a long section in which Sylvester disputes with a group of Jewish rabbis brought from Palestine at Constantine's orders. Sylvester convinces everyone at the debate of the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, partly by having better arguments partly by working better miracles.)

The whole idea of Jewish-Christians appealing to Sylvester concerning problems with Greek Christian bishops, is anachronistic anyway, Sylvester could have done nothing much to help them even if he had wished to do so. Sylvester is being attributed the type of authority over the whole Christian church which the popes were not able to exercise until somewhat later.

Andrew Criddle