The School at Rome

At Rome, where he settled after travels that included a stay at Ephesus, Justin opened a school of Christian instruction — by his own testimony in the Acts of Justin, in a room above the baths of one Myrtinus. There he taught the faith as a philosopher teaches in his lecture-room; his most famous pupil was Tatian the Assyrian, later the author of the Diatessaron and the founder of his own sect. There too he fell into public rivalry with Crescens, a Cynic philosopher whose hostility Justin openly accused of seeking his death — a foreboding the event fulfilled. This file treats the school and its conflicts.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

The School Above the Baths

Justin’s Christian teaching at Rome was conducted as a school in the recognizable mode of the philosophical schools of the age: a teacher with a fixed place, receiving any who came to learn. The most precise testimony comes from the Acts of Justin, the record of his trial, where the prefect Rusticus asks where the Christians assemble and Justin answers that he has been lodging above the baths of a man named Myrtinus (the name varies in the manuscripts), and that throughout his second stay in Rome he has known no other meeting-place; whoever wished to come to him there, he taught “the words of truth” (Acts of Justin, recension B, 3; trans. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, pp. 47–53). The detail is unusually concrete for an early Christian text and is generally taken as authentic: it locates Justin’s activity in a private upper room in the city, an informal academy where the faith was expounded to all comers (Barnard, Justin Martyr, pp. 13–14; Minns & Parvis, Apologies, pp. 32–33).

The school is the institutional expression of the vocation treated in the companion file (see Philosophy as the True Faith). Justin had claimed Christianity as the true philosophy; at Rome he taught it as one. His two Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho are, in form and tone, the works of such a teacher — reasoned, expository, addressed to the educated. Whether Justin charged fees, organized his pupils formally, or stood in any official relation to the wider Roman church, the sources do not say; the picture is of a respected Christian intellectual instructing a circle of hearers in his rented rooms (Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, pp. 11–12).

The Baths of Myrtinus

The location Justin gives at his trial — an upper room above the baths of a man named Myrtinus (or Martinus, or Timothy, as the recensions variously have it) — is a detail worth pausing on, because it tells us something about the shape of Christian life in second-century Rome (Acts of Justin, recension B, 3; Musurillo, p. 51). There were as yet no church buildings; Christians met in private houses and rented rooms, and a teacher like Justin received his pupils where he lodged. The public baths were among the busiest social spaces of the Roman city, and the rooms above and around them were let out as apartments and shops; Justin’s choice of such a place put his school in the ordinary fabric of urban life, accessible to whoever wished to climb the stairs and listen. The detail also has an evidentiary value at the trial: Rusticus asks where the Christians assemble, evidently probing for a wider network, and Justin answers that he knows only his own lodging — neither denying the faith nor betraying others, but stating plainly where he himself has taught. The baths of Myrtinus thus locate Justin’s school precisely in the world of the second-century city: an informal academy of the true philosophy, kept in rented rooms above a bathhouse, open to all comers.

Tatian the Assyrian

The best-known product of the school was Tatian the Assyrian, who tells us himself that he was Justin’s pupil and who became, in his own right, an important and difficult figure. Tatian is remembered above all for the Diatessaron, the harmony that wove the four Gospels into a single continuous narrative and became the standard Gospel text of the Syriac church for centuries, and for his Oration to the Greeks, a fierce apologetic far harsher toward Hellenism than anything in Justin (Barnard, Justin Martyr, p. 14). After Justin’s death Tatian drifted into rigorist and Encratite teaching — extreme asceticism, rejection of marriage — and was reckoned by the later Church a heresiarch (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV.29; trans. NPNF II/1). That the master was a martyr-saint and the pupil a condemned sectary is a sobering note in the story of the school, and a reminder that Justin’s open, philosophical mode of Christian teaching could lead in more than one direction. Eusebius also reports that Tatian, while still Justin’s pupil, shared his master’s exposure to the malice of Crescens (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV.16; trans. NPNF II/1).

The Rivalry with Crescens the Cynic

Justin’s Roman career brought him into open and dangerous conflict with Crescens, a Cynic philosopher whom Justin regarded as a charlatan — a man who courted the crowd’s favor and attacked the Christians not from conviction but from ignorance and to win applause. In the Second Apology Justin names him directly and accuses him of bringing the charge of atheism and impiety against the Christians without having examined the teaching he condemned, and he says outright that he expects Crescens to engineer his death: “I, too, expect to be plotted against and fixed to the stake, by some of those I have named, or perhaps by Crescens, that lover not of wisdom, but of boasting” (Second Apology 3; ANF 1; the chapter is numbered 8 in some editions, reflecting the disputed arrangement of the text — see The Shorter Apology). Justin had, he says, challenged Crescens to public debate and bested him, exposing that the Cynic either did not understand Christian teaching or did not dare to say what he really thought before the crowd (Second Apology 3; ANF 1).

