Note 81 — Chapter VI

Tradition tells very little about Cornelius. There is indeed a long article devoted to him by the Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, Feb. t. 1, p. 280, but there is nothing in it. He is commemorated on Feb. 2nd. The Greeks make him bishop of Scepsis, the Latins of Cæsarea. St. Jerome says that in his time the house of Cornelius had been turned into a church. The story of his life as told in the Martyrologies is evidently a mere mediæval concoction. At Scepsis the prefect Demetrius brings him into a temple of Apollo, when at his prayer the idol is smashed to pieces and the magistrate converted. Such stories are, however, the stock-in-trade of the legend-mongers of the Middle Ages.