In the year 363, the Roman Emperor elevated a man named Apronianus to the position of governor. While en route to Rome to receive his commission, Apronianus suffered the loss of an eye (the details of how this misfortune arose are omitted or lost to history). Like many people do, Apronianus asked “Why me? Why has this horror befallen me?”
The conclusion that Apronianus came to was this: It was the work of magicians! Conjurers! Spirit-workers who could manipulate the physical plane! Like Herod deciding to kill all babies in the area of Bethlehem upon hearing (from magi/cians, no less!) that one of these infants would one day usurp his power over the Jews, Apronianus decided that he needed to kill all (or as many) of the magicians that he could lay his hands and weapons upon. Butler writes that Apronianus engaged in this massacre “to satisfy his spleen and his superstition.”
So who qualified as “magicians”? Of course, those who self-identified as such. But then there was an entire sect of people who claimed, on a regular basis, to turn bread into flesh and wine into blood–people who identified themselves as workers of miraculous healings (attributed to their Higher Power) and who claimed to offer eternal life. It simply does not get much more magical than this! Add that they proclaimed that their leader had died–died dead, as it were–and then returned to life for forty days, and then floated up into heaven!
Yup. Christians–those whom two-eyed Apronianus perhaps never gave much thought to–suddenly seemed to one-eyed Apronianus among those he needed to exterminate. Bibiana, a young virgin in Rome who was raised a Christian, was among those rounded up by the agents of Apronianus. At first, he did not want to execute this young woman (in fact, it seems he would like to have bedded her), but when all Bibiana would do when brought into his presence was hold fast to her Christian testimony and practice, Apronianus finally reached the point where he had seen and heard quite enough from her.
Butler narrates:
Apronianus, enraged at the courage and perseverance of a tender virgin, at length passed sentence of death upon her, and ordered her to be tied to a pillar and whipped with scourges loaded with leaden plummets till she expired. The saint underwent this punishment cheerfully and died in the hands of the executioners.
For those, like me, who wonder what “lead plummets” are, immediately below is a photo of one. Imagine the various cords of whips, each with one of these attached. So brutal, so horrifying. So much bitterness because of one male’s bodily misfortune, coupled with sexual rejection.
Women down to today continue to be accused of magical powers (not usually as such, but more like “look what you made me do!”) and are beaten and killed in every country of the world by men who seek to blame them for their misfortune, who feel the need to punish this female (or all females in general) for rejecting them, and who take what power they have to smash and pummel females to “satisfy their spleens and their superstitions.”
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