From the Chambers’ Book of Days
A special reverence and interest is attached to St. John—’the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ Through a misapprehension of the Saviour’s words, a belief, we are informed, came to he entertained among the other apostles that this disciple should never die, and the notion was doubtless fostered by the circumstance, that John outlived all his brethren and coadjutors in the Christian ministry, and was indeed the only apostle who died’ a natural death. He expired peacefully at Ephesus, it is stated, at the advanced age of ninety-four, in the reign of the Emperor Trajan, and the year of our Lord 100; thus, as Brady observes, ‘making the first century of the Christian Era and the Apostolical Age, terminate together.’
Though John thus escaped actual martyrdom, he was, nevertheless, called upon to endure great persecution in the cause of his Friend and Master. Various fathers of the church, among others Tertullian and St. Jerome, relate that in the reign of Domitian, the Evangelist, having been accused of attempting to subvert the religion of the Roman Empire, was transported from Asia to Rome, and there, in presence of the emperor and senate, before the gate called Porta Latina, or the Latin Gate, he was cast into a caldron of boiling oil, which he not only remained in for a long time uninjured, but ultimately emerged from, with renovated health and vigor. In commemoration of this event, the Roman Catholic Church retains in its calendar, on the 6th of May, a festival entitled ‘St. John before the Latin Gate.’ Domitian, we are further informed, notwithstanding this miraculous interposition, continued obdurate, and banished St. John to Patmos, a lonely island in the Grecian Archipelago, where he was employed in working among the criminals in the mines. In this dreary abode, the apostle, as he informs us himself, witnessed those sublime and wondrous visions, which he has recorded King the Apocalypse.
On the assassination of Domitian, and the elevation of Nerva to the imperial throne, John was released from his confinement at Patmos, and returned to Ephesus, where he continued till his death. A tradition obtains, that in his last days, when unable to walk to church, he used to be carried thither, and exhorted the congregation in his own memorable words, ‘Little children, love one another.’ Partly in reference to the angelic and amiable disposition of St. John, partly also, apparently, in allusion to the circumstance of his having been the youngest of the apostles, this evangelist is always represented as a young man, with a heavenly mien and beautiful features. He is very generally represented holding in his left hand an urn, from which a demoniacal figure is escaping. This device appears to bear reference to a legend which states that, a priest of Diana having denied the divine origin of the apostolic miracles, and challenged St. John to drink a cup of poison which he had prepared, the Evangelist, to remove his skepticism, after having first made on the vessel the sign of the cross, emptied it to the last drop without receiving the least injury. The purging of the cup from all evil is typified in the flight from it of Satan, the father of mischief; as represented in the medieval emblem. From this legend, a superstitious custom seems to have sprung of obtaining, on St. John’s Day, supplies of hallowed wine, which was both drunk and used in the manufacture of manchets or little loaves; the individuals who partook of which were deemed secure from all danger of poison throughout the ensuing year. The subjoined allusion to the practice occurs in Googe’s translation of Naogeorgus:
‘Nexte John the sonne of Zebedee hath his appoynted day,
Who once by cruell Tyrannts’ will, constrayned was they say
Strong poyson up to drinke; therefore the Papistes doe beleeve
That whoso puts their trust in him, no poyson them can greeve:
The wine beside that halowed is in worship of his name,
The Priestes doe give the people that bring money for the same.
And after with, the selfe same wine are little manchets made
Agaynst the boystrous Winter stormes, and sundrie such like trade.
The men upon this solemne day, do take this holy wine
To make them strong, so do the maydes to make them faire and fine.’