Eusebius takes Justin’s foreboding as fulfilled prophecy. Reporting Justin’s death, he writes that “Justin… after he had in the garb of a philosopher served as ambassador for the word of God… most likely was put to death by [Crescens’] machinations,” and he quotes Justin’s own words about the plotting of the Cynic as the proof (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV.16; trans. NPNF II/1). How far Crescens was in fact the cause of Justin’s arrest is uncertain — the Acts of Justin, the actual trial record, do not mention him at all, naming only the prefect Rusticus and the charge of refusing to sacrifice (Acts of Justin; Musurillo). The tradition that Crescens denounced Justin therefore rests on Justin’s own expectation and Eusebius’ inference, not on the court record [Disputed: Justin (Second Apology 3) anticipates death at Crescens’ hands and Eusebius (Eccl. Hist. IV.16) reports it as having so happened; the Acts of Justin (Musurillo) record only the prefect Rusticus and make no mention of Crescens — so the role of Crescens in the actual arrest is attested by Justin’s foreboding and Eusebius’ inference, not by the trial record].

The Travels and the Coming to Rome

Justin did not begin at Rome. The Dialogue with Trypho is set at Ephesus, and Justin appears to have taught and disputed in the Greek East before coming to the capital; the Acts of Justin speak of his having been at Rome on two occasions (“this is my second sojourn in Rome”), which implies an itinerant phase of teaching and travel between visits (Acts of Justin, recension B, 3; Musurillo, p. 51; Barnard, Justin Martyr, pp. 13–14). The picture that emerges is of a wandering Christian philosopher in the mold of the itinerant teachers of the age, moving between the great cities, disputing in colonnades and gymnasia, and finally settling in Rome where the Apologies were written and the school established. Rome was the natural terminus: the seat of the emperor to whom the Apologies are addressed, the center of the empire’s intellectual and legal life, and a city with a large and prominent Christian community. It was there, in his rented upper room, that Justin’s career as teacher, apologist, and finally martyr came to its head.

The Character of the School

Justin’s school should not be imagined as an institution with buildings, enrollment, and a curriculum in the modern sense, nor even as an official organ of the Roman church. It was a private teaching-circle of the kind any philosopher of the age might gather: a respected teacher in a fixed place, receiving whoever came to learn, expounding his doctrine and answering questions. What made it distinctive was its subject — the Christian faith taught as the true philosophy — and its openness: Justin says he taught “the words of truth” to all who wished to come (Acts of Justin B.3; Musurillo, p. 51). The Apologies and the Dialogue give us, in effect, the kind of instruction such a school offered: reasoned exposition of Christian belief, defense against objections, demonstration from prophecy, and the framing of the gospel in terms an educated pagan or Jew could engage. The school was thus the laboratory of Justin’s written work and the seed of a Christian intellectual tradition that would find its fuller institutional form in the catechetical school of Alexandria under Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen a generation or two later. Justin stands at the head of that development — the first Christian we can clearly see teaching the faith as a philosophy, in a school of his own, in the heart of the empire (Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, pp. 11–12; Barnard, Justin Martyr, ch. 1).

The School and the Death

The school and its conflicts lead directly to the martyrdom. It was as the master of a known Christian teaching-circle in the capital — a man who taught openly, debated philosophers in public, and would not be quiet — that Justin came to the attention of the authorities; and it was in his rooms above the baths that the Christians who died with him had gathered (see The Trial Before Rusticus). The very visibility that made the school an instrument of the gospel made it a target. Justin had written that he watched Christians die fearlessly and was drawn toward the faith by their courage (Second Apology 12; see The Conversion); his own school became, in the end, the setting from which he and his pupils went to make the same witness.

References

The Acts of Justin and his Companions (recensions A, B, C). In Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 42–61.
Justin, Second Apology 3, 12. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV.11, IV.16, IV.29. Trans. NPNF II/1.
Barnard, L. W. Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Chadwick, Henry. Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
Minns, Denis, and Paul Parvis. Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.