?^§ 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



C2"d s. VII. Mab. 12. '5». 



any one of the three translators — Traversari, Jo- 

 hannes Wolfius, or Barth. 



It may be proper to add that Gibbon, partly 

 perhaps through a willingness to place in the 

 strongest light the evidence for the miraculous 

 speech of the Confessors, has followed Ruinart 

 in attaching an importance to the; statements in 

 the Theophrastus, which they do not intrinsically 

 deserve. They occur, not in a work of history, 

 but in an imaginary conversation. The way in 

 which they are introduced is the following : — 

 Three imaginary persons take part in the conver- 

 sation : JEgyptus, an Alexandrian ; Theophrastus, 

 an Athenian ; and Axitheus, a Syrian ; the last 

 of whom is supposed to represent ^neas of Gaza. 

 Axitheus, in arguing for the resurrection of the 

 body, says that there are holy men in Syria and 

 elsewhere who prove by miracles the doctrines 

 which they teach. He then adduces three miracles. 

 The first is the case of a husbandman's dead son, 

 who was brought back to life by an old man 

 whom Axitheus knew. The precise time and 

 place of this miracle is not specified ; nor the name 

 of the old man who performed it, nor the name of 

 the husbandman's son who was the subject of it ; 

 nor the name of the husbandman who witnessed 

 it. The second miracle is the case of a blind dis- 

 ciple, who, in testimony of the truth of the doc- 

 trines taught to him, received his sight on the 

 seventh day after his- master's death, in accord- 

 ance with an assurance given to him by his master 

 when the latter was on his death-bed. In this 

 case likewise neither the time nor place is speci- 

 fied ; nor the name of the master who gave the 

 assurance on his death-bed, nor the name of the 

 disciple who received his sight. The third mira- 

 cle is the supposed miraculous speech of the Afri- 

 can Confessors ; in regard to which, although 

 Libya is mentioned as the country in which 

 the tongues extracted by the roots were " cut 



out " (" Tr)v 6eo(j)i\7J yKccrrav tKrefivd "), AxitheuS 

 does not specify the place where, nor the time 

 when, he saw any of the sufferers, nor how many 

 he saw, nor the name of any one of them. Com- 

 bining all these narrations with the imaginary 

 character of the Theophrastus, it is not easy to say 

 how far ^neas of Gaza deemed himself bound by 

 the laws of historical veracity, or how far he re- 

 garded it allowable to indulge in poetical colour- 

 ing or rhetorical exaggeration. That his account 

 of the supposed miraculous speech of the Confes- 

 sors is not free from exaggeration seems certain ; 

 for we find in it the extravagant statement that the 

 Confessors, when they had been deprived of their 

 tongues, spoke more clearly than they had done 

 before. It has been suggested by Dr. Newman 

 that this assertion receives light from a story told 

 by Count Marcellinus, that Hunneric ordered the 

 tongue of a Catholic youth to be cut out who 

 had lived from his birth without speech at all ; 



and that the youth soon after spoke, and gave 

 glory to God with the first sounds of his voice. 

 But there is no sufficient evidence of any con- 

 nexion whatever between this story and the state- 

 ment of Axitheus ; and even if any such connexion 

 were proved, and the story of the credulous chro- 

 nicler Count Marcellinus were true, this would 

 be far from affording a justification for that state- 

 ment. It would still be a palpable exaggeration 

 to generalise from that one case ; and if JSneas of 

 Gaza really intended to propose for our serious 

 belief everything supernatural related in the Theo- 

 phrastus, we could not avoid doubting the dispas- 

 sionateness and accuracy of his mind. At any rate, 

 it would be unsafe to rely on the Theophrastus for 

 any important detail of any kind connected with 

 the speech of the Confessors ; and it would be un- 

 reasonable to accept it as an authority for any fact 

 contrary to known anatomical laws. 



At the same time it may be readily. admitted 

 that -^neas of Gaza honestly thought that the 

 African Confessors spoke miraculously without 

 tongues. The so-called cutting out of the tongue 

 was not a regular lloman punishment, and he pro- 

 bably sincerely believed that the whole of their 

 tongues had been cut out, just as Colonel Churchill 

 believed so of the Emirs on whom he saw the 

 mutilation performed in the Lebanon ; and just as 

 Sir JohnMalcolmbelievedsoofZalKhanofKhisht, 

 with whom he frequently conversed at Teheran. 

 (See "N. & Q.," 2'"' S. v. 409—410.) In alf the 

 three cases, owing to indistinct anatomical ideas, 

 the excision of all that part of the tongue which 

 is loose in the mouth seems to have been con- 

 founded with the excision of the whole tongue ; 

 and the stump of the tongue, and the muscular 

 fibres which attach it to the lower jaw, seem to 

 have been confounded with the roots of the 

 tongue. Again, through the general immunity 

 from the punishment of mutilated tongues, ^neas 

 of Gaza was probably as ignorant as the majority 

 of even educated Englishmen at the present day, 

 that it is a natural organic law for persons to be 

 able to converse, more or less intelligibly, who 

 have been deprived of all that portion of the 

 tongue which is loose in the mouth, and who in 

 popular language are said to have lost their 

 tongues. If we consider, therefore, that the Afri- 

 can Confessors had suffered for their religious 

 doctrines, and if we bear in mind the ideas pre- 

 valent respecting miracles in the age in which 

 Mneaa of Gaza lived, it will appear not only not 

 surprising, but almost unavoidable, that the power 

 of speech of the Confessors should have been 

 deemed by him miraculous. E. T. 



In reading the late Dr. Eaine's beautiful me- 

 moir of the Rev. John Hodgson, F.S.A.N., the 

 historian of Northumberland, I have to-day met 

 with an anecdote strongly confirmatory of the 



