page_title: Sicilia (Roman province)
section_title: Arrival of Christianity in Sicily
hierarchical_section_title: Sicilia (Roman province) / History / Arrival of Christianity in Sicily
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Martyrium der hl. Agatha; aus dem Weißenauer Passionale); Fondation Bodmer, Coligny, Switzerland; Cod. Bodmer 127, fol. 39v English: Illumination from the Passionary of Weissenau (Weißenauer Passionale); Fondation Bodmer, Coligny, Switzerland; Cod. Bodmer 127, fol. 39v
context_page_description: Sicilia was the first province acquired by the Roman Republic. The western part of the island was brought under Roman control in 241 BC at the conclusion of the First Punic War with Carthage. A praetor was regularly assigned to the island from c.227 BC. The Kingdom of Syracuse under Hieron II remained an independent ally of Rome until its defeat in 212 BC during the Second Punic War. Thereafter the province included the whole of the island of Sicily, the island of Malta, and the smaller island groups.
  During the Roman Republic, the island was the main source of grain for the city of Rome. Extraction was heavy, provoking armed uprisings known as the First and Second Servile Wars in the second century BC. In the first century, the Roman governor, Verres, was famously prosecuted for his corruption by Cicero. In the civil wars which brought the Roman Republic to an end, Sicily was controlled by Sextus Pompey in opposition to the Second Triumvirate. When the island finally came under the control of Augustus in 36 BC, it was substantially reorganised, with large Roman colonies being established in several major cities.
context_section_description: The first reference to a Christian presence on the island appears in Acts (28.12–13): "We landed in Syracuse, where we remained for three days and then we travelled along the coast and arrived at Rhegion." In this way, Paul of Tarsus, on his voyage from the Levant to Rome, which is described at the end of Acts, travelled through Sicily. He stopped in Syracuse after having been shipwrecked and forced to disembark on Malta. From Malta, according to the account in Acts, Paul travelled to Syracuse, but it is not clear why he stopped there. It is clear that Syracuse was still used in this period as a stop on the way to Rome on commercial trade routes. Perhaps Paul was hosted by a Jewish community, such as existed in many ports of the Mediterranean – the Jewish community at Catania is well-attested epigraphically. After Paul, there are no sources before the 3rd century AD which expressly mention a Christian presence on the island.
  There are various legends which link the arrival of Christianity in Sicily with Paul's brief sojourn on the island, while other traditions report that Paulmet Christians who had already arrived before him and that this was the reason why he stopped on the island. But Acts doesn't mention any of this and these traditions may respond to the desire to make the arrival of Christianity in Sicily as early as possible (60 or even 40 AD), in order to reinforce the authority of the Sicilian church.
  The first certain reference to a Sicilian church is found in an official letter (Epist. 30.5.2), sent from Rome to Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage. This document dates between 250 and 251 during the Decian persecution and discusses the lapsi – Christians who had performed acts of worship to pagan deities in the face of Roman persecutions. The letter mentions a similar letter sent to Sicily, which suggests that apostasy was considered a problem on the island as well and that the Christian presence on Sicily was already significant enough to have a hierarchical relationship with Rome. It is possible that this community developed at the end of the 2nd century AD or at the beginning of the 3rd century – the period in which the first archaeological evidence appears.
  The Decian (AD 250) and Diocletianic Persecutions (304) are the setting for the stories of two important Sicilian martyrs, Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy. These saints are known only from hagiographies written about two hundred years after the events, which represent them as young and beautiful virgins, victims of two persecutors called Quintianus and Pascasius. It is likely that these sources respond to a desire to link the two most important cities of eastern Sicily: Catania, home of Saint Agatha, and Syracuse, home of Saint Lucy. Significantly, all the principal saints of the island are women – in addition to Agatha and Lucy, there are the Palermitan saints, Nympha (4th century martyr), Olivia (5th century martyr), and Christina (martyred in 304), who was introduced into the cult of Saint Rosalia by the Palermitans. Perhaps this emphasis on female figures in Sicilian Christianity reflects the emphasis on female deities in pre-Christian Sicilian religion (e.g. Venus of Eryx, Isis, Demeter and Kore).
  Two important Christian inscriptions have been discovered from the period. One is the Epitaph of Julia Florentina, discovered at Catania in 1730 (in the necropolis on the site of the modern via Dottor Consoli) and now in the Louvre in Paris. It is a funerary inscription, dating to the end of the 3rd century AD at the earliest, which records in Latin the death of a child of little more than a year in age, buried next to the "Christian martyrs" (but it is not clear whether this refers to Agatha and Euplius). The inscription is the first direct evidence for Christianity on the island. The other inscription, also sepulchral, is the so-called Inscription of Euskia in Greek, which was discovered at the end of the 19th century in the Catacombs of San Giovanni in Syracuse and dates to the beginning of the 5th century. The document indicates a local cult of Lucy. At the time o
caption: The martyrdom of Saint Agatha (Cod. Bodmer 127, fol. 39v, end of the 12th century)
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